Hobbyists and others were mostly left out, and even those who had access to CAD tools were limited in their ability to be creative, as some parameters of fuselage, airfoil, and engine concepts were difficult to represent and couldn’t be modified without extensive re-work. For years, the best, and maybe only, way to dream up a realistic new aircraft design was to use computer-aided design (CAD) software, an expensive and regimented class of programs accessible only to professional engineers or engineering students. The old saying about the inability to build a better mousetrap could also apply to aircraft design tools.
