OpenVSP Wing Blending
These topics will guide you through the basics of wing blending in OpenVSP and will demonstrate how to successfully leverage these features to create smooth, clean, and robust models quickly.
Encyclopedia
Updated Sep 25, 2025
Contents
Introduction
Wing blending enables direct control over the sweep (angle) and strengths of the leading and trailing edge feature lines. Users may control one side of an airfoil blend or both sides at once. Both sweep and strengths may be set manually or based on the inboard or outboard wing section definition. The local dihedral angle may also be altered.
Wing blending is very similar to skinning and follows some of the same best practices. Be cautious, however, because two opposing blends can quickly crash into each other and cause extreme surface rippling. Keep increasing a blend's strength to see this in action.
Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer
Blending Winglets
The guide below will demonstrate how to achieve smoothly blended winglets by combining adjacent airfoil station sweep, strength, and dihedral. Extreme differences in chord between the main wing and winglet can be tricky to blend but often are successful after some iteration.
Modeling winglets effectively was traditionally difficult to achieve in OpenVSP before blending. Now, it couldn't be easier. Fast, parametric variation on winglet designs is incredibly accessible without lots of manual fiddling.
Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer