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General OpenVSP Component Controls

These features are inherent to all OpenVSP components. The tutorials below will introduce you to several of these features and help you understand attachment and positioning, symmetry, and even mass properties.

Encyclopedia
Updated Sep 18, 2025

Contents

Component Name and Color

You can change the name and color of your component from the “Gen” tab in the component window. Both the wireframe color and the component material (shown in Shaded view) are accessed in this tab.

It only takes a moment to give your component a unique name or color which will save you from confusion and mistakes later.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Component Tessellation

This topic will cover changing the component surface tessellation for both “body” and “wing” type geometries and how those settings can affect your models and analyses.

Avoid over-resolving the tessellation when you don't need it. Most OpenVSP operations work well at lower resolutions.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Mass Property: Fundamentals

This topic covers the basics of component mass properties and how to adjust these parameters. More modern versions of OpenVSP (v3.35.0 and up) enable you to specify mass properties and inertias under the “Mass” tab. Specified mass properties will stack with generalized volume- and surface-based mass so be careful.

Mass property interaction can become complex very quickly. Used sparingly, component mass can add depth and meaning to your model beyond the outer mold line.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Mass Property: Priority & Intersection

This topic covers how different components intersect under mass properties and how mass priority changes these behaviors. The higher priority will be calculated first, then the next lower, and so on down to zero. In the example of a wing of priority 1 intersecting a fuselage of priority 0, the wing mass will be computed for the entire wing volume and the fuselage mass will be computed for the entire fuselage minus the volume occupied by the wing.

As of OpenVSP v3.45, components completely contained within other components will not have surface mass calculated into the final result. For example, a hollow tank inside a fuselage will essentially have no mass because the surface mass is ignored. This is a known deficiency and is among the requested feature improvements.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Component Transformation

This topic covers the basics of component transformations such as translation and rotation using the “XForm” tab.

The basics of the XForm tab must be well-understood to grasp the more advanced interactions resulting from attachment. Take some time to get to know the controls.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Attachment to a Parent Origin

This tutorial will demonstrate how to attach a component to a parent geometry origin and illustrates the translation and rotation behaviors resulting from this attachment.

Attaching to the parent origin is exceptionally useful and is commonly used for relative placement and rotation among geometries in OpenVSP.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Attachment to a Parent Surface

This tutorial will demonstrate how to attach a component to a parent geometry’s surface and illustrates the translation and rotation behaviors resulting from this attachment. Enacting combinations of translation and rotation attachment helps you achieve some amazing behaviors and parametric variation in OpenVSP that would otherwise be extremely cumbersome or difficult in traditional CAD software.

Surface attachment is a powerful feature of parametric modeling that helps ensure geometries maintain relative placement along a surface where you intend, even when the parent surface changes shape.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Attachment to a Parent Volume

Although the video tutorial for volumetric attachment has not yet been created, you can read one of the more recent presentations by Rob Mcdonald from the 2024 OpenVSP Workshop covering attachment and symmetry more generally. Thank you for your patience as we work to add content to this library.

Compared to surface rotation attachment, where the component is rotated normal to the surface, volumetric rotation attachment aligns the component along the body's internal axes and parametric space. This can be a very versatile tool in your arsenal.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Component Symmetry Introduction

This tutorial introduces the multiple different types of symmetry available in OpenVSP and how to set and adjust them.

Component symmetry across planes or about axes is very useful and ensures appropriate copying of geometries while driving any designs from a single component. However, for any anti-symmetric behavior or designs, such as with twin-engine airplanes with same-direction propellers (critical engine, etc.), you will need to model each component separately.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Symmetry and Attachment

The component symmetric behavior depends on where and how the component is attached to its parent or where it is placed relative to the global origin. A child component may not be attached to a parent geometry at all yet still rely on that geometry as a basis for symmetry.

Be sure to choose the right basis for your component symmetry. Change some parameters around once you've set symmetry to ensure that the model behaves as expected. Just because it looks right, doesn't mean it is right. Checking your work now is much less painful than finding it later.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Symmetry with Propellers

Propellers allow you to combine axial and planar symmetry to create reflected axial arrangements in your model. For example, you can use a Prop component and planar symmetry to make counter-rotating propellers on either side of your aircraft.

Propellers have their own blade symmetry about the thrust axis by default. This may be cleverly combined with other kinds of symmetry create interesting shapes but be careful of unintended behaviors.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer

Scaling Components

This tutorial demonstrates how to apply component scaling using the Scale parameter in the XForm tab. Note that scaling may be performed multiple times or all at once. You may also perform a group scaling operation by selecting multiple components and using the Group Modifications window. Until you click ‘Accept’ the scale will be saved with your model and you can reset to 1.0.

Component scaling and smart input fields go hand-in-hand to quickly and accurately make unit changes. For example, you can combine several unit changes into a single step by multiplying each factor together.

Brandon Litherland
Aerospace Engineer