Airframe Assembly

Syncrofit™ Provides a Defining Moment for Airframe Assembly

Aerospace manufacturers are looking for technology partners to help them navigate state-of-the-art airframe development. Airframes are extremely complex in their own right and the growing use of composite structures are making them that much more difficult to engineer.

For instance, defining holes and fasteners for today’s complex airframes is crucial to keeping an aircraft program on schedule. Taking an integrated approach to airframe design and assembly is key for making well-informed design decisions so the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fasteners in a single aircraft—and their location, type, fastening requirements, material and cost—can be effectively managed and communicated throughout the supply chain.

Vistagy’s Syncrofit software is the only production-proven, CAD-integrated, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution for managing the complexities of airframe interfaces with a particular emphasis on fastened structures. Syncrofit, which is part of the Vistagy Aerosuite™, has broad capabilities to efficiently author, validate, and communicate both the type design definition and the manufacturing assembly states of the airframe.

Syncrofit is a family of engineering software applications developed specifically for designing and manufacturing airframes and large aerostructures. Today’s "new world" airframe design calls for digital model-based definitions that minimize the tedious, time-consuming process of creating drawings, while taking into account new composite materials, manufacturing technologies and globally distributed partners. Vistagy software helps you easily author and capture complete digital representations of airframe assemblies and share critical design and manufacturing detail more efficiently than ever across your enterprise and the global supply chain.

Additionally, by using Syncrofit to define fasteners early-on, aerospace manufacturers are able to provide procurement with precise and up-to-date bills of materials (BOMs) and dramatically compress the fastener management process. Using Syncrofit to manage all the fastener details and the interactions of components within the assemblies, engineers can validate that fastener design rules have been met and that the ripple effect of changes during skin thickness updates are propagated throughout the assembly.

With Vistagy’s Syncrofit, engineers can:

• Employ a single interface for capturing and authoring design details;
• Define information concerning non-modeled parts such as coatings, sealants, labels and inserts;
• Define joint definitions and part relationships;
• Determine fastener specifications and locations to ensure accurate part manufacturing;
• Streamline the supply chain and share detailed data across supplier organizations.
• Develop the inputs for automated hole drilling and fastener installation systems.