WIP - a very historic Enterprise

[CTM]

I've mentioned this project in my previous WIP thread http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=92307

and I finally have something to show for it now. Building USS Enterprise (CV6) in AutoCAD. In that time I have successfully converted a set of drawings from the National Archives into AutoCAD drawings that are now also reconciled with each other and properly aligned with each other. There are additional detail drawings (quite a few pages in fact) that I have yet to convert (a painstaking process of tracing each analog drawing into a "definitive" CAD drawing - each sheet takes me about 9 hours of actual drawing (and in my free time that works out to about a week). So far this project has been just shy of 150 hours in AutoCAD - not counting research time. Ultimately, I will actually build this ship full-size in AutoCAD (hey, it's a hobby, and it keeps me out of trouble), but for now the drawings as they go.

Anyway, here are the first 15 sheets of this project.

 

[CTM]

 

[CTM]

 

[Albertese]

Fantastic! I will follow this with great interest!

--Alex

 

[Mytran]

Wow! Great project

 

[dubeau]

Nice work. Not an expert in Autocad, but it's really good.

 

[B.J.]

Very nice! I love seeing the actual deck plans, not just the exterior. I can certainly appreciate the amount of work that's gone into this!

You mentioned you got the originals from the National Archives. Is that available online?

 

[CTM]

The principle set of plans I got in 11x17 paper through a business called "Maryland Silver" - 200+ pages of plans copied from the national archives. Multiple pages per original sheet. Much of it illegible, much of it marred and distorted. I scanned each page, then adjust for scale and alignment, then trace. Then I had to move on to the next page (which would have some overlap) and repeat. I had to do a great deal of research to differentiate between the "as planned" and the "as built" and to determine some of the basics. For example, it is well documented that the latitudinal frame spacing was 4' (48"), but there is no documentation on the longitudinal frame spacing. Through a great deal of research and analysis of photos and plans, I was able to determine that generally the longitudinal frames were 43" apart, though some were as much as 54".

There is some contradictory information in the sources as well. My first run at the island had it 14'-9" wide (fits with most of the baseline assumptions), but I have a detailed sheet on the Tripod Mast - complete with legible measurements - which shows that it has to be 13' wide. When laid out at 14'-9" it looks too "fat". I corrected my drawings and continued. One night a few weeks ago I was watching Battle 360 and I saw that their CGI team made the same mistake I made originally - but they didn't catch and fix it (they may have caught it, but they didn't fix it).

I'm also in the process of reading The Big E - the definitive book about this ship. When they talk about the damage and rudder problems at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, I have a much better feel for the description because I've all but built this ship. As an identical sister to Yorktown, the damage she got at Coral Sea is much more informative (Frame 108 is a real place in my mind now, not just some odd reference).

 

[B.J.]

^ Okay, now I'm *really* impressed!

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Very nice work there

 

[blssdwlf]

Excellent detailed work CTM and great research. It's a shame that the Enterprise wasn't one of the handful of WW2 era ships that are preserved as a museum.

 

[Mudang Harada]

Best of luck.

 

[CTM]

Completed the Port Profile today. I had to reverse the original to get it properly registered with the rest of the build, drew it in reverse, and then reversed the result to get the "exterior" view. When I actually build the model, I'll be using the reversed view rather than the "normal" view.

 

[CTM]

With a cold and rainy day, and nothing better to do, I made some great progress. I have the gallery/flight deck structure sheets converted, including the detail breakouts, for two out of three sheets.

unless otherwise noted, sizes are in feet.

 

[CTM]

The next sheet took me a couple of weeks (including several major real world interruptions) but I finally finished it tonight.

 

[B.J.]

Nice! Are these just structures, or are there any systems included?

 

[CTM]

So far just structures. I have some system diagrams to input as well (fuel lines, fire plugs, etc), but I haven't gotten to those sheets just yet.

 

[CTM]

So, turns out changing jobs, moving, and buying a house takes an enormous amount of free time, and my hobbies suffer. With the return to darker evenings, I have returned to this project. Latest sheet is the forward aircraft elevator.

I do have a newer copy of AutoCAD (2015), but don't plan on moving over to that until I start the 3D phase of this project. I'm practicing with other things in 2015 so that I have a cleaner run with this project when I make that move. I'm treating this as a "Master Piece" and don't want to pay the learning curve price on this one.

 

[Admiral Danev]

This looks great, I would love to see a more up close version of the deck plans though! Cant make out the details to well sadly

 

[USS Triumphant]

When you've got her fully rendered, is there any chance I could get a wallpaper of her in standard orbit?