Help with 1701-D drawings?

[circusdog]

I decided to move on to the 1701-D from my TOS project and try the image-projection/tracing technique to build a CAD model. Things were going fairly smoothly until I ran into trouble today getting the deck layers to line up. I am using a cutaway view from Ed Whitefire I found on LCARS as a base.

I started lining things up using the warp core, but now that I am working on decks in the 20's, it is difficult to keep the reference. I am not recognizing details that pass between decks. What appear to be turbolift shafts don't seem to line up with deck plan features.

Anyone here ever do a deck-by-deck of the D?

 

[Albertese]

I understand that occasional poster Rick Sternbach made one of those once. Maybe he'll show up if you ask a good question.

--Alex

 

[Forbin]

Just say his name three times, and hold on to the glassware.

 

[circusdog]

Rick Sternbach

I'll look for him, thanks!

 

[circusdog]

In the meantime, I decided to work on the saucer section. Doesn't look too bad...

The bridge and the top two decks confused me for a bit, so I made what I could.

 

[Ziz]

Post some screenshots of your progress. I'm sure someone around here would be able to give you something else to key off of to line things up.

You could also try finding the centerpoints of all the saucer decks and just line them up that way.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Just say his name three times, and hold on to the glassware.

It helps if you leave a plate of cookies and a glass of milk out.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

I understand that occasional poster Rick Sternbach made one of those once. Maybe he'll show up if you ask a good question.

--Alex

I have redone the large deck plans for the Galaxy class Enterprise for a canceled but possibly to be reborn licensed publication project. A number of details have been re-aligned, including Jefferies Tubes, turbolift shafts, etc., all in Adobe Illustrator. The deck art was transferred to clear acrylic sheets cut by laser and would have made a neat cutaway model. See http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=31147 for a look at the project about two weeks before the plug was pulled, basically because of poor test market response and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami. Some of us on the project believe that a world-wide market does still exist for this kind of subscription model. I will continue to refine the exterior ortho plans and interior deck art when feasible; right now, I've got the most accurate drawings of the ILM six-footer ever. Kinda nice to be able to say that. - Rick

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I understand that occasional poster Rick Sternbach made one of those once. Maybe he'll show up if you ask a good question.

--Alex

I have redone the large deck plans for the Galaxy class Enterprise for a canceled but possibly to be reborn licensed publication project. A number of details have been re-aligned, including Jefferies Tubes, turbolift shafts, etc., all in Adobe Illustrator. The deck art was transferred to clear acrylic sheets cut by laser and would have made a neat cutaway model. See http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=31147 for a look at the project about two weeks before the plug was pulled, basically because of poor test market response and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami. Some of us on the project believe that a world-wide market does still exist for this kind of subscription model. I will continue to refine the exterior ortho plans and interior deck art when feasible; right now, I've got the most accurate drawings of the ILM six-footer ever. Kinda nice to be able to say that. - Rick

Many of us, out here in the real (non-publishing, and yes, non-Tsunami-ravaged) world definitely agree with you, Rick.

Does what you said mean that you're focusing more on the six-footer (excepting, I presume, the saucer edge) than the four-footer?

 

[FalTorPan]

I understand that occasional poster Rick Sternbach made one of those once. Maybe he'll show up if you ask a good question.

--Alex

It should be noted that Ed Whitefire's drawings and Rick Sternbach's drawings are completely different works of art.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Does what you said mean that you're focusing more on the six-footer (excepting, I presume, the saucer edge) than the four-footer?

I'm operating on the theory (at least for the Japan/UK project) that the six-footer, being the first representation of the Ent-D that was built (and the last to be refurbished for GENERATIONS), is the standard for all subsequent physical models and the "driver" for all 2-D art and CG representations. There are a few oddities in the model as it appeared at the Christies auction as compared to the Farpoint premiere, mostly in locations and numbers of windows and deck thicknesses, but in those cases, I chose to apply a mental "rule" that imagined "what would Starfleet have done if this thing were real?" in order to nail down shapes and positions in the Illustrator art. Some of the features in the new blueprints don't exactly match the model, but make engineering sense for what's going on outside and inside (there is a new cutaway as well, with lots of little people). Needless to say, it gets complicated, but the intent is to have the art be very close to the model and make 24th century tech sense.

Rick

 

[circusdog]

it gets complicated, but the intent is to have the art be very close to the model and make 24th century tech sense.

Yay!

 

[circusdog]

It should be noted that Ed Whitefire's drawings and Rick Sternbach's drawings are completely different works of art.

Duly noted. I have copies of both. I started with Rick's since it was more detailed, ran into trouble tracing it and switched to Ed's because it was easier to trace the major lines.

I am mainly interested in building an "exterior" model.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Does what you said mean that you're focusing more on the six-footer (excepting, I presume, the saucer edge) than the four-footer?

I'm operating on the theory (at least for the Japan/UK project) that the six-footer, being the first representation of the Ent-D that was built (and the last to be refurbished for GENERATIONS), is the standard for all subsequent physical models and the "driver" for all 2-D art and CG representations. There are a few oddities in the model as it appeared at the Christies auction as compared to the Farpoint premiere, mostly in locations and numbers of windows and deck thicknesses, but in those cases, I chose to apply a mental "rule" that imagined "what would Starfleet have done if this thing were real?" in order to nail down shapes and positions in the Illustrator art. Some of the features in the new blueprints don't exactly match the model, but make engineering sense for what's going on outside and inside (there is a new cutaway as well, with lots of little people). Needless to say, it gets complicated, but the intent is to have the art be very close to the model and make 24th century tech sense.

