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University of Colorado Boulder · AIAA Design/Build/Fly
Student working on CAD in the lab
Member resources

Everything you need to start contributing

The software we use, the shop trainings to get out of the way early, and the places the team talks and stores its work.

Software

Four tools cover almost everything

Install these in your first week. Each one is free to CU students, and the tutorials linked below are the ones our leads recommend.

Fusion 360

Fusion 360

Almost all of our modelling is done here, especially the mass components and moving parts. Free for students through the ITLL.

Get Fusion 360
XFLR5

XFLR5

Handles the aerodynamics: airfoil selection, drag polars, aerodynamic surface design and stability simulation. Free and open source.

Download XFLR5 Tutorial
MATLAB

MATLAB

Where XFLR5 and Fusion data come together to simulate missions, run sensitivity analyses and make the plots that go in the report. Free through CU OIT.

Get MATLAB Tutorial
Arduino

Arduino

Microcontroller programming for the mission-specific moving electrical parts and flight-test instrumentation.

Get the Arduino IDE Tutorial
Hardware and shop

Get your trainings done early

The ITLL and the Aerospace building run short trainings for each of these. If you are missing any, getting them out of the way is the fastest route to being useful on build days.

  • 3D printing · FDM printers in the ITLL for brackets, mounts and mission hardware.
  • Laser cutting · Ribs, spars and formers straight from the CAD flat pattern.
  • Machine shop · Mill, lathe and hand tools for metal fittings and moulds.
  • Soldering · Harnesses, connectors and boards for the avionics stack.
  • Basic electronics · Enough to read a schematic, meter a circuit and not let the smoke out.
ITLL trainings
Student holding a laser-cut wing sectionLaser-cut wing
Collaboration

Where the team lives online

Microsoft Teams

Team communication and file storage. Join the channels of the subteams you are interested in and add the DBF folder to your OneDrive.

Open Teams

Overleaf

Proposal and design report drafting in LaTeX, with the whole team editing the same document.

Open Overleaf

GitHub

Code management and version control for avionics firmware, MATLAB analysis and this website.

Open GitHub
New here? The onboarding document with a primer on RC aircraft is pinned in the General channel on Teams. Start there, then work through the join checklist.
Next step

Stuck on something?

Ask in the subteam channel on Teams, or grab a lead at the next full team meeting. Nobody expects you to know it all on day one.

Join checklist Contact a lead