About the drawing on the front page

The front page of this site carries one drawing: a Bombardier Global 7500 standing on a display plinth. It is not a picture of an aircraft. It is built from more than fifty solid parts, each one defined in code, grouped into six assemblies you can pick out one by one.

How it is made

The drawing is built with Anatomy, a kit for isometric technical illustrations. The fuselage, the engine nacelles, the wheels and the fairings are turned parts: a profile spun around an axis, the way a lathe would make them. The nose is turned about an axis tilted 5.5° down from the cabin's, which gives it the 7500's droop and puts the windscreen across its front. The wings, winglets, fin, tailplane and pylons are flat profiles given thickness. A script places every part, records its true shape, and measures which part is in front of which, so the drawing stays correct while it moves.

Hover a part, or use the arrow keys, and its assembly lights up. Press Space, or tap the plinth, and the aircraft comes apart: the fin and tailplane lift, and the engines and wings slide outward. The nose, cabin, tail cone and landing gear stay on the plinth.

What is published, and what is not

The drawing is to scale where Bombardier publishes a number: 111 ft (33.8 m) long, 104 ft (31.7 m) across the winglets, 27 ft (8.2 m) to the top of the tail, and a 35.3° wing sweep. The engines are GE Passports, rated at 18,920 lbf of takeoff thrust, and each fan has 18 blades, as drawn.

Everything else is an interpretation, drawn by eye from photographs: the diameter of the fuselage, the shape of the windscreen, the number and position of the windows, the panel lines, the planform breaks and the landing gear. Treat it as an illustration, not an engineering drawing.

Sources

• Bombardier, Global 7500 specifications, as cited on Wikipedia.
• GE Aerospace, Passport engine datasheet.