9 PDF

[Robert Simmons]

Greetings TOS Trek fans and welcome to the 9 PDF project. The purpose of this project is to put into every TOS Trek fan's hands detailed build plans of the entire Desilu / Paramount Stage 9 as it stood in 1968...for free of charge. All detailed measurements are included. Extra effort was not spared to ensure screen accuracy for everything down to the stud. Intent on this project is to match measurement for measurement, angle for angle, curve for curve, joint for joint, intersection for intersection to be an exact match to what was seen in TOS Trek. Starting points are the surviving Stage 9 floor plans for Journey to Babel and the Mike McMaster plans and subjecting them to TOS Trek stills to rebuild and to map out the original sets making revisions or additions where needed. By using 3 different methods of extracting exact measurements from TOS stills allows for cross checking measurements before locking them in. A McMaster study model of the bridge will be used as a placeholder and a starting point for checking the plans. To revise where needed, and complete where information is missing. And anything correct will be validated and kept. Since this is a top to bottom scrutiny and a prospective complete overhaul in checking and verifying every measurement will yield a new set of plans accurate and more complete to what was seen in TOS Trek. The McMaster plans and study model are serving only as a starting point baseline to compare and measure against TOS stills. My special thanks to Matthew Bell in Wales for his work in measuring the original plans and thus sparing me the extra tedium of having to take additional time to do all that. As well I wish to acknowledge and thank him for his consent to allow this project to use the measurements he worked up from the original floor plans. I wanted to do something like this back in grade school in 1975 but with peer pressure from non Trek fans and the deterring costs of printing broke me of the notion then. With the rise and frequency of Trek fan films on the web I feel the time and climate is more favorable to receive such a product and that digital electronic publication totally sidesteps the hindering costs of having the materials physically printed and distributed.

One of the many obsticals to fans and fan films in building their own TOS sets has been ...
1. Motivation.
2. Cost.
3. Space.
4. Detail information on how to build these sets.

It is my hope that by making initial crude study models, and then detailed scale builder's proofs and detailed plans for these sets. And as a result that I'll be able to remove what I consider a major prohibitive obstacle hindering fans from building accurate sets let alone sets period. 9 PDF is intended to be a ongoing set of releases for each set all included in one complete PDF file to be free distributed to everyone. This project will be periodically updated publically for new releases on the individual sets. Release 1.0 will have the transporter room as the first finished set of plans. Photos of the builder's proofs will be included as a guide. For now the focus is on general build information such as precise measurements and dimensions. Cosmetic detailing will come later after all the sets have had final builder's proofs built and plans released pubically. I intend on the material to be needing the protection on the current copyright holder CBS, to ensure that the materials will not be stolen by some and renamed so they attempt to charge and make a personal profit. My attitude is that if anyone is going to profit it should be the current copyright holder. And if the current copyright holder is not making a profit off the 9 PDF materials then no one should. Not even me who worked up the materials.

When I made my public appeal back in October 2010 in the Starship Ajax video update for fan films to share their sets and to challenge fandom to set up regional stages in different parts of the country to make the sets closer and more accessible to fans wanting to shoot their own productions on them. But there is a problem that what productions are out there are limited in space and money to be limited by what sets they have. My hope is that 9 PDF can make it possible for others to have the ability to build sets the other fan productions do not have but would make them available to either current or new fan films. In short it is my intended goal that if fans use the materials in 9 PDF to build sets that they can network together with other productions and relieve the logjam of more sets being needed for current and future fan productions anywhere. This project is a outgrowth of being caught off guard and rushed in not having the time in 2011 when Working with Starship Ajax to do what I considered a properly thorough study of the surviving materials so as to to work up accurate build references from. The 9 PDF project is meant to give proper attention to addressing this.

The release date for 9 PDF Release 1.0 has yet to be announced but expect it to be sometime before the end of the year.

 

[MGagen]

This sounds like a very worthy project.

Here is something that you might find useful in accurizing the McMaster blueprints (if you're wanting the sets as built, rather than idealized). It is an odd feature of the bridge geometry that I discovered back in early '05 (and which was confirmed by Petri Blomqvist, independently, via photogrammetric analysis of set images). The dimensions are based on the scaled set drawings, but may be off by a small amount as the bridge itself had no dimensional callouts in any publicly available drawings. The proportions of the individual wedges, however, are quite real.

I wish you well in your endeavor.

M.

 

[Robert Simmons]

Thank you. Input is welcome. I am opting for as built over idealized.

 

[Mytran]

These scale models are great. I can only imagine the quality of the finished articles!
A complete "nuts & bolts" document would make a tremendous difference to many fanon productions, this is an excellent project.

 

[publiusr]

Maybe, just maybe--a toy company will be interested...

 

[Robert Simmons]

Thanks guys. Tried to go back and add a few pics and noticed I can't edit my post. I guess it is a 24 hour thing. Was going to insert these before the corridor pic. If a forum administrator could insert them for me it would be much appreciated. I am planning on adding a few more from other sets after that to the introductory post.

