RDS includes an all-new 3-D CAD module that was developed specifically for the design of new aerospace vehicles. It "knows what an airplane is" and has numerous features that allow rapid creation and modification of aircraft and spacecraft components. A new design can be developed in as little as an hour (1-2 days is more typical). Once the design is created, this Design Layout Module automatically extracts the important geometric information and loads it into the appropriate analysis module via an automatically-created RDS TAB file, which is also useful as a source of geometric information for reporting purposes.

RDS rapidly analyzes an aircraft's aerodynamics, weights, propulsion, longitudinal stability, and cost, and performs mission sizing and range/loiter analysis. RDS has complete performance analysis including takeoff, landing, rate of climb, Ps, fs, turn rate, and acceleration. RDS provides graphical output for drag polars, L/D ratio, thrust curves, flight envelope, range parameter, and more. RDS-Professional also has a built-in optimization capability including classic Carpet Plots and a full Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO). RDS works equally well in Metric and FPS units, and all inputs and outputs - past and present - can be instantly switched from one to the other.

An experienced RDS user says, "RDS quickly provides mission results as accurately as a full-blown mission program. Given a couple of days and a simple picture, I can predict if our engine will provide the desired performance. This is a great improvement over our previous methodology." - J. Turner, Principal Engineer- Powerplant Installations Analysis, Honeywell Engines & Systems

RDS comes in a full-featured Professional version and a reduced-capability Student version whose license agreement restricts its usage to educational purposes (including self-instruction). Click here for a viewgraph presentation of RDS and its capabilities, here for a detailed RDS writeup, here for sample illustrations from RDS design and analysis work, and here for a paper describing the mathematics used in the Design Layout Module.

NOTE TO PURCHASERS: RDS is a DOS program. You don't need to know anything about DOS to run it. Just follow the simple set-up instructions and click on the shortcut on your Windows desktop. RDS has a nice mouse-driven interface and is easy to learn. It runs great under most versions of Windows. Under 64-bit Vista you have to run RDS through DOSBOX or something similar. It takes a bit of effort to set this up the first time but then it runs just fine. Click here for more information.