How Streamlining Workflows Helped This Company Create the First eVTOL to Be Certified Worldwide

The race to being the first eVTOL aircraft to be certified worldwide meant that Joby Aviation had to accelerate internal loads modeling to one-third of its original time requirement.

Edited by EE Staff

Cool Stuff

Nov 3, 2026

Aerospace

With a composite airframe, tilt rotors, and a four-passenger capacity (plus pilot), the Joby aircraft is designed with a range of 150 miles to take customers from one side of a major metropolitan area to another in a fraction of the time it would take them by car or rail—and 100x quieter than a helicopter. In Central California, where Joby is headquartered, this means going from San Jose to San Francisco in 15 minutes, compared to the 1.5-2 hours the same trip takes by car or rail today.

To achieve this seemingly impossible task, the engineers at Joby Aviation needed an engineering platform as next-generation as its airframe in order to achieve its ambitious certification goals. This is what led the company to Cadence’s MSC Apex software—with its integrated CAD-to-Mesh workflows—that allow for rapid design iterations to be completed in fractions of the time it would take using traditional FEA software packages.

*Images courtesy of Hexagon and Joby Aviation.*

To generate internal loads for a certified new aircraft, the full airframe FEA modeling environment must be organized, while also being flexible enough to handle rapid changes. This certification is traditionally a long multi-year process, which is complicated by analysis occurring sequentially with design changes. Joby Aviation set a target of ridesharing with passengers in 2024, requiring innovative concepts where design and analysis happen in parallel. To meet this goal, a company-wide focus on streamlining legacy workflows and processes was needed, in addition to support by advanced software. Simply put, the traditional ways of doing internal loads modeling would not work. Nontraditional engineering workflows require non-traditional engineering software.

“I’m sure I’m not alone in getting frustrated with overcoming the inertia of ‘the way things are done’ in this world of new aircraft certification. But here at Joby, every opportunity we can get to pull that schedule to the left, we are open to exploring,” said Brian Smith, Structural Analyst & Internal Loads Specialist at Joby Aviation.

To find an optimized solution, engineers at Joby had to ask themselves where they spent most of their time—is there anywhere that someone is waiting for inputs before continuing their work? Is there anything that can be done in parallel? Is there opportunity to either combine toolsets, or come up with ways for them to sync together?

The Right Software

When Cadence’s MSC Apex was evaluated, every step of design and analysis was compared to the current toolset to measure the time saved, and to look for efficiencies. During this evaluation phase, a benchmark was completed, focusing on time spent in the areas of geometry cleanup, meshing, mesh connection, design change incorporation, and achieving a run-ready NASTRAN model.

A game-changer arose during this benchmark when a design change was incorporated, and this change needed to be reflected by updating the existing structural finite element model (FEM) for Internal Loads modeling. Whereas the traditional toolset required a complete model rebuild, Cadence’s MSC Apex was able to incorporate the design change and modify the existing FEM, thus enabling a new Internal Loads model to be built in a fraction of the time. This benchmark resulted in a five-day workflow being reduced to a single day of effort, with much of the time saved due to seamlessly switching an outdated part to a new design with no re-meshing required.

Cadence’s MSC Apex’s Transform tool can be seen in action on a doubly-curved fully composite fuselage section, allowing for “on-the-fly” design changes with all elements and connections staying intact, requiring almost zero re-work. Images courtesy of Hexagon and Joby Aviation.

In addition to the engineering time saved, overall frustration was decreased immensely, which was traditionally caused by repetitive and mundane tasks throughout the internal loads finite element modeling process. This frustration was prevented through the focus on user experience as well as the technical modeling process in Cadence’s MSC Apex. By incorporating updates based on real-world feedback and suggestions from Joby Aviation in both product and people-focused dimensions, Cadence’s MSC Apex is helping drive a greater shift towards ecosystem-level support in engineering.

Rear image of Joby’s eVTOL aircraft, showing the vast amounts of doubly-curved surfaces on the fuselage and wing. Images courtesy of Hexagon and Joby Aviation. — *Rear image of Joby’s eVTOL aircraft, showing the vast amounts of* *doubly-curved surfaces on the fuselage and wing. Images courtesy of Hexagon and Joby Aviation.*

“The Apex platform is so fundamentally more usable than other pre-processors, it gives you the freedom to build the model how you want to, rather than making the user conform to whatever the pre-processor’s ‘method’ is. The pre-processor should be the tool, and the engineer the driver, not the other way around, and Cadence’s MSC Apex gives the user freedom when others do not,” Smith said.

For information:

Hexagon

MSC Apex

Joby Aviation