And a few from early on when I had to separate the sets since the project was swallowing my loft man cave space.

 

[uniderth]

That's some amazing work! I already know some cgi models I'll have to revise.

 

[Robert Simmons]

That's some amazing work! I already know some cgi models I'll have to revise.

 

[Albertese]

Looks really great! Is all of this Season 3? Are you planing to do anything from other years of the show?

--Alex

 

[Robert Simmons]

Looks really great! Is all of this Season 3? Are you planing to do anything from other years of the show?

--Alex

Thank you. This is season 2 before they revised the transporter room to it's 3rd season footprint to prevent wilding into the corridor. I took the 3rd season floorplan and took the 1st and 2nd season floorplan and trimmed the difference all the wall panels from the door to the back of the Transporter room so that it will fit in the 3rd season non wilded footprint. Matthew Bell who is contributing as a partner on this project ( mytran ) has requested that I do the first season shorter briefing room, and I have agreed and am deciding whether to release the first season briefing room when I release the 2nd season briefing room. The briefing room I'm planning on being the second set plans to be released. As well the 3rd season pressure chamber in the med lab will be there but I'll be angling the wall away from the corridor so that wilding will not be necessary. I do plan on also including Auxillary Control, the shuttle exterior and interior sets. But for now the main priority is modeling what is on the blueprint floorplans for "Journey To Babel" floorplans. As far as the 1st season "Space Seed" vacuum chamber behind the Examination ward that is also planned but also set aside till later like the other sets I mentioned. Priority in the project has been on the outboard sets on the corridor. This is due to being limited in space since where sickbay inboard sets are right in the middle of where my chair is where I work.

 

[Albertese]

Cool. This is such a great project! Personally, I've been tinkering over the years with a set of deckplans for the ship, in which my assumption is that all the sets existed concurrently. You're research seems top-notch. I'd love to see plans for the Season one engineering set. Also, Sickbay got a lot of variation over the years, and it'd be fun to see those different versions.

Anyhow, whatever you're willing to do will be be a great boon to the rest of us. I will follow with great interest!

--Alex

 

[Robert Simmons]

Cool. This is such a great project! Personally, I've been tinkering over the years with a set of deckplans for the ship, in which my assumption is that all the sets existed concurrently. You're research seems top-notch. I'd love to see plans for the Season one engineering set. Also, Sickbay got a lot of variation over the years, and it'd be fun to see those different versions.

Anyhow, whatever you're willing to do will be be a great boon to the rest of us. I will follow with great interest!

--Alex

Thank you Alex for the kind comments. I had not even entertained a first season engineering room or Sickbay since my focus is on the stage 9 floor plan in it's last layout variant. But since Matt Bell has asked for a first season Briefing Room then I think it it fair to consider your request as well later on. But my focus was more "Journey To Babel" 2nd season blueprints since that was the last version of the overall Stage 9's layout.

Where I planned on being at this point I am way behind schedule. My initial planned public rollout on the public announcement was April but have had some big delays and drawbacks. I've been assisting a local fan film ready for one of their builds and has set me back half a year on his project since my goal had been to have everything rendered in crude study models before launching the public announcement. As well I recently bought a hard drive and transferred all my data onto it that I have been working on. And it got bumped and fell over and the drive got wrecked and I lost all my data that has taken me years to assemble for this project. Returned the drive and wrote it off as a loss since I didn't have the money for data recovery services. Much of it can be replaced but will take considerable time to replace. The TOS stills from the entire series were lost and had been sorted into a broken down sorting system archive that made it almost instantly any still I need at the drop of a hat. So for now I am taking a break while I regroup and start rebuilding the source material I will need to work on.

 

[c64man1701]

I really like what you are doing here, Finding plans and information to get started on my project is been hard. Michigan really needs a complete TOS set for film makers to use on their projects. Love it

 

[Robert Simmons]

I really like what you are doing here, Finding plans and information to get started on my project is been hard. Michigan really needs a complete TOS set for film makers to use on their projects. Love it

Thank you. I wish I could hand it to you now. However this project is still in what I would consider it's infancy and the overhaul on the bridge plans is going to take a while and will be released later in the project. Until then the best I can urge you to do is get large printouts of the Mike McMaster bridge plans to minimize measuring errors while working from them. I had large 2 foot by 3 foot print outs made that I worked from. Try to get it printed on gloss stock to minimize bleed on the printout that may blur the finer measurements. After that you will need to shift into low gear mentally and get large strips of card stock and a ton of sharpened pencils and slowly and carefully building rulers for each sheet of the plans which is tedious and time consuming. Be prepared to get impatient while doing it. Don't rush and make sure you don't rush and keep your pencil leads sharp at all times. Constantly stop and review what you have done to ensure it is uniform and consistent or it will throw creep into all the little measurements which if you are not careful will come back to bite you later on in the form of fit problems with the parts you make. It's critical you get the rulers you make consistent or uniform or it will throw your measurements. Make sure to tape each ruler to it's respective sheet so you don't get them mixed up. It wouldn't hurt to write down on your printout sheets each measurement as you do it. I didn't which caused me problems constantly having to go back and remeasure to confirm I wasn't messing things up. I could feed you those measurements now off my model. But if I am planning on revising it I'm not to keen on handing out measurements that I think will ultimately need to be discarded. As far as the rest of the sets the only one that I have in any state of finalization is the transporter set which is getting a redo on the ceiling of the chamber since I overhauled it's load bearing design since I modeled it. Some of the plans already have been drawn up with a couple pages needing some minor revisions to the drawings for changes I made halfway through. But they are not at a complete state just yet for what I feel comfortable releasing at this time. I'm still in the early phase of rebuilding my visual reference library to work from.

