Shuttle: circa 2270. Sketchup trial

[Patrickivan]

Hello Everybody!

Inspired by fellow TREK BBS Sketchup users, I decided to give it a try again. It's been well over a year since I used Sketchup and I was originally frustrated by my computer slowing things down so much, that basic things became to much of a chore.

Anyway, I wanted to start small and a shuttle seemed perfect to work in scale with the little Sketchup dude. This shuttle is simply a means to familiarize myself with Sketchup again- and learn more!

It will have some familiar design shapes, and I'll throw in some plumbing. The end goal is to use this to get ideas for a more refined shuttle, based both on treknology, and my lay knowledge of real technology.

But here's what I did yesterday- it took about 2 hours, and I am still fleshing out merging componants together. LIke the inner hull with the outter skin. The nacelle is simply a tube to show where the nacelle will be going.

Any input is of course welcome. Of course the purpose of the shuttle is still up in the air, so it's design is completely whimsical for the moment, but feel free to suggest what this can turn in to.

 

[Vance]

Hmm.. 2270 would put it at either the tail end of fandom's Phase II tech period, or just at the new stuff for TMP. Might want to look at SFPO's Endeavour for ideas on the warp nacelles.

 

[aloha62]

once your happy with the design i encourage you to give kerkythea a try as a sketch-up compatible renderer that goes a great way in smoothing sketch-ups rough edges... literally.


plus the ability to add lighting is awesome.

good luck!


ps. you can if you wish switch to thinner edges/lines by going into the 'view' menu selecting 'edge styles' and deselecting the bottom 3, one is on as standard i cant remember which but by default it makes things look bulky.

 

[BorgMan]

A great start, though I would recommend two things:

1: Make sure that all faces are in the same direction, as this could lead to trouble in renderers. For example, your darker colored faces are actually facing *backwards*, while the lighter ones are *forward*. A lot of renderers only pick up colored faces that face front, so keep that in mind.
2: When holdding down ctrl while erasing, you will smooth the edge you are erasing. This helps when you have a face that's made up out of multiple faces, like your panels on the side. When you smooth them, the resulting face behaves as a single one

I would recommend you head over to the 3DWarehouse and have a look at some of the better models, how they are modelled. Not to promote my own Type 12 but I can guarantee that it is a quality model. Youcan find it right here. HappySketchUpping! ^_^

 

[Patrickivan]

^ thanks- I'll check it out...
I certainly am starting to understand that there are very specific rules with how lines can effect existing objects within the object... The hard part is figuring out what those rules are.

I'm house sitting for my mother this weekend, so I hope to have plenty of sketchup time on her faster computer. I just have to remember to bring my drawing with me- or start from scratch

 

[BorgMan]

If there's an internet connection, why don't you just mail it to yourself right away? Or subscribe for a free Dropbox account and install it on your computer and laptop and use that folder one as your main save-file. That way youll always have the most recent version of the model, no matter where you go