Joining the Forums

[Donnewtype]

Good day everyone.
A friend of mine sent me a video from YouTube that showed the original Enterprise under construction in space dock. Done to the TMP score it got me inspired to try my hand at some modeling work as well. With all the talent on display here, I hope to contribute to the discussion as well.

I remember watching the original series on Channel 29, Buffalo NY back in the mid seventies and looked forward to the premiere of the Next Gen as it promised to continue the adventure. With all the different Trek Universes out there, I've found some amazing designs as well as some not so amazing. What I've built up so far is based on the original technical manual and the blueprints that were produced back in 1975 I think. These would be what people are referring to the Franz Joseph Enterprise.

Now I started off with the Galileo Shuttle, so that when I got started on the Enterprise, I had something to reference the scale of the ship. Now here is the shuttle:

And here is the Enterprise:

another view:

and another:

Last one:

My main goal was to create something that matched proportionally to the various plans, blueprints and dimensions that I found. I also used a photo guide to the 11ft. model that is on display at the Smithsonian published by Scott Lowther.

More to come as I build it.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Nicely done. These were built in Sketchup, yes? I recognize the built-in green/blue horizon and hard grid lines. The models appear well-proportioned and without any obvious distortion. FJ would be proud, I think.

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Nice sketchup work there

 

[Spaceship Jo]

Great work. Looking forward to seeing more, and hopefully some orthos!

 

[BorgMan]

Welcome to the boards! Now, you might want to change a small thing to your model. Single lines in SketchUp (like the way you've done your shieldgrid) don't show up on rendering programs like Kerkythea. Instead, you need to double them (with one of the Tools on Surface, for example, which you can find in the Plugin Warehouse) and paint the resulting faces with a colour darker than the one next to it. Right now I'm on mobile so I can't type out a big explenation, but if you hit up my TOS Challenger, you'll see what I mean: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/3d95e177-a13d-4ee5-8f40-541c7abc4750/USS-Challenger?hl=nl

 

[Donnewtype]

Thanks BorgMan, I'll check it out

 

[Donnewtype]

So I've added more detail to the nacelles and I've fitted a shuttle bay into the secondary hull to see if it works..
The length of the shuttle bay is 83 ft. which I found on a set of plans drawn by David Shaw, this one:

With a shuttle in it, it looks right as you can see here

and here

Now here are close ups of detail that I've added
Secondary Hull

And Warp Nacelles

Now I yesterday dug out my old copy of the Starfleet Technical Manual, the one that showed the Heavy Cruiser, Destroyer, Transport and Dreadnought. I thought I'd have fun and construct the other ships as well as the Enterprise Heavy Cruiser. I'll post some pics of those ships as I get them done as well.

 

[Donnewtype]

So I've added more to my Heavy Cruiser. The windows are now positioned along with adding the Control Booths and Observation Gallery to the Shuttle Bay. Here are some orthographic views of the Heavy Cruiser Class:

Now a close up of what I added to the Shuttle Bay

Proportion wise I'm happy with what I have. But with the Shuttle Bay fitted, I think I've run into the problem that everyone has had to face and that is trying to get everything to fit into the hull.

In working through the decks, I asked myself where's the space for all the machinery? Where do all the reactors, pipes, conduits and technology go? Also what is the thickness of the hull? The space between decks? Thinking of all that made my head hurt but I think I hit the right spot between screen, model, design and reality. First the decks:

I have 23 Decks with a shuttle bay that I've now extended back to sit under the nacelle pylons

The orange space is where I think the Main Deflector Shield Magnetron/Accelerator Projectatron machinery would go.
Now this see through shows the Secondary Hull Decks with the shortened Shuttle Bay.

And now with the longer Bay

There's odd spaces all over the ship, but I figure that they are used for system routing etc. I arbitrarily made the hull 19 inches thick and each deck is a single assembly 120 inches thick. I spaced each deck assembly 12 inches apart. It seems to be working so far. What has everyone else used? Done?

 

[blssdwlf]

What has everyone else used? Done?

When I modeled my observation deck, I measured the thickness of the exterior window frame at 5". Now since there are no square windows on the exterior model I assumed that the two square ones were part of a larger rectangle window that's not visible from the inside. So a hull thickness between 5"-10" seems reasonable but it would be interesting to see it at 19". For each deck in my build the height varied. Some were 10', some 6', some 9' and others 12' to 16'. But, I took a Thermian approach to it and it is not for everyone

My recommendation is to have fun modeling and rendering. The great thing is that there is plenty room for your imagination and there are lots of ways to build the Enterprise so definitely experiment like what you are doing now. For low stress decision making, I recommend to set a consistent set of rules for yourself. Keep up the excellent progress!

 

[Bernard Guignard]

keep up the great work

 

[Donnewtype]

Thanks Bernard and blssdwlf.

