Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I am impressed they have a distributed CAD/CAM system which lets them share the schematics of the planes construction with all the partners. "Source Code Control" in the 3D CAD space was abysmal, got better in the 3D digital feature space as studios created systems for asset management, and it seems to be solidly implemented by Airbus here : (video link: http://videos.airbus.com/video/dc6bd25e7f3s.html)

View on HN

> "Source Code Control" in the 3D CAD space was abysmal, got better in the 3D digital feature space as studios created systems for asset management, and it seems to be solidly implemented by Airbus here

I doubt that when technical drawing "versioning" predates CAD by decades, in the form of drawing release/review and configuration management (CM) groups that were highly organized by WW2. This was then implemented by packages like ENOVIA, SolidWorks PLM, which facilitate the review/signoff process to be paperless, but it is basically the same. This is completely different from the entertainment industry, which doesn't care about part compatibility, analyst reviews (stress, aerodynamics, weights, etc.), not to mention the nature of CAD data (rife with engineering metadata on assembly hierarchies, dimensions with tolerances, materials) being very different from the "looks good" graphics of entertainment/art.

My take on it has always been that 'drawings' (in the draftsperson meaning) were essentially the archive format of designs. So while you could look through a list of change orders in a drawing, seeing what that change was, or more commonly not seeing it, has been the challenge. Boeing made a big deal about this when, as a Sun customer in the '80s, Sun helped them put basic drawings online as living models/schematics.

I would agree its less impressive if everyone is forced to used the same CAD package. The video did not state whether or not that was the case.

EADS/Airbus are using CATIA by Dassault Systemes/IBM. Though they had some issues during development of A380 (different software versions, change management, etc):

  Initial production of the A380 was troubled by delays 
  attributed to the 530 km (330 mi) of wiring in each 
  aircraft. Airbus cited as underlying causes the 
  complexity of the cabin wiring (98,000 wires and 40,000 
  connectors), its concurrent design and production, the 
  high degree of customisation for each airline, and 
  failures of configuration management and change control.
  The German and Spanish Airbus facilities continued to use 
  CATIA version 4, while British and French sites migrated 
  to version 5. This caused overall configuration 
  management problems, at least in part because wiring 
  harnesses manufactured using aluminium rather than copper 
  conductors necessitated special design rules including 
  non-standard dimensions and bend radii; these were not 
  easily transferred between versions of the software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A380#Production_and_delivery_de...

Nevertheless, CATIA is top-notch is used by many car, ship, aircraft and spacecraft manufactures.

Thanks for that, so the cost of doing business with EADS/Airbus is you need to buy CATIA license? In the past this was a challenge with people picking up small machine shops and what not since they had their own design flow. So I'm curious if IBM/Dassult made allowances for that or if there is a $50K "membership" fee which you have to pay to get into the EADS club :-)

It's not implemented by Airbus, the revision control is built into CATIA, the commercial software they use (made by Dassault Systemes).

I'm currently working with some 3D CAD software like Inventor and Creo Parametrics. They still save versonioned files (gear.prt.1, gear.prt.2).

Not sure what to think about that.

Reminds me of this:

http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/The_Best-est_Version_Control...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com