 

[Robert Comsol]

This - is - awesome! Fascinating!

I'm impressed seeing the amount of passion for accuracy, this is a great project. Kudos!

While my own deck plan project is still in its WIP infancy, eventually I will have to rely on accurate reproductions.

I'm most curious to see how you will handle Dr. McCoy's office.
Both the "Journey to Babel" set drawing and Matt Jefferies' paper model of the set (much smaller than yours, obviously) had the skull shelf set too far back.

In my main deck 7 draft I had already tried to fix that, but now it seems that the desk is too much in the way.

Again, great job, I'll definitely stay tuned.

Bob

 

[Mario de Monti]

Wow!! This is just - WOW!!! Simply amazing the kind of passion you put into this project, and I hope many future fan productions will benefit from the result.
But even if you´re not going to build full-size sets and just enjoy building cardboard models (like myself) it looks like it´s going to be a LOT of fun and a dream come true.

Thanks a lot and keep up the great work

Mario

 

[Robert Simmons]

This - is - awesome! Fascinating!

I'm impressed seeing the amount of passion for accuracy, this is a great project. Kudos!

While my own deck plan project is still in its WIP infancy, eventually I will have to rely on accurate reproductions.

I'm most curious to see how you will handle Dr. McCoy's office.
Both the "Journey to Babel" set drawing and Matt Jefferies' paper model of the set (much smaller than yours, obviously) had the skull shelf set too far back.

In my main deck 7 draft I had already tried to fix that, but now it seems that the desk is too much in the way.

Again, great job, I'll definitely stay tuned.

Bob

Thank you. Concerning McCoy's skull cabinent...I actually had not that occur to me. But since you mentioned the skull cabinet in McCoy's office, I'll start giving some attention before I get to it. As with all the models the stage 9 Babel floor plans is my starting point and TOS stills are what I am fine tuning from.

Wow!! This is just - WOW!!! Simply amazing the kind of passion you put into this project, and I hope many future fan productions will benefit from the result.
But even if you´re not going to build full-size sets and just enjoy building cardboard models (like myself) it looks like it´s going to be a LOT of fun and a dream come true.

Thanks a lot and keep up the great work

Mario

Thank you. For me it is not about cardboard models. I don't have the money to pay for a minimum 110 foot by 160 foot facility and the lumber and supplies to nail down faithfully now a 100% accurate reproduction on on everything as seen on Stage 9. But on a macro level working it all down to this size scale makes it more easy to keep focus for me. Fans and fan films have recreated portions of it with some success. But seeing it not 100% really has been nagging at me for a while wanting to see this problem fixed as far as correct profiles on consoles, proper room spacing, etc. so it's the old adage if you want something done I'll have to do it myself. I chose 1/12th scale for this project cause it makes for me at least cleaner translation on scaling to full size measurements. And the larger scale will allow for tighter measuring to minimize errors. And I felt that if I was going to go through the process of doing this to satisfying my nagging curiousity I might as well blueprint and share the thing so everyone else can benefit from it or it would be pointless even doing it to begin with. I would like to see fans with 100% accurate sets or at least put into their hand the information necessary to make them 100%.

 

[Mudd]

Concerning what MGagen pointed out about angles and measurements on the bridge - IIRC this is also the way that Jimm Johnson and company actually proceeded on building the Exeter bridge. The view screen "slice" was where they made up the difference between ideal angles and actual working measurements on the other stations.

 

[Robert Simmons]

Concerning what MGagen pointed out about angles and measurements on the bridge - IIRC this is also the way that Jimm Johnson and company actually proceeded on building the Exeter bridge. The view screen "slice" was where they made up the difference between ideal angles and actual working measurements on the other stations.

That would explain why I came up 4 inches shorter combined on the platforms on both sides of the view screen. When I relaid out the bridge that had me scratching my head trying to figure out how to proceed to balance out everything where it was all the same. What MGagen pointed was providing the missing piece of the puzzle I wish I had when I was trying to figure out best to reassemble that bridge set.

 

[Mudd]

Yeah, basically it's a practical impossibility to construct all of those stations to exact angles so you design them to some rationalized measurements that are "close enough" - which requires an eventual fudge factor to close up the circle.

Exeter's bridge was never a full circle, of course. Still, it made sense to use measurements to the nearest 1/4 inch (or whatever) rather than trying to cut to angles.