In recent times, the Internet has enabled groups of engineers to work together with the sort of depth and breadth undoable years before. The Bleriot Project is a special example. In December 2007, Frenchman Stephane Bouye began working with a team to recreate the famous 1909 Bleriot XI airplane to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its first flight across the English Channel. GrabCAD chatted with Stephane about how this was accomplished and his thoughts on GrabCAD and collaborative design and manufacturing.
Stephane Bouye is a professor working for the French Ministry of Education, spending his time setting up training centres in Mexico, India, Brazil and South Africa in partnership with Dassault Systemes. These ‘Product Lifecycle Management Competency Centres’ aim to teach others on PLM methodology using CATIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA & ENOVIA.
The Bleriot Project started when Brazilian aviation enthusiast Fernando Botelho contacted Stephane in December, 2007. Botelho had already crafted a 1908 Demoiselle and wanted to create a Bleriot XI from original drafts and fly it at the 2009 Air Show in Le Bourget in France. “It was a huge project so we decided to share the work with PLMCC in Brazil, India and France, and also to use and test a SMARTEAM Database.” Stephane continues, “Our students were very excited by the project. Even if it was complex, I think for all of us it was a great challenge and we learned a lot from each other. We shared work, but also expertise.”
The team worked from the original yet unrevised blueprints from 1909, challenging them to improve the whole airplane. 100 years earlier, if a problem was discovered during manufacturing, adjustments were made and the masterplan was left untouched. Jumping forward to the 2008, the same problems were occurring during the ‘virtual’ assembly. Clash detection, airflow simulation and other analysis techniques were utilized to optimize the entire blueprint and ease the final manufacturing step. In the end, metal parts were sandcasted from 3D prints of the patterns and the cores.
This was no prototype for the windtunnel. The first and only Bleriot XI was built directly from CAD, taken straight out of the hanger and flown. An impressive accomplishment in itself, but a legendary one when you consider that it was co-created by a group of engineers linked together by the right software, training and interests! It is only fitting that a revolutionary design such as the Bleriot XI monoplane was given new life by an international team. The original aim of Frenchman Louis Bleriot and his team was to make an airplane that could make its way across the English Channel and win the £1,000 prize, one of the many international competitions that helped further the nascent aviation industry. Does this sound faintly familiar?
The rapid advancement of CAD software and 3D printing allow the engineer to create amazing and work and get it out the door quickly. However the most valuable development has been the parallel growth of social networks like GrabCAD that bring together engineers, CAD drafters and designers together. GrabCAD fulfills the missing element of collaborative work – finding the right people. As Stephane kindly described GrabCAD, “It’s amazing! It’s really nice to see a community of engineers like this…much better to spend time on GrabCAD than on Facebook because it’s so much more productive.
The Bleriot Project was designed to teach PLMCC students, but demonstrates that given the right environment and proper management, anything is possible. Collaborative engineering is going to change everything because its becoming easier and easier to meet and work with like-minded individuals. As the costs of prototyping go down, the barriers to what can be actually created disappear, providing an invaluable impetus for social design and engineering. This is precisely why GrabCAD exist, if only to make it easier for the world to come together and create nothing like what has been done before.
