Structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model of an orbiter conceptStructural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model of an orbiter concept

As part of my day job at a US government space agency, I developed a tool to quickly generate structural finite element models of aerospace vehicles including rockets, aircraft, and landers. While not its primary purpose, the program can also be used to create models for 3-D printing. It is called Loft and was recently approved for public release. It can be downloaded for free at https://software.nasa.gov/software/LAR-18704-1. If you want to take a look at the manual before downloading the software you can see that for free at https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230001772. I also gave a presentation at the AIAA SciTech conference in January 2024, where I talked about the code and three broad use cases for it.

The conference paper can be read here. And the AIAA featured my paper on Kudos here.

Here are some 3-D prints that I created using Loft:

Aircraft, rockets, and component 3-D models created in Loft
Teaching aids for a Calculus class created in Loft

The Loft input files to create these calculus models are linked below: