Lets talk about the Galaxy Project
Its been a while since I stated my intent to redo the Galaxy Project from scratch. The original had become outdated with our new knowledge of the sets and improvements to my reverse engineering skills.
Redoing the work of several years takes a long time…
However the process has not been helped my my health issues. These caused the project to grind to a halt for a year. Although I am currently much better than I was a year ago, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have make changes to keep this hobby viable for me.
Voyager Project
A mistake I made early on was to try and keep the Voyager Project updated with the latest Galaxy Project pages. Although they do share elements, I was essentially doing twice the work, and any Galaxy alterations would have meant completely redoing the relevant Voyager Project pages.
As a result, the Voyager Project will be on hiatus and I will focus on the Galaxy Project.
Interconnected parts
Sometimes sections are reliant on other sections and those may not be done yet. Before I would have to do both sections together, which would slow things down.
Now a “Dimensions to be confirmed” box can be used instead to indicate that this is still in progress. This would allow me to release without having to entire sections as well.
E.g. K-arch section gives the measurements for the K-arch overall and for the corridor, but the engineering arch is “Dimensions to be confirmed”. This means it can be released and later added when Engineering is completed separately.
Formatting
When I first started on the blueprinting projects, I reused a template that I had done for a previous collaboration. That project required portrait A4 pages, and a style of dimensions that required lots of manual altering,
The format was a poor choice for the Trek projects – set elements are not tall and narrow, and so often individual diagrams would have to be split across several pages. This would slow down the whole process as I would have to repeatedly go back and forth.
Also the time taken manually adjust every single dimension line length to fit the style, would have been better spent elsewhere.
Finally altering or adding single pages required changing all the page numbers and contents pages.
Lets fix that
This is the new format for the Project:
New format:
- A2 landscape page – much more space for diagrams. Also I get approximately 3-4 pages of the old A4 version onto a single sheet.
- Dimensions can just be placed without alterations
- New description box in corner – has sheet number for section (e.g. sheet 1 of 4 for warp core) and a version number. These let me revise and replace pages without having to alter the whole booklet.
One downside that it is harder to print off a copy (now a print shop is needed), but the vast majority using the plans simply display them on computer as either PDF or images.
Whilst redoing all the pages to the new style does consume time, the new workflow means that it takes far less time to build these pages than the originals.
PDF workflow
Before I was merge each of the pdf pages into a booklet using PDFmerge and then using scripts to strip out duplicated fonts and file headers.
This has now been replaced with PDFsam Basic (free), which does all the merging and cleaning up. It also produces a smaller file without quality loss – 13Mb instead of 20Mb.
One step instead of several with a better result.
Galaxy Project Release
So far I've been aiming to completely replace everything and than release it as a single block. This ends up pushing back releases again and again.
It would have been better if I had instead released incrementally – the blueprints would be available and the project may not have been so overwhelming.
From now on this project will be an incremental release – I’ll release the current version and go from there.
The Galaxy Project version 2023/10/07 release
PDF and page images:
http://archive.frogland.co.uk/Reverse Engineered Blueprints/Galaxy Project/index.html
Current content:
Done in new format:
- Standard Doors
- Turbolift Doors
- Future Imperfect Doors
- Panels
- Straight Arch corridor section
- K-Arch
- Hathaway Warp Core and warp conduits
- Button panels (long and small)
- Small capsule Labels
- Alcove Console (used in med lab, science lab and many other off-ship locations)
Done but old format (latest version, but still in A4 format – included in plans):
- Shuttlebay (series 1& 2)
- Shuttlebay (series 3-7)
- Holodeck and arch (now including arch panels and Control PADD)
- Cargo Bay (cargo lifter and cargo transporter)
- Jefferies Junction (need to alter light though)
In progress:
- K-arch corridor
- Reinforced door
- More button panels (door panel and 4 row panel)
- Labels [ large and door ]
Needs redoing (not included):
- Turbolift – the pages were all done before I noticed a serious error.
- Reference list of set appearances in episodes. Redoing the list for more detail / accuracy.
Just going to highlight a couple of people:
- Jeff_the_Sloth of Fleet Workshop Forum. We worked together on the Cargo Lifter, both working on and refining the 3D model. Jeff also helped with feedback and research
- Caseytube of Twitter. We worked together to transcribe all the Small Capsule Labels we could identify. We located about 8 unique sheets of labels and many orphaned labels. The Galaxy Project lists the ones from TNG, but the wiki page has small labels from all shows and movies.
Wiki page for label transcripts:
https://replication-ops.com/wiki/Capsule_Labels/Known_Label_Text
Additional thanks can be found on the blueprint booklet.
