Another take on the Original Enterprise...

Okay, a little scale-work, using the studio sets, and a few assumptions... and here's the layout of the twin (mirrored) engineering stations in the primary hull.



These are similar to, but not identical to, the engine room in the secondary hull. In fact, I've been looking at the various versions seen throughout the series, and there seem to be three main configuration which were used... the "final" version (with ladder), and two "full wall of console" versions, each of which had a slightly different console/wall arrangement.

The real question is... which layout should be which? Well... by taking the approach I'm taking, I think I can have "all three" (or all-three-ish, at least).

Both versions, in the primary hull, will have a "ladderway to a second level" on the outboard side. However, in one case we wouldn't have been able to see that side, so that room will have a full row of consoles on the opposite wall. Each will have a pair of step-down transformers, but since those are free-standing, connected by cables routed through the deck (which we never saw but, c'mon... they were there, I swear!), they stay wherever the crew happens to bolt them down.

All three "sets" have the same general control-room configuration, and all have an energizer adjacent. The one in main engineering, however, got retrofit to have the "equipment block on the floor," while the others did not.

The thing you can make out from this, mainly, is exactly how big the engineering set was relative to the ship (again, note that my scale is larger than is ordinarily assumed, though I'm happy with my scale, which seems to be working out very well in all areas so far).

I'd love to hear your opinions on what ought to be done with the various engineering work-bays.

 

Are you thinking of this like a raised floor or lowered ceiling as is common in Network Server Rooms? In my line of work I have dealt extensively with these. Pipes, conduits, and cabling is run either through racks in (or rather near) the ceiling and/or through similar in a raised floor. The equipment they are attached to is spotted and connected on the floor (I can envision a more secure locking mechanism for a ship vs. a planetary structure). This allows for easy swap-out/upgrade/repair/replacement of equipment modules without moving the connections, but if they connections need to be moved, that is possible too.

 

I always assumed that the engine room seen in "The Naked Time" was impulse engineering, since the ship would typically fire the impulse engines before leaving orbit anyway, and definitely before changing course to go to warp. I would also assume that the vacant engine room seen on "night shift" in "Elaan of Troyus" was the (then-unused) warp drive engineering room.

Either way, your impulse/saucer engine room should include the control room seen in "The Alternative Factor".


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Oh, and I've been meaning to ask you: if you are (for sake of argument) defining the TOS Enterprise as being approximately 1070 feet in length, what would you think this implies about the TMP "refit" version? Would it be the same length, or would it likely be proportionally larger still?

 

Well, in fact, to get the "full set" into the outer ring like that, I have to space it up from the "natural deckline" but a bit. So yeah, it's a "raised floor" with gear underneath it.

This works quite nicely with this set, by the way, since the height from the main level deck to the "balcony deck" is not the same 9'4"-plus-deck-thickness as the rest of the ship has. Basically, the engineering workrooms are, effectively, on their own subdeck out there.

It's interesting that you mention server-rooms and the replacement/etc approach, because that's my justification for the three rooms being so similar. Basically, you have certain standard-form-factor pieces of equipment... this allows for easy retrofitting, easier in-field repair jobs (less spare parts, less overall expertise, etc, required) and also allows for a degree of familiarity for anyone assigned to any of the main duty stations.. with "familiarity" translating to "better efficiency."

There's a basic framework making up these rooms, and "standard equipment" items populate those frames, which are then configured as necessary (and as often as Scotty can come up with a tweak to make it better!)

 

Am I missing something from that episode? I don't recall, off the top of my head, whether or not that room was specified as being in the saucer. (It's one of my least favorite episodes, so I'm not inclined to go back and watch it right now! )

That's a very interesting question. Let me answer it this way...

My primary hull has a diameter of 144.3 meters, exactly. (In english units, that's 473' 5").

The TMP Enterprise has a 460' diameter saucer, according to my David Kimble cut-away. That's 140.2 meters.

If you upsize the TMP ship by 1.03... that is, increase the size by 3%... the two primary hulls line up very nicely.

So as far as I'm concerned... when the 1701 was "refit" (translation... torn down to almost nothing and effectively rebuilt from the ground up, but with a few frame members retained to avoid violation of treaty), the engines were scrapped out, the secondary hull was new, but some elements of the framing of the primary hull were retained... and the saucer diameters were the same.

That's how I'd handle that ship. 3% isn't much, is it?

 

HOLY HELL! that's some AMAZING WORK! what 3-D program are you using?

 

RE: "Alterative Factor" engineering being located in saucer

I'm assuming it was because there was power being routed through it at the time, and one would expect the impulse power room(s) to be more active with personnel while either in planetary orbit or within a star system.

 

RE: "refit" size vs. Cary-size

Another way of looking at it:

"Official" Enterprise ship lengths (in feet):

TOS: 947 TMP: 1,000

"Cary" Enterprise ship lengths (in feet):

TOS: 1,067? TMP: ??? (Proportionally greater?)



I wonder what it would be like to envision the TMP Enterprise (and Reliant) being Cary-sized, say, with the refit NCC-1701 being 1,126.7 feet long...

