Another take on the Original Enterprise...

[Gep Malakai]

Ziz wrote:

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Cary, can you change some of those pics to thumbnails/links? I'm running 1680 x 1050 and even with the browser maxed, I STILL have to scroll from New York to Los Angeles to see the whole thing.

I'll do you one better--I'm at 1920x1200 and still get massive page stretching.

[Cary L. Brown]

Okay, I've gone a step further, with a little bit of input from David Shaw (thanks!) in determining some details of the internal configuration of the ship.

The primary hull has some circular corridors, obviously. Not every corridor will be the same diameter, but they were all portrayed by just one corridor set in TOS. We have to acknowledge that this was a "cheat" and was never really intended to be a 100% accurate representation of the interior of the ship... don't you agree?

Well, I've done some basic cleanup on the studio plans (manually) and have created a section with dimensions. It's interesting to note just how crude the studio plans really were... lines aren't straight, curves aren't true arcs, etc... they're really hand-sketches, and I'm sure that the carpenters had a fun time figuring out how to make everything fit together! There's just enough information to serve as guidance, but nothing to the level of a true, dimensionally-accurate blueprint.

Still, the general information is there. One element that was given, explicitly, was the interior wall diameter for the briefing room set. So, from that one detail, and the "cleaned-up" drawing, I was able to create the following.

My "stake in the sand" is the 55' 7" radius from the centerline of the primary hull to the interior wall of the briefing room set. I scaled the set-drawing to match a real feature in my model at that diameter. And here's what I got.



What's interesting here is that the walls are actually far, far thicker than even I'd been assuming - 0.735m, or 29". (The yellow line represents my original, presumed "minimum wall thickness," by contrast). This actually makes a bit of sense, when you consider that they would have to put a guy inside that wall on either side of a doorway in order to pull the doors open or push them closed. Still, it's a serious chunk. And by reviewing the other set drawings, it becomes clear that this is a fairly typical wall thickness.

Also, I've determined that the corridor we're familiar with seeing is exactly 2.5m wide (98.5", or 8' 2 1/2"). Other bits I've extracted include the fact that, yes, the sets were 10' 0" tall overall, with each double-pocket door being 6' 6" tall and 4' 2" wide. There's a 5" distance between the top edge of the door and the reduced-height in the interior of the door alcove. As I've stated before, I really didn't feel obligated to keep the 10' number, as much of that is simply extended above the "set details" to prevent shooting of the rafters, I think, but I've permitted a full 10' from one deck to the next deck anyway, and I'm pleased with my choice.

How do you guys feel about the full 10' number? Anyone have a real argument against reducing that? It seems that, with the walls being so much thicker than I'd originally assumed, there's a lot of internal structure there already... but I still like having some internal structure between the deck and the next ceiling level down.

Just so you know, I plan to have an identical corridor matching the set on every deck where it will fit (in the primary hull), and that will drive my general internal design.

[TIN_MAN]

I'd say ignore the 10' hieght, as that's just the standard hieght of the "flats" used to build the sets, so it has no relation to haw high the decks were actually supposed to be.

[Psion]

Cary, I've gotta say [jog, jog, jog to the right] that this model is fantastic. [jog, jog, jog back] And the ten foot deck height [jog, jog, jog back out to the right] seems perfectly reasonable and [jog, jog, jog once more to the left] even leaves room for goofiness like Jefferies tubes [walk, walk, walk to the right] between decks if one assumes the tubes run like [walk, walk walk back to the left] duct work over working spaces.

(Just let ... me catch ... my breath ... a minute.)

Also, let me congratulate you [limp, limp, limp to the right] on creating a thread that burns calories. Could you please put in some turbolifts? 'Cause I'm done going back and forth and plan to stay right here for the remainder of the discussion otherwise.

[Shaw]

My general view of the deck heights is that for the corridors, they need to be tall enough to support the periodic cross-panels, and the other rooms can be lower (specially the ones that include structural members). This would mean that if you had to cut through the floor to get to the next deck, you'd want to do it where you'd have a corridor below.

I can't recall off hand, but I seem to recall a small opening between decks in some of the early episodes (like Charlie X) that some crew members were working with. Those showed a minimum deck thickness in the corridors of 6 to 8 inches (of course there wasn't actually another deck below on set).

