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Foils - Model Airfoil Plotter

Foils is a mature model airfoil plotter for Windows 3.1 onwards. It is known to work in all the Windows 95 family and to at least Windows 2000.

A new version, Foils 5, is in the planning stages. It is intended to produce a multi-platform program (ie including Windows and Linux), possibly written in Java.  More information is available from the Foils project summary at SourceForge.

Foils draws accurately scaled rib or foam cutting templates on any Windows supported printer, or via clipboard to some drawing and CAD programs.
 


Foils is OPEN SOURCE and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Features:

  • Draws leading & trailing edges and wing sheeting
     
  • Uses interpolation (spline) to ensure a smooth curve
     
  • Draws guide marks for foam cutting templates
     
  • Independently modifies camber and thickness
     
  • Selection of predefined sections
     
  • Built-in editor to add your own sections
     
  • Outputs to clipboard as metafile picture
     
  • Preview before print
     
  • Generates rib set
     
  • Imports and Exports standard .dat aerofoil definition files
     

More than 1100 aerofoil sections in .dat format are available from the UIUC Airfoil Data Site.

Download Foils 4.2f (425k) from SourceForge

At SourceForge you will find two files, Foils42f.zip and Foils42f-src.zip .

The Foils program is supplied as Foils42f.zip. You will need to manually extract it to a temporary directory, using Winzip or similar, before running setup.exe. Afterwards, delete the files from the temporary directory.

The source files are in Foils42f-src.zip. Download these if you want to further develop Foils, to add those extra features you have always wanted! Note that you do not need these simply to run Foils.

You are free to redistribute the Foils program under the GPL. If you do this must also redistribute the sources; the GPL does not permit you to supply the program without also supplying the source code.

This is the main program window. You can see the list of available sections, and the various features, such as leading and trailing edge, that you can select as required.

Foils main window

If the section you want is not included already, you can enter the coordinates yourself using this editor.

Foils edit window

This is an example of the way that Foils 4.2 provides support for foam cutting templates.

Foils foam template output

As a final example, this illustrates how Foils 4.2 can generate a set of ribs for a tapered wing, with thickness and washout varying across the span.

Foils rib-set output


For best results, use Foils 4.2 with a CAD package. For affordable CAD, check out


You may like to visit my website for more model-flying related topics.


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