Just musing...

 

So, no specific line...

In my "worldview" of the ship we've got signficant parallel hardware implementation (such as, for instance, multiple energizers... aka "tube structures in the engine room(s)"). There's no reason to assume that they'd shut down one portion of the ship in one circumstance and only turn it on when "appropriate." (The only instance we ever saw of that was in "The Ultimate Computer.")

I had been planning on having that facility be in the secondary hull. Specifically, a deck down from "main engineering," with the "wall of crystal cabinets" roughly underneath the center of the main volume of main engineering. I'm thinking that the redesign of the main engine room had several major components, one of which was an increase in available power by a totally different "dilithium power extractor" system. Perhaps in later days, this room was refitted to look like it did in TAS... that is, like this:



Individual energizers in the primary hull don't even necessarily require dilithium (though I was planning on having that)... because the dilithium is mainly required for conversion of the m/am reaction products into something more useful, while you don't require quite the same level of "conversion" for fusion reaction products to be converted into useful energy.

The one thing I really want to avoid is anything looking like a "steam" system... which is the only way we currently can convert energy from reactions (whether nuclear or simple combustion) into usable form.

Regarding your "scale" issue... I seen no reason to assume a proportional growth. Again, I'm disinclined towards "assuming a solution" before solving the problem. I came up with my scale based upon the simple question: "What size lets everything fit together best?" I admit I was inclined, initially, more towards the 1080' number which is most commonly posited as an alternative to 947', but I made a choice not to try to "shoehorn" things together. So I altered things and got my "best fit" without ever bothering to measure the overall length. Only once I had everything working as desired did I measure the design. THAT is how I came up with my number...

... and that's what I'd want to do with the TMP ship, as well. I don't want to assume anything. Try to make things fit, and determine, from that, what the "best" scale for that ship is. Since it is, for all practical purposes, a totally different ship, I have no problem with it being a bit larger, or even a bit smaller, if that's what works out best.

I suspect that in order to get Engineering, the torpedo rooms, and all the rest inside that ship, it would probably have to grow by more than 3%, anyway. But that's not my project right now (maybe someday I'll give that a shot, but there's only one of me!). There IS another thread in this forum where someone is trying out the TMP ship... he may end up coming to some conclusions re: that as well. We'll see.


"MiracleFan"... I've said this earlier, but it's grown into a long thread, so I have no problem repeating myself. I'm working in a CAD package I've been using for many years (both for professional purposes and, as seen here, for "recreational/training" purposes) called "Pro/ENGINEER."

 

I am taking a very similar approach. I will simply put the parts together, and then build the visible hull around it. I have not given a serious thought to how much it might have to "grow", but I don't imagine it will be any of the established figures, and almost certainly not the lower figures that are often quoted. I am reading this thread with great interest as well, as this is supposed to be the predecessor in design - meaning that the TMP ship is just the TOS ship with significant modernizations.

 

Yes. Most bad things would be decent if you totally change it.

For example, Pol Pot might not have been that bad of a guy if he didn't kill all those people.

 

Absolutely Right™

 

I've done a few new things to the secondary hull today... leaving interior work aside for the moment, and focusing on polishing off the exterior.

The MAIN thing I accomplished was finishing all of the windows... I had not yet implemented the circular "sensor porthole" windows yet, on the secondary hull. Those are now all in place. That can best be seen here:


Now, I also added the detail along the spine, and the radiator grillwork on the inside of the nacelle pylons. I think I chose too light of a tone for the radiator panels, however (note that I'm not planning on implementing the "gridwork" as a physical detail, but may do so as a bumpmap when I start playing with texture work in Maya later on). You can see the red "spine outline" with the three little lamps in it in the following two images.





Note that, as far as I can tell from screencaps and pictures I have available, this is two greens flanking a single red. However, much like the "purple" landing-pattern light, I suspect that my colors may be off a bit. Anyone know for certain what the colors of the two "flanking" lamps are? They look green to me, but they COULD be yellow, or even white, I think.

The remaining details on the secondary hull exterior include:

1) A hatch for the tractor beam (not sure about this one, though).

2) The "row of tubes" directly in front of the banners. I need better references on this as well, since I can't seem to make out the real physical form of those. It LOOKS like it's just dowel-rod, halved and glued on, but it could just as easily be "ribbed panel" like you have in railway cars, or something else entirely. So... anyone have better intel on this?

3) The p/s "running lights" (NOT "ion pods" as far as I'm concerned!). Simple to do, just haven't gotten to them yet. They'll be physically identical to the ones on the primary hull (the SMALL ones, I mean) but will be white rather than colored.

4) The "hull station numbers." Yes, I'm leaving off "markings," I said earlier... but that mainly applies to things which are specific to a particular ship. I want those to be added last, so that if I change them it won't have the potential to bring the whole model crashing down. Since those "station numbers" would be the same regardless of which ship this is, I'll go ahead and add them.

