I thought it might be fun if we all learn how to this together, so I picked a ship, an unusual shp, the Frax CA, and thought I'd give it a whirl. I'm going to "pretend" that I know less than I do so that we can get some of the experts in here and make it a conversation, not a monologue.

For various reasons, I selected a scale of one meter to one pixel. My theory is once I map out a Level-3 general area plan, I can copy each deck to a separate document, expand it to four or five times that size, and work my way up.

So, I started with the external drawing. Figuring each shuttle pad as 12m wide (so it can accomodate an 8m shuttle on a turntable) I worked out that the non-engine overall hull was 360m. I have no idea how many decks there will be, but that's the glory of the frax, it can be anything I need it to be.

Looking at the drawing I worked my way down the decks. I decided that the "main deck" would be the one whose ceiling forms the weather deck. So what you see are the O-1, O-2, and O-3 decks.

On the top of the O3 deck, we have two areas each 12m front to back. The front one is 48m wide and includes the bridge. The back one is 36m wide with aux con. I added a pair of 3m vertical turbolift tubes. That's how far I got.

At this point I need the experts to tell me how many square meters I need for a bridge. Then I can map out a chunk and see if the space left might make offices or the captain's quarters or maybe a conference room. That is all stuff that can wait for a much later step, but I need to block out the bridge now.

Obviously, I already mapped in the phaser equipment rooms on O2 and we know where the shuttle bay is on O1, but let's not get away with ourselves. I may not get back here today, but let's keep the noise and clutter down, Omega and the ISC out, and just have the experts tell me how much space I need for a bridge.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 01:58 pm: Edit

see if this is better

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 04:24 pm: Edit

At 360 meters, this is 25% longer than the Fed CA. But given that the Frax ships are supposed to be long and narrow, that's probably about right.

Just the way I work, but I would not have started with the O-decks yet. Also, once I did get to those, I would have kept an outline of the ship (thin light grey lines, if you wish) around those decks to keep everything lined up. You can delete the outline during the final clean up.

My next step (Nick might have other ideas) would have been to do a side view with the same scale and orientation, as if you simply rolled the ship on the long axis. As there's no mini or clip-art to go by, you'll just have to wing it for how thick the ship should be top to bottom.

Next, I would slice the ship up into decks, creating a cut-away view. You can adjust the ship's thickness and/or deck-to-ceiling heights to get the number of deck you intend to have. I don't know how much of the ship is below the "belt line" (the widest/longest dimensions), but I would guess two or three decks above and three to five below will give you all the deck space you could ever fill.

I'll hold off on what to do after that until you're ready.


Garth L. Getgen

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 05:10 pm: Edit

Fed CA bridge on Franz Joseph deckplans is 6 meters radius internally measured, so 113 square meters (Area=Pi*radius-squared).

If you include the funky wrap-around corridor and the turbolift, it is 8 meters in radius for the whole bridge module, or 200 square meters.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 05:39 pm: Edit

Actually, Nick, it depends on whether you measure from the front or the back of the consoles. I got the same 6 meters you did, going from the back, but only 5.25 from the front. So, it's about 87 square meters of usable floor space. But Steve does need to know both numbers.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 05:55 pm: Edit

I just made a space 9x9 meters including wall thickness. Should be plenty.

Not really wanting to do the side view because I don't know how many decks I need. Somebody got a figure for the total square footage of all decks of a Fed CA? That would tell me if I need 3, 4, or 5 decks.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 06:09 pm: Edit

I changed my mind. Let me go ahead and explain the next step in the process (of how -I- would do the project).

Draw a front on (bow plane) view of the ship at the same scale as the top and side views. Slice that into decks at the same levels of the side cut-away, creating a cross-section view.

You may want to reverse these two steps, drawing the front view first and then slicing into decks. Why? Well, if you have a mini that you're working from, you're pretty well locked in on the shape, so it makes sense to draw it first.

Or perhaps you have some ideas in mind of how much the sides slope in. Let's say you want a nice 45-deg slope. You've already set the scale for the overall width of the ship, and the width of the top hull-plate. Setting the slope to a fixed angle will determine the thickness of the ship, and thus force the number (or ceiling heights) of the deck slices.

