The main route: engineers virtually configure and test routing designs for the new Airbus. (User focus: 3d design).

When it takes to the sky in 2004, the new Airbus A380 from Airbus SAS (Toulouse, France) will be the most spacious commercial passenger aircraft ever built, measuring 80 meters from nose to tail and from nose to wing tip. Despite the plane's enormous size, the space allocated to routing the aircraft's critical internal systems is more constrained than ever.

Conserving space for the fuel, electrical, oxygen, and other systems was the key to accommodating 555 passengers in a three-class interior layout, compared to the smaller 75-meter A340-600, which seats 380. To meet this design demand, Airbus engineers are using a 3D virtual environment called IRIS, a acronym for the French translation of interactive System Implantation and Routing, to conceptualize and analyze these systems during the airplane's initial development phase.

The design software, created by the EADS (European Aeronautic Defense and Space company) Corporate Common Research Center (CCR), enables architects to quickly explore different configurations for the 11 systems that snake throughout the plane, and later output the data to a CAD program. The application does not require a tremendous amount of computer memory, so it can function on a PC or workstation. Furthermore, users do not need previous CAD experience, because the program was designed for engineers who are accustomed to working with 2D drawings.

"Most of our system engineers do not use CAD programs, so we needed an easy-to-use application that would allow them to rapidly predesign, visualize, and analyze all systems throughout the airplane," says Christophe Brosse, head of systems layout integration for the Airbus. "IRIS is like [Microsoft's] PowerPoint, only in 3D. All the systems can be created, viewed, and modified. Then, once the routings are validated, the data can be exported directly to the airplane's structural architecture within the CAD program."

The CCR development team based the application on the Sense8 WorldToolKit from EAI (now UGS), a library of virtual reality functions for building, manipulating, and navigating data within a 3D environment. The IRIS data can be exported in VRML format for browser viewing, or directly into PTC's CADDS 5i CAD/CAM suite, which is primarily used for the Airbus's overall structure development, along with Dassault Systemes' Catia.

A Direct Route

Once the basic structure ...