Rick

That sounds fantastic, Rick... though I'm still curious if you're thinking of the "Ten-forward-compatible" saucer edge, as seen on the 4-footer, or the original-Probert-intent narrow edge as see on the 6-footer.

I'm assuming you're doing the deckwork in Illustrator, but I'm wondering if you've got some sort of tool where you can stack these decks up in 3D (AutoCAD would probably do nicely for that) or if you're just sort of "eyeballing" things, or if you're doing it the old, "brute-force" way? I am not aware of illustrator allowing you to put different drawing planes at distances apart, or perpendicular to each other for that matter, and being able to spin/pan/zoom them in 3D. But... hey, if they have that capability, it would make it a much more useful tool, wouldn't it?

 

[circusdog]

So, the troubles I keep running into are:

1) The images I have seem to be somewhat skewed, usually less than a degree, but just enough to cause problems.

2) The lines in the images are generally multiple (4 or more) pixels wide. Along with the skew, this makes the image hard to line up with an axis.

3) When I manage to settle on a good line and rotate the image to make the line horizontal (or vertical), many apparent symmetrical features don't resolve to the resolved symmetry.

works of art.

Yeah, I suppose I should just take it as it is, me not being very artistic.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

CircusDog...

I suspect that what you're seeing is due to paper-slippage during the scanning and/or printing processes. This always happens. With printed-word stuff, it's trivial, but with technical drawings, it can theoretically become a real issue. (This is why most professionally-done drawings have a "do not scale" comment on them... its the dimensions shown that matter... the numbers, in other words... not the shapes shown, which are to be used in developing real parts!)

Your best bet is to define your shapes mathematically. Create the oval of the saucer (derive the actual oval proportion based upon the outermost edge, then create scaled "child" copies moving inwards). Draw the radial lines from the true center as guides as well. Then, using those, approximate (as best you can) the shapes shown on the prints. But use the prints as a visual guide, not as a "direct trace" guide. They're, at best, an approximation... if for no other reason than due to the paper slippage in the original printing process, then in the latter scanning process (assuming you're working from scanned data, which seems to be a given). Two "slip" events can totally distort the prints. Not enough to cause you to not be able to enjoy reading them, but certainly enough to make using them as a mathematically-precise guide pretty much impossible!

 

[Rick Sternbach]

That sounds fantastic, Rick... though I'm still curious if you're thinking of the "Ten-forward-compatible" saucer edge, as seen on the 4-footer, or the original-Probert-intent narrow edge as see on the 6-footer.

I'm assuming you're doing the deckwork in Illustrator, but I'm wondering if you've got some sort of tool where you can stack these decks up in 3D (AutoCAD would probably do nicely for that) or if you're just sort of "eyeballing" things, or if you're doing it the old, "brute-force" way? I am not aware of illustrator allowing you to put different drawing planes at distances apart, or perpendicular to each other for that matter, and being able to spin/pan/zoom them in 3D. But... hey, if they have that capability, it would make it a much more useful tool, wouldn't it?

First off, I'm not doing anything in 3-D, but for both the saucer and engineering hull, I'm working with ortho photos of the actual finished six-footer and spare castings of the major hull parts in order to get "best fit" saucer ellipses and engineering decks, and then fitting surface details and interior bits. The engineering hull shield grid was a huge new hassle, but finally works. 3-D wouldn't help a whole lot, but precise values for minor and major axes do. I'm still old school that way for some things. I have also used the Pocket Books interior plans as initial placed images in Illustrator, highly grayed out, just to help plan constant bits like the turbos and computer cores and J-tubes and major structural bits like walls and corridors. A lot of the interiors have changed, as have the exterior details. I'll put it this way: Both the Pocket Books orthos and Ed Whitefire's are not as accurate as the new ones. I'll totally admit that some of the 1994 bits were amazingly off, mostly due to lack of exact data, deadlines, etc. Not so this time around, and I hope they'll end up in dark blue ink on paper at some point.

As for 10-Forward and the saucer edge, it all seems to fit fine, with Deck 10 below the sensor strip and Deck 9 above. The refurbished windows in GENERATIONS follow the "correct" Deck 9/10 scheme, and that's what I'm using. The interior heights are sometimes cheated a bit, since the Paramount sets were often impossibly tall for production reasons. I'm not a canon-head in that regard; no all-powerful image on videotape controls my life.

I'm hoping to have further news as events warrant.

Rick

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Seven days, Rick...

Seven days.

 

[Psion]

Rick, back in the days of the original FJ blueprints, I spent more teenage hours wandering the decks of the first Enterprise than I did looking at girls. I found your 1994 blueprints of the Enterprise-D similarly distracting.

I will, of course, pay good money for the privilege of doing so again. Much to my wife's disappointment.

 

[circusdog]

I suspect that what you're seeing is due to paper-slippage during the scanning and/or printing processes.

Yes, I realize that.

its the dimensions shown that matter

My kingdom for a dimension!

Your best bet is to define your shapes mathematically. Create the oval of the saucer (derive the actual oval proportion based upon the outermost edge, then create scaled "child" copies moving inwards). Draw the radial lines from the true center as guides as well. Then, using those, approximate (as best you can) the shapes shown on the prints.

That is what I do when I am able to recognize connections. The problem is one of visualization I guess.

(assuming you're working from scanned data, which seems to be a given).

Apparently.