This is stemming from some thoughts I had regarding Warped9's thread.
http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=72128
What basis do you design a ship?
From a personal standpoint, I like to come up with a purpose and make some constraints as to what the ship is for. For me, just throwing lines on paper would quickly result in "Mondo-super Universe class ultimate battle destroyer". I also like the elegance of a good "form follows function" to the designs of military equipment. it reminds me of a saying used in the aerospace design industry I once read about and always keep in mind when trying to think of a design, "If it doesn't look right, it won't fly right". Which in my mind meant that while there is a science to designing aircraft, there is also an art to it. I also have a tendency to want to come up with smaller ship designs in response to avoiding my "inner fanboy" and creating some huge 12 nacelle'd, 40 photon monstrosity.
So, what type of thought processes do you go through when thinking out a new ship?
When I started my destroyer project,
U.S.S. Charles F. Adams, I went with the concept of what do I need to make the starship functional? The answer was simple, what do you have in your house to make it functional? (In no order...) there are bedrooms, an eating area, a kitchen, a laundry, a den/office (where in I do my skullduggery), storage area's, and a garage for my shuttle craft/Ford Explorer. Ad nausium... Now to make it move I simply look at it as a big RV. Add in controls and an engine/power plant and vi-jola! Instant starship.
These are all common areas or modules that are necessary for all starships, they may vary in design and shape from ship to ship, but they are the building blocks from which all else spring.
The next question is where does my ship fit in to the Star Trek universe (as I preserve it?)
Well, I don't care for the big 1701D/NX2000/Jar-jar esque
Uberprizes. They're fun to look at, but story wise nah-h-h, not so much. All the capability of a starbase, with warp drive. Where's the challenge in that? Then the situtation is 4 or 5 people doing everything all the time, with Red Shirts to suck phaser bolts for them... "Sir we just lost ensign Expendable...he's dead Jim."
I prefer the original concept, 300ish guys and gals out there, doing stuff-f! Getting into trouble and having to use their noggens to get out...or flat out, cut and run, A/R. No big deal holo-labs/decks, no double talk generators, no ubercomputer control/automation functions. Things are done by the guys and gals of the crew, much like the real world of the twenty first century.
Ok so we nailed down the crew, what about the ship? The
Adams will be built using the modular construction of at least the ship builders of the present, I would therefore use the common modules from the TOS heavy cruisers of the Constellation class. Which of course gives me the saucer section as a starting point. Construction would be bonded (not welded) modules of advanced composites. (No little tiny plates butt welded together.) Ship to be built in space, not in a quarry... lifting that much weight into orbit presents a lot of problems, and I do mean a LOT. (Which is why ships are not constructed in Nevada and trucked to San Francisco.)
Now comes the fun part... research. Being an old aviation guy I can identify with the original designer of the Enterprise. (But I don't know from boats...) Fortunately for me I lived not far from Oakland and the
U.S.S. Hornet. As well as a couple of other ships across the bay in S.F. (where in our hero promptly made a nuisance of himself ) To my surprise the docents on those ships were happy to expound on their ship's construction and mission. One gentleman on the
Hornet was curious about why I was asking so many questions. So I braced for impact and told him what I was doing. Turns out he was a Trekkie and as consequence I got to see some things that the public is not allowed to. All in all I visited an Aircraft carrier, a fleet submarine, a destroyer, a liberity ship, a stern wheel river boat and the
HMS Surprise. (Chuck's hints to happiness... If you are doing something like this, and live near a museum ship, grab you sketch book and visit the ships. Don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions, the docents are a pretty good group all in all. Plus they get to tell you all kinds of stuff about their ship!) From this I got a pretty good feel what life would be like on a ship/starship. (The Navy guys here will laugh and roll around on the floor in hysteria at our hero's "land lubber" take on things.)
Being a reenactor and all around history buff, I look for actual things and sequences of events to latch on to for my drawing... to give it a good grounding as it were, in believability because if I don't believe in the ship, nobody else will either. So names, numbers, time/era and etc. must have meaning. For example I like to place my ship's designs some where between TOS and the TMP eras. I figure it gives me a developed "world" to pull from as well as a large-ish gray area to play with my designs. At the same time giving the reader/viewer a sense of familiarity, almost.
Then we start putting things on paper in earnest like, what do I want to accomplish with this drawing? What level of detail is acceptable? What do I want to include? What do I want to exclude? How many and type of views are needed? An so forth and so on. Right now I work in 2D, some day maybe I'll get enough bucks to for an old copy of Autocad 2005 and be able to do 3D solids. (sigh)
As I block in the first pass at the ship on the board, I think about the ship's back story/history, fleshing out some of the details in my mind as I go.
Once I've got the first pass done, I move to an inboard profile, where in I show the general layout of decks and details. Sometimes, more often than not, this involves pushing and squeezing the ship's outline to make things fit or work.
Once the inboard profile is firmly set in jello, I go back to the out board profile and include the updates from the inboard profile. NOTE: All drawings are done full scale, for the autocad guys, 1 foot equals 1 unit.
Next I project the other required views and repeat the revision process as above.
For my own bookkeeping all drawings start out as a revision level "-" and when I change or update the drawing I roll the revision level to a numerical level starting at "1" and go to where I release the drawing as finished when it becomes a revision level "A". Yeah I know too much drafting ingrained into me... the advantage is as I go along and if I don't like something I've done I can always go back to the pryor REV and pick it up again...avoiding the blunder(s) previous!
Once I'm done, I write block all cool stuff from the margins to my block library, of which I have several. Then I delete/nuke everything else save the actual drawing(s) copy the views out to separate pages and put on the borders, dimensions and notes.
For references I use;
MIL-STD-100 Drawing Reference Manual
ANSI-Y14M Supersedes Mil Std 100
THE MACHINERY HANDBOOK Ver 26
STNG Technical Manual
DSNINE Technical Manual
MR SCOTTS GUIDE TO THE ENTERPRISE
STAR FLEET Technical Manual
STAR TREK Blueprints
STNG Blueprints
These are my "go to" references, at different times I use a bunch of information on the internet and other places.
I hope some of this is useful...
Regards
Chuck