Hooray for specialness! Though for all we know, the squareness was to accommodate extra inertial dampeners to counteract the extra jostling from the higher speeds that lift went at, of course, to get everyone down there soonest. Likewise, the mag coil liners were specially made for that extra speed, and to get everyone around right angle corners a la car from the 1984 show "Automan". There, that feels better. Mark
Heh... I wandered off and started nitpicking the hull thickness issues over in Trek Tech and look what happens... Anyway, the screen shots of the revised layouts look great! Thanks for posting those, Rick. But, I don't suppose you were able to deal more with the varying deck height issue? As I've contemplated putting this together in Blender, I took some time and did create generally uniform deck heights throughout both hulls - worked out fairly well, really. But of course, I had to pretty much ignore the hull facade to do it...
Say graffy, since you can see people in his elevation view the hull thickness can't be more than a head and a should or about a foot and a half (estimate).
Given the back and forth we've had in the hull thread, I don't know that I'd consider the hull lines representative of the actual thickness at *any* particular point. But yeah, that seems reasonable.
That actually answers my question about the shape and design of the windows - I have never thought of them as skylights before!
The deck plans and cutaways and such were never really meant to represent real-world construction schematics. The Illustrator line weights were chosen from an artistic standpoint only. Most everything I did in the deck plans was intended as an item locator, more like icons on a general diagram. I'd have to be paid a ton more money to make sure that an NN pt line actually measured out to some real number of feet or meters. Rick
Yeah, I had more or less assumed as much. I've been toying around with building Enterprise D in Blender just as a fun little architectural side project. Figured maybe I'd try to lay out the framing on the blueprints in Inkscape first, just to see if I could make it all fit... It's a bit of a trick interpreting the frame and hull thicknesses from the tech manual and trying to put together a mental picture of the cross-section. Thus far, I've concluded that determining the hull thickness is more or less a creative exercise. So be it - that's most of the fun, anyway. Thanks, Joel
Hi Rick - would a reasonable extrapolation of the thickness of the hull come from a combination of the view you provide (below) and observation of the thickness of the window frames from say, "Ten Forward" or the "briefing room" scenes from the show? Or are those rooms with windows just happen to have unusually thin hull sections?
Couldn't you use Q-Who to get a "guesstimate" of hull thickness? It looks like a few inches of hull backed by a foot or so of "stuff"... http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x16/qwho_hd_262.jpg
I remember seeing this when I was a kid and it aired for the first time thinking, "Holy crap! the Borg just did that!" Season 2, right? which means I musta been about eight years old? Funny what sticks with you over the years... --Alex
Heh. How is it I don't remember that one? I know I was avidly watching by season two... I think I've more or less concluded the hull thickness can wildly vary, and I don't even need TV show screncaps to defend that. There seems to be plenty of room in the tech manual description to interpret the hull thickness a variety of ways. In fact, the only real conclusion I feel comfortable with is that it can vary between a foot to four feet... (and perhaps even twice that) depending on what part of the hull you're looking at. I'm itching to take a stab at laying out some framing members in Inkscape... After following Havoc92's build of the FJ plans (he did the bones last), I think it's probably the place to start after building the hull shell and breaking out the decks... Personally, I think a 3D view of the skeletal structure alone would be pretty cool.
That's beautiful HarryM. Excellent memory! edit: Huh, is that like the 2nd time we've ever seen a toilet? (other than one from ST5?)...
You deserve it. Thes Dot.com billionairs need to give guys like you and Aridas and others money--I am serious. Steve Jobs was influenced by Whole Earth Catalog. Ed Tuft and others should be sought out by kids like Zuckerberg. If I had his money, I would fund things like sailing ship replicas--but especially folks in the visual arts to do what they love--all mortgages paid so they may spend the rest of their lives creating--even if they weren't doing a job for me.
I am ressuracting / hijacking this topic as I recently got my hands on the Sternbach blueprints for Enterprise D. They are really beautiful. What has however bugged me is that there seems to be a "constructive issue" between Deck1 (Bridge / Ready Room / Observation Lounge) and Deck 1 lower. I think there is no space left between the bridge to actually fit the hallway of the Deck1 lower section. Same would be true with the ready room - which would block the hallway as well (or reduce its height to make it impracticle for waling, like 50cm or so). I digged further into this ;-) and also it seems this "issue" is still existing in the project for DeAgostini Japan as we can see in those pictures. Another topic is Picards ready room and the window next to his fish tank. We can see that the window has nearly full room height - and helow there is approx 1foot until the ships hull starts. In all exterior shots however the ready room window is actually more like half room hight (see picture below - its just the small "dot" left of the turbo lift exterior connection points) Anthe whole Bridge section (including the ready room) "sticks out" for approx only 50% "room height" out of the hull. Did this only bug me ? How did the OP got arround this issues when modelling in blender ?
I can't really speak to any Deck 1-2 alignment issues between the etched plexi parts as produced by DeAgostini Japan. My Adobe Illustrator files line up pretty well, so perhaps it was a scaling problem with the plastic bits. I'll look into any height problems between the decks. - Rick
Okay, I think one of the problems is with the actual config of the "ramp" called out in pink on this starboard elevation cutaway. The slanty bit would really need to extend down to the floor of Deck 2. I didn't intend that the ramp end up in some cramped crawlspace; it's a bit misleading. I suspect that a large scale foamcore model of the whole Deck 1-2 mess would be able to clear things up. And as to any shape or scale problems with the exterior of Picard's ready room, all I can say is that we whipped up the basic model of the wall in a very big hurry so that the VFX folks could make use of it. - Rick
Wow. I never expected to get such a fast reply ! And even from the master himself ! So nice to see everything in more glorious detail. Thank you so much for sharing the high-res screen shots. Yes seems really the misalignment between bridge and deck1 lower is some production issue of the plastics. Anyway I have a couple of more questions What about the rooms in Deck 1 - lower? I marked this in pink color. Are they supposed to be at the same level as the observation lounge ? Or are this really high rooms starting in Deck 2 ? As we can see in the 2nd picture of the crashed Enterprise there are windows (for rooms) at the front. But if the rooms are at the same level as the obs lounge shouldn't the stairs (green in front) also go up to the Deck 1 lower ? I suppose there is no room for the stairs I marked with te orange arrow to be in Deck 1 lower due to the bridge. Also shouldn't the elevator shaft (blue) be a little bit more in front, as the cutout in the deck plans marks the front elevator (of the bridge) to be the one going down