PropCad upgrade

For the past three years, HydroComp has been developing enhancements to the PropCad software in order to update and expand PropCad’s propeller design capabilities. According to HydroComp, a substantial effort has focused on data entry and visualisation. As a result, PropCad has moved to a table-driven interface that allows users to quickly enter and modify data in their designs. The content of the interface has been consolidated so that principle dimensions, radial distributions, and 2D section offsets are now all visible on the main screen. A new summary table displays the derived characteristics of the design, including weight, mass moment of inertia, total skew, and mean pitch. The display mode enables graphing of any radial distribution, such as chord, skew, or pitch angle. One-click graphing allows quick visualisation of blade outlines, thickness profiles, and 2D section offsets.

PropCad 2014 also features an improved, fully-parametric Builder that allows users to define radial distributions of parameters from HydroComp’s library propellers, from user-generated distribution files, or by entering the data directly into the sections spreadsheet.

By Jake Frith