Some of the assumptions that I've made in building up the Cruiser are built around the years that I've worked in the Aerospace Industry as an Assembler and Mechanic. Seeing how an aircraft's structure is built up and then assembled made me think of how they might build such a thing as the Enterprise.

Begin Technobabble: "Each deck is an individual structurally rigid unit complete with all required interior walls, corridors, ducting, equipment racking, etc.. Each deck is then secured to the others and the resulting stack is enclosed by a load bearing exterior shell (the outer hull). At the interconnect points i.e.: the Primary Hull to Dorsal; Dorsal to Secondary Hull; Warp Nacelles to Support Pylons, Support Pylons to Secondary Hull. heavy structural frames are incorporated to provide the additional rigidity that those points need.

Structural Integrity Fields are used to help lessen the stresses that the structure must absorb, but the structure must be able to handle the loads physically itself. All of this of course means that the material science people have created the exotic alloys that can take the punishment a Starship will be subjected to." End technobabble.

More fun on the way.

 

[Atolm]

Awesome stuff mate!
Welcome aboard!

 

[Donnewtype]

Good day everyone.
So I've added the markings to make the ship the actual Enterprise by mapping the text and numbers onto the mesh itself. It's a lot of work but I like the finished look. I also realized that I can change the background colour and remove the horizon line in Sketchup (Who knew?) so here are some beauty shots:

Shuttle Bay View

I'll take some detail pics of the shuttle bay detail and other sections as I build them.
So more to come

 

[BorgMan]

Yeah, changing the background is great for quickies. I only use it for identifying my ships that I upload to the 3DWarehouse, so that people can easily spot my models when scrolling.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

I'm sorry if this was already addressed upthread, but I'm staring at your wonderful model and I can't stop wondering why your teardrop has three decks instead of two (or one and a half, as per Shaw and several others).

 

[Donnewtype]

No need to apologize Jo. I'm working from the Franz Joseph blueprints and in the cross section it shows three decks making up the teardrop. In the following pic you can better see how I've placed the decks inside the Primary Hull.

I had to make the teardrop taller than the blueprints though in order to fit the decks into the hull and keep everything proportional. If I model each deck I may have to go back and tweak the hull profile to better fit everything.
But that's in the future.

 

[BorgMan]

The Joseph prints show it yeah, but is that last deck a full sized deck? Because, as you said, the teardrop had to be made bigger than the original plans. If I recall correctly that deck houses the planetary sensor, it very well doesn't need to be a complete deck. I'll have a loot at the Cygnus plans later today to see if I can see any differences there...

 

[Spaceship Jo]

No need to apologize Jo. I'm working from the Franz Joseph blueprints and in the cross section it shows three decks making up the teardrop. In the following pic you can better see how I've placed the decks inside the Primary Hull.

I had to make the teardrop taller than the blueprints though in order to fit the decks into the hull and keep everything proportional. If I model each deck I may have to go back and tweak the hull profile to better fit everything.
But that's in the future.

Indeed, that picture is most clarifying!

I'm gotten used to the Shaw / Drexler "shorter teardrop / taller upper saucer surface", which Drex managed to do with four decks (same as FJ, but less bulbous) between the bridge and widest saucer deck and Shaw did with three, as you've posted above.

But yes, that new cutaway makes your intentions much clearer to me. So many ways to make the Big E!

 

[Donnewtype]

Good day everyone.
I started a thread about what other famous sci-fi ships you would like to see with the Enterprise and I posted an image of the Enterprise and the Arcadia, Space Pirate Harlock's famous ship from the manga. Now with modelling the outside of the Arcadia, I wanted to see if I could fit everything the ship supposedly had inside. So I started to block out the decks, equipment, engines, FTL drive etc. to see how I could construct the internal layout of the ship. Here are two images of what I have built up to now.

and

Each colour represents a different deck/system of the ship. Yellow are energy radiator/collectors, orange and green are operation and crew decks, purple are engines, FTL drive, computer core, power plant. It helped me visualize and work out the relationship each system/block would have with the others and then work out how the elevators, ladders, etc. would fit so the crew can get to were they need to be. The large tan block at the front is the housing for the huge Bow Slicer (Switch Blade) that Harlock uses
to ram his enemies and smash his way to freedom on several occasions.

Now I took this approach when starting to work out the deck arrangement for the
Enterprise/Heavy Cruiser model. So after some work and rework I have now gotten to this stage:

It follows the FJ blueprints as much as possible, but I have already run into some problems that will have to be addressed as I detail each deck.
Here is another view:

The pipe cleaner with the three blocks is the Jefferies Tube that runs up to the Warp Nacelle and you can see how the connection turns out to be an odd shape/space. Then there is the Interconnect Pylon and Primary Hull. Looking at the FJ plans, he put the Impulse Drive and Main Engineering at the back edge of the saucer. To me that's too small, the Impulse Engines should be big and more in proportion to the Primary Hull and ship overall. That means I have to figure out how the &*(()_ to get the turbolift and Engineering and Impulse into the same space. Now here are some assumptions that I worked out as I started to construct the decks and cross sections.