[Cary L. Brown]

Psion wrote:

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Cary, I've gotta say [jog, jog, jog to the right] that this model is fantastic. [jog, jog, jog back] And the ten foot deck height [jog, jog, jog back out to the right] seems perfectly reasonable and [jog, jog, jog once more to the left] even leaves room for goofiness like Jefferies tubes [walk, walk, walk to the right] between decks if one assumes the tubes run like [walk, walk walk back to the left] duct work over working spaces.

(Just let ... me catch ... my breath ... a minute.)

Also, let me congratulate you [limp, limp, limp to the right] on creating a thread that burns calories. Could you please put in some turbolifts? 'Cause I'm done going back and forth and plan to stay right here for the remainder of the discussion otherwise.

Hey, I'm just trying to ensure the physical fitness of my peers...

Seriously.. didn't mean to cause problems. I have to admit, it's hard to judge by sight, since I'm running this 30" 120hz panel and those images only span half my screen. I did read PTrope's "pinned" thread and so I'll do my best to comply with that from hereon out.

And on that note...

I've done a bit more with internal layout and windows. The really interesting thing is that the "ring corridor set" used in the physical sets really makes a LOT of sense, especially at this scale. There are six decks where this is the ideal corridor size. The "weapons deck" has a smaller corridor (but since we've only seen this deck once, in "Balance of Terror," and only seen the corridor once as Spock ran back to the phaser control room) I don't have a problem with a minor tweak to what was seen on-screen there.

By the way, one thing I've done is created four big "lounge" areas at 45-degree angles around the primary hull outer diameter. I'm assuming one of these is where the Koridian Players did their performance, and one is going to be the gymnasium (from Charley X). The aft portion of the outer ring will be impulse engineering (including two control rooms which will look something like main engineering, but will be oriented tangentially to the ring rather than radially, and both facing towards the impulse engine core). I'm thinking that the lower portion of the ring may also include some 6-person lifeboats (ejected radially, much like was seen in "In a Mirror, Darkly" on the mirror NX-01).

All my internal walls are now 0.735m thick, to match the physical sets.

The good thing here is that six of the primary hull decks have the actual physical ring corridor, so pretty much every shot from the series (except for those involving main engineering) can be made to work.

Because I'm going with a lot of non-habitation space in the primary hull (and also in the secondary hull) the idea of everyone having their own cabin is, as expected, going to go by the wayside. A few lower ranked personnel will have private cabins, but this will be due to the requirements of their job (such as Rand, who serves as the Captain's secretary and works extensively from her cabin). Most crew will be 4-up, with higher-ranked ones being 2-up, as will the jr. officers (like Chekov). Higher-ranking officers will have private cabins on Deck 5, of course.

[FrontLine]

Cary, great work and I cant find fault with a decision you have made yet. I'm looking forward to seeing this project grow. In the mean time what CAD package are you using? I use ACA 2008 and seeing this work you are doing is really kicking me in the butt. I really need to learn how to work in 3D

[Cary L. Brown]

FrontLine wrote:

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Cary, great work and I cant find fault with a decision you have made yet. I'm looking forward to seeing this project grow.

Thanks, I appreciate the comments from you (and all the rest of you too). I'm putting it up here for two reasons - one, it's just more fun to do this stuff when you can share it with people who'll appreciate it, and (2) because I'm (as always) actively seeking comments, both positive and negative (provided that the negatives fall into "constructive criticism" rather than what I've seen a bit too much of in other arenas on here from time to time). So please, everyone, feel free to chime in, suggest, criticise, etc.

In the mean time what CAD package are you using? I use ACA 2008 and seeing this work you are doing is really kicking me in the butt. I really need to learn how to work in 3D

I'm running Pro/ENGINEER, "Wildfire 2.0" at home. At work, I'm using Wildfire 4.0 (upgrades are expensive and I don't need the minor additional capabilities for home work), and they've just released another major build ("Wildfire 5.0").

I've used plenty of 3D CAD packages, but overall, Pro/E is my favorite. Which is not to say it doesn't have problems... and that some of the other packages don't excell where this one has troubles. Pro/E's rendering capabilities are minimal... but I have a few add-on rendering options I play with, as well as an old version (6.0) of Maya that I can interchange data with for nicer renderings, once I've got everything really worked out.

