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AddPlyby Addcomposites

Learn AddPly

Guided exercises for real laminate work.

Five exercises take you from a shipped four-ply starter to a multi-face CAD laminate, then through materials, layer inspection, reinforcement patches and the design-intent handoff. Every step names the control it uses and the result to expect, and every exercise ends with what it does not claim. For the one-page map of the whole workflow, start at the Guide; these are the hands-on exercises it links into.

Format self-pacedTotal about 140 minNeeds a desktop browser

0°+45°-45°90°

Open workspace Five aerospace design casesSandbox challenge

The five exercises

Do them in order, or jump to the one you need. Each lists its own prerequisites and starting example, so you never have to guess what should be open first.

  1. First laminate: a four-ply [0/+45/-45/90]

    Open a shipped planar example, confirm its four declared plies, save it, reopen it and export it.

    15 min · Beginner

  2. Multi-face CAD laminate: several faces, one tooling surface

    Open the shipped B02 curved skin, group its connected faces, read the cross-face region, inspect the declared rules, measure exact evidence, save/reopen and produce the summary and plybook.

    40 min · Intermediate

  3. Materials and process intent: author, bind, and let evidence go stale

    Create or import a material card, bind it to plies, add a process card, read usage and counts, then regenerate stale evidence.

    30 min · Intermediate

  4. Inspect layers, add patches and understand ply drops

    Continue on your own mold: build the skin, vary reinforcement footprints, inspect each layer and read the local thickness steps.

    35 min · Advanced

  5. AddPath-ready handoff: export design intent, not paths

    Assemble the design intent AddPly can currently provide and export the open handoff, with its boundaries stated.

    20 min · Advanced
Technical render of the AddPly wing-skin example: a NACA 2412 upper skin with four local thickness zones, ply-drop ribs, a declared fibre-direction field and the tool rosette.
The same real render the product page uses, generated from the repository wing-skin example. Exercise 2 works on your own imported CAD faces; the wing-skin example itself is a single imported surface and is not a multi-face demonstration.

Sandbox challenge: change the design, keep the claims honest

There is no single right answer here. Take the laminate you built and change it deliberately, then prove the change flows through the evidence.

Try at least four

  • Add two plies, reorder the stack, and confirm the orientation counts change in Summary… after Regenerate.
  • Duplicate a ply onto the same region and then delete it; use Undo to bring it back.
  • Edit one ply’s declared Angle (°) and re-run Measure local declared-thickness map; explain why the measured areas stay the same while the declared thickness may not.
  • Cut a second region from a different tooling group (or a different projection plane) and measure the all-regions intersection of the two.
  • Give one region a different material and compare nominal material usage in Summary….
  • Expand Layup checks, declare the maximum consecutive same orientation reference with Apply rule and see whether your stack passes.
  • Tick Require symmetry about the mid-plane and Require off-axis balance, then read each region’s verdict in the stack panel and in the plybook. Remember NOT_REQUIRED is not a pass.

Keep the claims honest

  • Do not describe the sandbox as manufactured, flight-ready, qualified or certified.
  • Do not claim a drape, a solved fibre path, a course or a machine program: AddPly defines the laminate and the build produces none of those.
  • Do not claim strength, stiffness, buckling, mass, producibility or aerodynamic results from declared data.
  • Do not quote a sheet that shows STALE — Regenerate it first.
  • Do not claim the AddPath consumer exists or that an exported handoff has been validated by one.