Hull is approx. 18" thick. The decks are uniform in height with 94" from floor to ceiling with each slice that you see 120' thick. This represents an outer structure that encloses the actual living space/volume.
(I know, no 10' cathedral ceilings.) I've decided to not rotate the bridge 36 degrees because it never made sense. The main viewer and turbolift are in line with each other (So no dramatic camera shots of Bones storming onto the Bridge as Kirk turns to ask what's wrong). No windows on the lower Primary Hull either. If I'm reading the plans right the lower decks (8, 9 and 10) are all surrounded with raw material and cargo storage. No windows.
To start things off, here is the initial bridge layout:

and with stations:

and in cross section:

More to come

 

[Donnewtype]

So I found an excerpt from the book 'The World of Star Trek' by David Gerrold and after reading it, I started to go over the FJ set of deck plans with a more critical eye. As Gerrold says in this piece from the book:

"Science fiction is not a western with ray guns and spaceships. It is a genre so demanding
that few of its practitioners are more than moderately competent at it. The responsibility to be
logical and scientifically accurate, while at the same time telling a good dramatic story, will
continually defeat any writer who approaches the field with less than total respect for its
requirements.

Because so few screenwriters are well versed in science fiction, STAR TREK should have
had a full-time science fiction writer on its staff, someone with a good background in science as
well as science fiction. Such a staff advisor could have worked closely with the writers, the
directors, the producers and the actors, as well as the designers and the decorators, to make
everything as logical, believable, and accurate as possible.

There were too many instances of clumsiness in STAR TREK’S production that a science
fiction advisor could have corrected. Doubletalk cannot disguise bad writing—and it will only
hurt good writing. It’s a little harder, yes, to be accurate, but the results are worth it.
Consider:

The Enterprise's corridors seemed awfully roomy, they were about twice as wide as they
should have been. In fact, the whole ship was too roomy. Space is at a premium in any kind of
enclosed environment. Anyone who’s ever been aboard a submarine—or even an aircraft carrier,
for that matter—knows that they are designed for the maximum utilization of their volume.
Efficiency is a necessity, and a spaceship is going to have to be designed the same way.
In fact, the requirements of a spaceship are much more stringent—for instance, the
interior atmosphere must be maintained with the correct combination of gases, at the right
temperature, pressure, humidity, and ionization, to maintain not just the lives, but the comfort as
well, of the crew. The margins for deviation are narrow; therefore, every cubic inch of interior
volume means airspace that must be maintained—and maintenance requires the expenditure of
energy. When you have to conserve your ship’s power, you don’t waste airspace.
The reason for such broad corridors? They had to be wide enough for a camera dolly,
cables and a film crew.
To attempt to show that the ship was cramped would have required the construction of
cramped sets—which are harder to work with and would have meant much more in the way of
production time.
(So, instead, we’re told that the ship has power to waste—it’s implied, not specifically
said. But if that’s so, then we should never see a story in which maintenance of life-support
functions become a critical factor for building suspense. A ship can’t be both wasteful and
limited.)
Another example: the turbo-elevators. These were the machines that took the various
crew members from one part of the ship to another. Good idea; especially as we are told that the
thickest part of the Enterprise's disc is twelve stories thick.
But—the elevators seemed to be the only way to get from one deck to another. If the
ship’s power supply were cut off, every deck would be separated from every other. Oh, well, not
really—somebody could always crawl through the air vents, or through the Jefferies Tube, or
down one of the ladders which we saw very infrequently. All except for the bridge. Cut off the
turbo-elevators and you isolate the bridge. Tsk. That’s bad designing. Illogical."

And I'm starting to see that in the FJ plans. So as I start working on individual decks, I'm asking myself what dose that specific detail do? Is it logical that a detail or room layout be like that? Take the concave underside of the primary hull; it makes a large volume of deck 7 unusable. To make room for the outer ring of cabins and the transporters on deck 7 I had to change the curvature of the underside, making it not as deep. With the secondary hull, there are two emergency transporters but no regular seven man transporters. It struck me that if the secondary hull is able to function separately, it would have them. Also does it make sense that the food slots (Replicators) should be thought of as more 3d printer than transporter or replicator? If I picture that, then the larger manufacturing units on the lower decks start to fit better.

It crossed my mind that I might end up with a full cross section of the Enterprise; with all the deck ladders, detail and other things that I've not seen yet.

More to come.