Now... on to today's work.

Mainly, I've been working on the dorsal and windows today, with the real focus being getting the integration between the dorsal and the primary hull to make sense. (I've also added in the beginning of nacelle pylons, but those are mainly there to help me judge interconnections between power systems, and to START thinking about secondary hull structural elements.)

Here is the primary hull with the new dorsal. I think it looks very much like the real ship.


(FYI - My biggest gripe with the Casimiro plans is that they reduce the primary hull underside details a bit, and even if those are "more accurate" they don't look to me like the ship I see on my screen. I far prefer this version, with the slightly larger lower primary hull protrusion.)

Now, a section through the centerline of the ship. (Note that when you see solid material, you shouldn't assume "solid mass of metal" in the "real" ship... those are just regions which are heavy with structural materials and hardware, but are not necessarily "solid volumes." That includes walls, decks, hull, and the big regions you see here. Basically, I'm modeling habitable spaces and leaving everything else solid. Make sense?)


Now, realize I've taken a few liberties here to make everything work, and one of those is here. I'm not "exactly" matching the window locations on the model (per ANY of the sets of prints I've seen). Here are my window locations as compared to the Sinclair window locations.


What I did there was to choose a "dorsal deck height" (in this case, 8' even) and a "dorsal deck thickness" (in this case, 2') and start shifting things around 'til everything lines up as well as it can. I thought about altering deck thicknesses in the dorsal, but didn't end up having to do that. The region up at the top is where the interconnection occurs... about halfway between the ceiling of deck 8D (that's "eight, dorsal") and the lower lip of the primary hull.

Once I had everything "tweaked in" (remarkably, I didn't even have to change the deck spacing or deck thickness numbers this time, though normally that's unavoidable) and I'd made my decks inside the dorsal's volume, well... I had to decide how to handle windows. I wanted them to be at a consistent height and size... they're 1.6m wide, 0.75m high, and 1m from the deck at the lower edge, by the way. It actually matches up very nicely, and some are pretty much exact. I moved a few windows longitudinally, to avoid having them go across any "split lines" (which can cause problems when making windows the way I do), but I don't think this is really noticeable, do you?

I'll add in the round "sensor windows" on the primary hull underside and the dorsal once I'm done with the square windows.

Now, I've also STARTED on the secondary hull's mechanical structure. One of the big "whines" I frequently hear about the TOS Enterprise is that the pylons are just "Popsicle sticks" stuck onto a cylinder, but that's not really true. Jefferies clearly thought through how this would all integrate, and I believe that if handled properly, (ie, build the rooms around the mechanism, not the other way around!) you can have a very robust structure here. What you see here is the very beginning of my secondary hull structure... the pylons come together at the centroid of the secondary hull (the inside corner of the "V" is exactly at the axis) and also are supported by "heavy ring" structures at the leading and trailing edges. There will be similar "heavy ring" structures at the dorsal leading and trailing edges. There will be several "heavy beam" elements going between the two ring sections, but a central axis "heavy beam." My plan for the secondary hull is to build the structure first, then start laying in decks and rooms and so forth.



One of the most common topics of conversation re: Trek has always been "where is the engine room?" Well, I imagine that the "triangle of pipes" falls right in the middle of the "V" made up by the pylon frame members. I'm not sure of exact details yet, though, obviously... I want to let the geometry drive the location, not vice versa.

[Captain Robert April]

I suggest you do yourself a favor and forget trying to use that tube assembly to determine the location of Engineering. Besides the obvious (opposite orientation, wrong angle), that approach also puts Engineering right up against the hangar deck, with no room to play with whatsoever.

Divorce that thing from the struts, so that yout can put it anywhere you want, and life does get a bit easier.

[sbk1234]

That is frickin' awesome!

[Psion]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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... Seriously.. didn't mean to cause problems. I have to admit, it's hard to judge by sight, since I'm running this 30" 120hz panel and those images only span half my screen....

Okay. Now I'm trying to decide if my envy for you has spilled into loathing. I hope you get whiplash using that thing, you ... you ... you glutton!

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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I've done a bit more with internal layout and windows. The really interesting thing is that the "ring corridor set" used in the physical sets really makes a LOT of sense, especially at this scale. There are six decks where this is the ideal corridor size. The "weapons deck" has a smaller corridor (but since we've only seen this deck once, in "Balance of Terror," and only seen the corridor once as Spock ran back to the phaser control room) I don't have a problem with a minor tweak to what was seen on-screen there.

