Six Weeks of Advanced Aircraft Design Workshops: What I Learned on the Front Lines

The last six weeks have been a concentrated test of everything we've built at nTop.

The nTop team ran five advanced aircraft design workshops with major defense contractors and one innovative startup, working directly with customer engineering teams to solve their most challenging vehicle configuration problems.

These are the engineering teams building next-generation fighters, UAVs, launched effects, and more.

I want to share what we learned, both about our technology and about what the aerospace industry really needs right now.

What is an "Advanced Aircraft Design Workshop?"

These aren't sales demos or marketing events.

They're intensive, three-day technical collaborations where we deploy our best aerospace experts and engineers directly alongside customer teams to tackle real programs with real deadlines.

When I say we show up on-site, I mean we roll up our sleeves and solve actual engineering problems. Over three days, we work shoulder-to-shoulder with customer engineers to build complete workflow solutions in nTop that address their specific mission requirements, design constraints, integrations, and analysis needs.

The stakes are high. If we can't deliver meaningful results in three days, we've wasted everyone's time. If we can, we've proven our technology works for production programs.

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The Technical Challenge We Set Ourselves

We could have stuck to safe, pre-built demonstrations. Instead, we committed to tackling whatever design challenges customers brought us, even if we'd never solved anything quite like them before.

Modeling Evolution

We started the summer with basic outer mold line models. By August, we were delivering full-fidelity aircraft with parametric airfoils, complex internal structures, fuel systems, and landing gear integration. Every model had to maintain geometric integrity, no matter how extreme the design changes became.

Analysis Integration

We integrated with whatever tools customers already used, including CFD packages, structural analysis software, and custom MDO frameworks. In one workshop, we even enabled a customer to call their own MATLAB scripts directly from within nTop, creating connections to their proprietary calculation methods.

Performance-Driven Design

This was the fundamental shift. Instead of only inputting geometric parameters like fuselage diameter or wing chord, our team made it possible to input performance requirements like range, altitude, payload capacity, and mission profile. The system automatically adjusts geometry to meet those requirements.

Real-Time Performance Feedback

We proved in real workflows that performance analysis doesn't have to happen after design decisions are made. Our latest workshops feature embedded performance predictions, fuel calculations, and mission analysis running alongside geometric changes. Engineers explored trade spaces with real physics feedback, not just pretty pictures.

What Customers Actually Told Us

The feedback has been direct and honest, which I appreciate. One engineering lead at a major prime captured the workflow shift perfectly: "This lets us go from multiple engineers per concept to multiple concepts per engineer."

That statement encapsulates everything we're trying to enable. Instead of assembling teams to develop single design points over weeks, individual engineers should be able to explore dozens of configurations in days, all with physics-backed performance data.

A conceptual design veteran with 25 years of experience told me he'd "never seen anything as useful as nTop for conceptual design." When someone who's spent that much time in the field says your tool addresses something they've never seen solved before, you get excited.

The time savings are substantial—tasks that took engineering teams three weeks are now completed in one to two days. But I've learned that the real value isn't just speed. It's the quality of decision-making that becomes possible when iteration cycles compress from weeks to hours.

The response has been encouraging across the board.

What strikes me most is how quickly word spreads in this industry. Customer-led advocacy is the most powerful marketing there is, and we're seeing engineers from completed workshops discussing our capabilities with peers at other organizations.

Technical Problems We Had to Solve

Several technical challenges from these workshops pushed our platform in new directions:

Unbreakable Parametric Models

We had to create aircraft models that never fail, regardless of parameter changes. Transition a twin-engine configuration to single-engine? The geometry has to regenerate cleanly every time. Adjust wing sweep, shear, and twist simultaneously? It has to work. This reliability is non-negotiable for the exploratory design work our customers need to do.

Live Optimization

During one workshop, we achieved something I'm particularly proud of: live multidisciplinary design optimization running in real-time during the customer session. Design parameters updated automatically based on performance targets while maintaining geometric validity. Watching optimization loops execute live, with customer executives in the room, proved our technology is production-ready.

Physics-Connected Geometry

We moved beyond parametric models to intelligent ones. Airfoil profiles respond to aerodynamic requirements. Structural elements adapt to load paths. Fuel systems adjust to mission profiles. The geometry isn't just flexible—it understands engineering.

Development Speed

The workshop environment forced us to develop capabilities faster than I thought possible. When customers needed specific features to solve real problems, we developed and deployed solutions in days. Features like adaptive meshing, advanced lofting controls, and multi-domain analysis emerged directly from workshop requirements and got implemented immediately.

How This Changed Our Product

These workshops have significantly accelerated our product development. The complex requirements we encountered forced rapid evolution and showed us exactly where to focus our engineering resources.

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What We've Shipped

In response to workshop feedback, we've delivered enhanced model generation capabilities, lofting tools, curvature visualization, improved documentation, adaptive meshing for multi-scale problems, and support for multiple fluid domains.

What's Coming Next

Current workshop-driven development includes advanced optimization frameworks, enhanced lofting blocks familiar to CAD users, convergent body export for seamless CAD integration, and nTop Arrow for streamlined workflows.

Every feature we develop earns its place by solving real customer problems first, then gets generalized for broader platform value. This customer-driven development approach ensures high market validation for our roadmap.

Five More Workshops Ahead

The momentum continues. We have five more workshops scheduled over the coming weeks with five more primes. Each workshop builds on what we've learned from the previous ones and we get to tackle new technical challenges.

The interest level has been strong. We're receiving workshop requests from organizations we've never worked with before, all seeking to understand how computational design can accelerate their development timelines and improve their competitive positioning.

The Bigger Picture

Here's what I've learned from being on the front lines with customer engineering teams:

• Traditional workflows can't keep pace with program requirements anymore.
• Design cycles that took months need to compress to weeks.
• Teams that explored single concepts need to evaluate dozens of alternatives.
• Analysis that happened after design decisions need to inform those decisions in real-time.

After six weeks of intensive customer collaboration, I'm confident in saying this: We have the most powerful software on the planet for vehicle and aircraft configuration today. There is no other platform out there that comes close in this application space.

The workshops have proven it. The customer feedback validates it. The pipeline opportunities confirm it.

The question for aerospace engineering leaders is straightforward: Are you ready to change how your team approaches vehicle design, or will you continue wrestling with workflows built for a different era?

If you're ready to see what's possible, let's talk about bringing our teams together for a design sprint. I guarantee it will be three days that change how you think about design.

Interested in learning how nTop can transform your aircraft design workflow? Contact us to discuss bringing an Advanced Aircraft Design Workshop to your organization.