MacFoil is a shareware Macintosh program that creates plots of airfoils, and is intended for builders of model airplanes. In addition to drawing the airfoil itself, it can also draw sheeting allowances and up to 10 spars or reference lines. It can create foam cutting templates including entry and exit ramps, washout (or washin) angles, and wire kerf compensation. You can edit an airfoil's thickness and camber, and export the modified airfoil data to a text file. You can also export an airfoil plot in DXF, EPS, or PICT format, and MacFoil prints at high resolution on printers that allow it. MacFoil runs on any PowerPC Macintosh with minimum 800 X 600 screen resolution, MacOS 8.6 or higher (including Mac OS X), and CarbonLib installed.
The latest version is 1.5. See the new features page for a list of changes from earlier versions. A complete version history is in the help files included with the program.
MacFoil is $25 shareware, and you can register securely online with a credit card. (If your browser won't support secure connections, register here instead.) There are many other payment options as well, see the Read Me file for more information. Registered users will receive a unique registration code that will disable the otherwise annoying timed startup dialog.
NEWS: There is a new version of MacFoil as of Feb. 10 2007. There is only one small change: the annoying "can't open airfoil data files" bug (see below) is fixed. Also, it won't run on OS9 anymore. This version is not well tested: please contact me with any problems you find.
If you're running OSX, use this version.
If you need to run OS 8.6 through 9.x, use the previous version 1.5, and note the bug alert below.
--BUG ALERT--
There is a bug in MacFoil, especially under Tiger (OSX 10.4.x), that sometimes prevents the program from recognizing airfoil coordinate files. Luckily, there is a simple workaround: use a utility like FileType, (available at http://www.frederikseiffert.de/filetype/) to change your airfoil coordinate files to type 'TEXT' and creator 'Foil' (case matters!). You can just drag a whole folder of them onto FileType and change them all at once. After that, MacFoil should recognize them just fine. Sorry for the trouble...
--END BUG ALERT--
The original version of MacFoil (1.0b3) is still available for those with really old Macintosh systems