Now... am I missing any other details? Like with the primary hull, where I forgot about the raised rib adjacent to the triangular "transporter emitters," I'd hate to forget about something 'til it's too late to easily add it!

 

Mr. Brown,

Just let me say that your take on the Enterprise is the closest I have seen to how I envisioned the ship for the last 30 years.

here are a couple pics of the area forward of the pennet to help you out:




Richard

 

Ah, those are some BEAUTIFUL shots... thank you!

So, what we've got is the two outlying "large" ribs as half-round (as I thought) but with conic-section ends, rather than spherical rounds as I'd been assuming. Looks like it's about a 2/3 conic...

In between, we have rectangular-section "ribs." I'd always been a little bit confused by the apparent "overwrap" of those little ribs... in some shots they seemed to wrap around onto the front, and in others they didn't. So, it seems that they just overhang the edge (and that makes for some fragility, as the lowermost one seems to be broken - I'm assuming that's not there by intent!)

I'll implement it pretty much as-shown (minus the broken tip on the lower one, obviously) ASAP.

One thing that I notice there is that the orientation of the "hinge" on the dish isn't the way some other images I've seen showed it... that is, the hinge seems to be "up/down" here, versus "side-to-side" as I've seen it before. That's not a problem, though, really, since I've been treating the stem of this thing as being able to rotate... it's more like a land-based satellite antenna in that regard, rotating and then tilting, with its own coordinate system being based upon a plane perpendicular to the direction of travel.

 

Mr. Brown,

Those pics are of the last restoration and the dish and the mount are not orginal, so the orientation is probably off.

I agree that the lowest rib is not ment to be short but the same as the others, thus has been broken at some point.

I would say that the main depression was slotted and the ribs are glued in like a dado joint, being a carpenter that is how I would do it anyway and that section of the ship is made of wood turned on a lathe so that method would work very easy.

Glad I could help you are most welcome.

Richard

 

Okay, I've got the "sensor grillwork" done. Here, again, are the images provided (thanks again)...




And here is the version on my model.



Of course, the 11' model doesn't have detail on the other side, but I'm treating that as an oversight and having this detail mirrored there.

I think I'll do the aft p/s running lights next, and MAYBE do the station markings tonight (provided I'm not gonna miss much sleep over it!)

 

I love how you can get close enough to almost rub your hand on the hull and still see no sign of polygons with this software. I've worked with a half-dozen modeling packages over the years, but they've all been polygon-based and I'd inevitably build something that looked great at first until you put the camera real close and suddenly see straight lines and shallow angles where you're supposed to see a curve. I don't want to give up my software yet, but your pictures do amaze me.

 

Well, to be fair, it does RENDER polygonally (after all, that's the basis of OpenGL, which this package uses as its rendering core, as well as Direct3D and every other 3D rendering language out there). The interesting thing is that for my models, my rendering is actually faster with a "higher quality" setting, because with the lower-quality rendering settings (in-software), it takes longer to translate (something it has to do in real-time). I usually leave my "quality" setting for shaded rendering at about 7 (out of 10) which gives me... well, what you see here.

Internally, everything is handled mathematically, however. So a curved surface is defined by the math behind the shape, not by a series of vertices and triangle and so forth.

At a "quality" setting of 10, the geometry is basically rendered into OpenGL at "one triangle per screen pixel," while at 7, I'm pretty close to one vertex per pixel.

Now, there's a drawback to this, so don't get too excited. The size, and the processing time, for parametrically-defined solid model like this is tremendously larger than a similar-sized polygonal, or even NURBS, based model. Which means that if you want to do rendering, you start here, then export into a polygonal mode sufficient for your needs and use that to render.

I'm running the max memory available on a 32-bit system, yet my Vega, when all together, completely consumes the full available memory. In order to continue with that, I need a 64-bit OS and a lot more memory. Of course, once that's done, I can bring it out and into a rendering package, very easily. (OBJ format works beautifully, whereas the "CAD-flavored" translations I've tried to use... STEP, IGES, etc... result in some ugly imports, particularly in Maya.)

When doing that sort of export, you basically have to determine the resolution of your export, by determining minimum allowable chord lengths and angles. Since the edge of the primary hull is a major curve feature, I found that to get a good OBJ file, I used a minimal allowable chord of 0.05m, and a mimimum allowable angle between triangles of 0.2 degrees. The model you see, earlier in this thread, was done at that "export quality" level and the end result looked pretty nice, I think.

My point? CAD is great... because it gives you mathematically-precise shapes. But it's a system-killler, compared to the more commonly-used surface-based "rendering" modeling programs.

 

Cary L. Brown,

I'm noticing the secondary hull has a series of annular rings around various sections. Could this imply a modular construction. A series of sections all pre-fabricated then slapped together like the way they join an aircraft fuselage during construction?

The saucer, from what David Shaw mentioned on his thread showed the pressure-hull diagram for the saucer and it looked like it could be constructed in a variety of pre-fabricated segments then slapped together too.

That would make construction incredibly efficient and fast, and could be quite useful for large refits.


CuttingEdge100