ABSTRACT
IN 1991, THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL LAMENTED, “Unfortunately, the overall quality of engineering design in the United States is poor…. Partnership and interaction among the three key players involved in this endeavor—industries, universities, and government—have diminished to the point that none serves the needs of the others…. This state of affairs virtually guarantees the continued decline of U.S. competitiveness.” During that same year, the ACSYNT Institute, a new joint venture between industry, university, and government, was struggling to share research and development activities in the conceptual design of aircraft, particularly in developing and using the ACSYNT computer program. Originally written by engineers at the Ames Research Center of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA-Ames), the computer program had new capabilities in computer-aided design written by faculty and students from Virginia Tech.
