NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/aeronaut/airliner/12

Text File | 1992-11-19 | 2.3 KB | 53 lines

Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners
Path: sparky!uunet!decwrl!ditka!ohare!news
From: Pete Mellor <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: TV programme on 777
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Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 12:22:53 GMT
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Jonathan,

> Would anyone who saw the whole programme like to provide a
> brief summary in this forum?

(A slightly more temperate response to your question! :-)

The programme concentrated mainly on the design of the airframe, and the use
of CAD systems to do this. It described how the structural calculations and
spatial arrangement of components could be handled using 3-D movable graphics.
The design system was intended to be "paperless", with electronic transfer of
designs between engineers' workstations, instead of blue-prints being dropped
in in-trays.

Examples of the sort of problems they were shown tackling were "What weight
of metal can we drill out of this structure and still leave it strong enough
to bear the stress?", and "When the kitchen door opens, does it hit the knees
of the first-cklass passengers?".

There was quite a bit of time devoted to the design of the doors, with a
management requirement to have them all identical to cut production costs,
and the design problems this entailed. The poor old designer took three months
to solve this one first time round, under pressure from what the manager
described as a "management ploy". ("Well, if *you* can't do it, which
consultant do you suggest we bring in to solve it for you?") On the second
version of the design, the problem of door uniformity was solved in a few
weeks, and by the third iteration it was down to a few days.

It definitely did have the feel of a "Boeing commercial" about it, with lots
of "gee-whizz" shots of designers manipulating computer graphics, and
anecdotes of the "Yes, of course we had problems, but just look how we learned
to overcome them!" variety. (See the door problem above.)

It was an interesting programme, but I was disappointed to find only one
passing reference to the flight control systems, having originally watched
it in the hope of learning about Boeing's approach to fly-by-computer.

Pete
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