Well done! As a youngster I remember looking at the FJ blueprints and being disappointed that all the TV action appeared to occur on only one deck in one particular corridor. I love big corridors and all, but this standardization makes the show make sense again. Thank you!

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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Hey ... that gizmo on the front circular glowing ports looks kind of familiar. Did you intentionally evoke Nomad? Okuda did almost the same thing, sticking the shape in engineering on 1701-D.

[USS Mariner]

I'd strongly encourage you to explore testing observation lounge designs using the ring of windows on the underside of the primary hull. Even at a 945ft scale (because, at that size, the 11-footer becomes at perfect 1/84th), the view and set possibilities are fantastic. My favorite use of the space was as double-height areas, emulating the Rec Dec's intended design with slopes and multiple levels, including an open space in the center and walkways along the windows for up-close views of the outside. It was a glorious mock-up, using as many TOS set elements as possible, like the ubiquitous angled support beams.

Shame. I'll have to rebuild the thing from scratch someday. I scrapped the model a long time ago, and I never thought any of those test shots were good enough to keep....

[BK613]

This is insanely great! Keep up the good work!

[Cary L. Brown]

Psion wrote:

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Well done! As a youngster I remember looking at the FJ blueprints and being disappointed that all the TV action appeared to occur on only one deck in one particular corridor. I love big corridors and all, but this standardization makes the show make sense again. Thank you!

Well, you're welcome... but believe me, I'm as pleasantly-surprised as anyone at just how easily this is all falling together. Almost as if the guy who did the original work might have actually had some of this in mind... sorta makes you go "hmmmmm."

Hey ... that gizmo on the front circular glowing ports looks kind of familiar. Did you intentionally evoke Nomad? Okuda did almost the same thing, sticking the shape in engineering on 1701-D.

Glad someone caught that... even though I altered it later on to look a bit LESS "nomad-y." My first-pass looked exactly like Nomad in-section like that, but I thought that was maybe just a bit TOO "cheesy."

FYI, the "gizmo" is a long-range, high-power scanner. There are three of them, with one facing directly forward and one to either side a few degrees offset (with overlapping cones of observation). Along with the dish (which is a totally different technology and which collects other forms of information as a result) you have the main "eyes" of the starship.

What you see on the main viewer, in fact, is a computer-generated image composited from the data collected by the many sensors and scanners throughout the ship, and with significant processing associated with the resultant imagery. You're not looking out a "window into space," but rather at a "composite data representation" of what's REALLY out there, but altered to make it more useful (for instance, making ships which may be millions of kilometers apart seem to be a few hundred meters apart, so that both ship's actions can be seen at once... or altering the nearly-imperceptable levels of light in space into something which seems almost like "studio lighting.") And of course, as a typical rule, the image seen omits any visual indication of the starship hull unless otherwise requested.

What you see in there are these three "scanner-telescopes" sharing a common ... well, think of it as a "water cooling jacket." You only see the aperature from outside, of course, but there's a lot more hardware inside.

Anyone who's familiar with my "Vega" class ship (originally my Titan design submission, and seen in small scale in my avatar) knows about the "nose" that seems to rub some folks the wrong way. But realize, that "nose" on the Vega is just a larger, more complicated and more sensitive version of this same "forward scanners" concept which I've been in favor of for as long as I can recall. But while the 1701 has three "telescopes," the Vega has an array of several hundred, all more powerful than the ones on the 1701, forming a "synthetic aperature array."

[Psion]

Awesome. You do realize though that you and I are in the minority of opinion about the function of those ports? Most everyone thinks they're windows ... they are, after all, the same color as the other windows. Not that it matters -- most people think it's all just a TV show so what did they know?

And my apologies if I've missed this, but is it your intention to leave the turboshaft exclusively vertical? I wasn't paying close attention to your Vega because while I found the technique fascinating, the subject of your work wasn't as interesting as this old girl, but I just assumed it had the usual run of turbolift tunnels. Here it looks like just a single shaft in the primary hull. And if you are running a shaft to the secondary hull, will the car tilt and go down diagonally, or do you prefer the more orthodox sidestepping shaft?