Isn't it though? No serious design work can be done only in 2D. You MUST build it in 3D or you will be all too likely to miss some critical conflict. Until the advent of computers for Ship Design, the plans as they came from the naval architects would be "interpreted" by the builders. Often, a ship would have to have extensive modifications while still on the slips to make some critical piece of equipment fit. This also led to wild variety among ships of the same class. Now, ships are built in the computer long before they get to the shipyard. While I won't say that modifications have gone away, they have become far less drastic, and things fit together much better (according to my sources at Newport News Shipbuilding, and the Norfolk Navy Yard). I didn't build my system to be a server. I built it to be a CAD system and a server. That means fast OS HDD (get an SSD if you can justify it, I didn't mostly because my older systems would seem that much slower by comparison. I comprimised though, and got a 300GB VelociRaptor OS HDD), throw as much RAM at it as you can afford/fit (my budget would have allowed for more RAM, but 6x2GB was the best I could get at the moment - the virtualization servers I use at work have 32GB of RAM, and about 8TB data storage. Of course, we also run several hundred virtual machines on them). I bought the most powerful processor I could before hitting the knee of the cost curve (Core i7 2.6GHz - $200, Core i7 3.2GHz - $999; let's see, going from 3.1GHz Pentium IV to Core i7... I could get the extra 600MHz by paying an additional $700?). Video card and monitors of your choice (gaming cards are not a bad idea here). That ought to be enough for a CAD system. I also wanted virtualization capability, so I had to max my available RAM. I also wanted to run a high capacity RAID, so I put in 3x1.5TB 7400RPM HDD's in a RAID5 configuration. I mounted it at /home, so even if the OS HDD crashes, I have lost none of my user data. I also have samba shared directories on /home, and am setting up all my other systems so that I save all my data to there over the network. You don't need to do that for a CAD system, but I was multi-purposing this system, and that drove many of the stats up. I also built it myself (Having a Microcenter a mile from your house can be a good thing, but it can also be an expensive thing). The only other suggestion, make sure you have a UPS that is capable of shouldering the load of the system for at least a few minutes (to survive brownouts). Buying a UPS to be able to maintain operation of the system for any length of time gets expensive.
There's Win XP mode and the compatibility settings to help out with that. This ground-up Enterprise is amazing...it's how I always picture doing the ship, and it'd definitely be awesome to do a walk through with some 3d game engine of this ship some day.
I'm stuck using 32-bit WINE under 64-bit CENTOS, so I sill have the 4GB limit, but I probably got away from the XP-imposed 2GB limit (we'll see in time). The other 8GB of RAM allow me to do other things with the system simultaneously (such as running Blender to do high-res renders. Say... do I have time to do that tonight?) For the 3d walk-through, I am planning on using Blender. Now, if I can just figure out how to use it....
To this portion, if I were to design a ship, I'd probably have the intermix chamber further back in the engineering hull, not connect to the impulse system (no real need, and the neck is a vulnerable point to the matter/antimatter system anyhow), and allow the split for the pylons and the drop door. I'd have the drop door simply not cut the shaft in half if I were to do it over again. I'd also use one photorp chamber, large-size, and chalk up the 'clean' photorp room to production oversight. That said, I think CTM is doing great work trying to adhere as closely as possible to the plans, and that's what I'd be doing as well - try to be as true as possible to the plans, while accommodating the flawed production. CTM - you are doing great work, and I look forward to each update on this thread. At some point in the future, with this experience in hand, perhaps you could work a 'dream TMP Enterprise' taking into account the conflicting accounts, and correcting them to make it work more logically. But that's for a different time. Excellent work on this!! James
You realize that from now on, whenever I read your posts, in my head you're going to sound like Professor Farnsworth.
Not substantially larger, no. I googled "Farnsworth Avatar" and got the background picture, and then took an Enterprise linedrawing, inverted it, and inserted it in place of the chalkboard. Took me under 5 min. I was playing around with importing my WIP into blender last night (actually playing around with getting blender installed on my new system) so I don't have anything new to show as of yet (except the AV, which doesn't count).
I'm saving this post for my end of the year Fry's shopping spree I do to make myself happy. I've never gotten a more complete. Incidently, it's intresting....we here were just talking UPS and the instability of the Texas power grid. Apperently our little grid isn't as well powered as the West and East Coast grids so surge protectors won't work well here on computers. They said it would kill a computer over time unless it had a continuous flow of power like in a UPS. I was a bit surprised.
Some more progress on G-deck. I've framed Auxiliary Control, and built the inner ring of quarters. I've also placed the corridors that run past the labs, Sick-Bay, and the Transporter Rooms. There are some extraneous corridor elements crowding Aux. control, they are leftover from my corridor placement, and I generally move them to the next layer when I finish whatever layer I am working on.
G deck looks good. One question though - what're those corridors doing outside the saucer? Are those F-Deck? Or just extraneous corridors? Keep up the good work! James
They are extending into the shallow spot on the underside of the saucer. There is another ring along the outer edge of the saucer that is out of the field of view of this picture. If you look back at the prior pics, you can see the whole deck at an earlier stage.
CTM, I assume you're using layers. Can I ask, if time and easy permits: Could you color code the coponets. Perhaps Turbo Lift Tubes, Transporter Room, corridors, and crew quarters for the saucer?
I do intend to deal with that, but have not gotten so far yet. My primary hull ports do, but I haven't addressed those in the secondary hull yet. They'll go in when I go back through and do the deck-by-deck detailing.