If you set the number and ceiling heights of the decks first, that will force the angle of the sloped sides. You could end up with something very shallow or very steep, not at all what you had in mind.

If you can't come up with a compromise between the number of decks and the slope of the sides, you may need to change the scale (and thus the overall length/width) of the ship to get the decks/slope where you want.

The other consideration in drawing the front view is what's below the belt line. Does that extend straight down before sloping inwards? Is the bottom of the ship flat, or does it have a V keel? Maybe the sides slope in at a steep angle, then kinks to a shallow one. This, too, will affect the total number of decks and the width of each one.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 06:31 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

Somebody got a figure for the total square footage of all decks of a Fed CA?

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By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 06:52 pm: Edit

-- delete -- i screwed the calculations up

Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 07:54 pm: Edit

Gimme dat data and I can do the front view cross section. Didn't want to do it when I didn't know if it would be doing 2, 3, 4, or 5 decks.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 08:41 pm: Edit

here's where I got when I went home.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 10:41 pm: Edit

Okay, someone can double-check what I came up with for the Fed CA, but I count 39,000 m^2 floor space for the saucer, and 55,500 m^2 for the entire ship (not including warp nacelles).

You said the AuxCon bubble is 36 meters wide, and I measure is at one-third the width of the ship. Ergo, the ship is 360 long by 108 wide, or 38,880 m^2. Of course, you need to discount for the pointed bow, but it's still probably up around 35,000 m^2. Two decks puts it up to 70K, about 15K more than the Fed. But the sloped sides will bring that back down some.

Another option is to cut the scale back to 2/3, with a footprint of 240x72, or 17,280 m^2. That lets you get four, maybe five, decks in reasonably. At 240 meters long, it's twice the length (diameter) of the Fed CA saucer and still 85% the Fed's total length. I'd say go with that. But that also screws up what you've done already with the shuttle bay and such.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 10:51 pm: Edit

Oh, I don't think it's that hard to adjust at this point, but Jean and Leanna both say that I need to get back to my scheduled work. So this may have to wait. But it is a good start.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 10:58 pm: Edit

They never let you have any fun. Oh well.

Rome wasn't built in a day, nor were any starships.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - 02:21 pm: Edit

I just noticed the front view cross-section. Whenever the girls let you play again, then next step I would suggest is to draw the side cut-away view. The cross-section lets you see the width of each deck, and the cut-away will let you see their length.

Once you have that, go ahead and draw the footprint of each deck. Personally, I like to put these side by side, with the bow towards the top of the screen, but it looks like you prefer pointing the bow to the right. Whatever works for you.

The tricky part will be getting the curves of the bow and stern right. Otherwise, it will be pretty straight forward. Use a medium-grey line to denote the max dimension of the deck, and a darker line for the usable floor space (i.e., has head room enough to stand up), and the light-grey line for the outline of the ship.

If you want, you can stop there and measure the total square meters of floor space in the ship. Per last night's discussion, the target number seems to be 50K-60K, but it's better if you're over than under. You can always cut out some areas as being over-height decks (for cargo, engineering, etc).


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - 03:34 pm: Edit

Remember that the Frax have to have fuel storage which your fed number doesn't include.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - 06:44 pm: Edit

Yes, true. I have not attempted a non-Fed ship yet, so I've not had to deal with that.

It might be helpful to put the clip art of the Frax ship next to that of a Fed CA (127m wide / 288m long), and try a couple different scales (360m x 108m / 240m x 72m) to see which "feels" right.

One thing I kind of glossed over here (because we've talked about it in other topics) is the deck heights. If this were a Fed (or Klingon / Romulan) ship, we'd assume 3.0 meters from one deck to the next. That includes the thickness of the deck plate and overhead plumbing & duct work.

We have no idea what a Frax is, let alone how tall they are or how much head room that desire. Even if they're human-size, maybe they fly and thus need five-meter high ceilings, if not more. You have an advantage that you would not normally have in that you get to set the ceiling height to adjust the scale to get the floor space you want.


Garth L. Getgen

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - 07:08 pm: Edit

I would guess as they are klingon sim ships the decks would be klingon sized. For boarding actions and such.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - 08:02 pm: Edit

We actually do know that Frax are human/klingon size.

What I still need is someone to independently confirm the total square footage (well, meters square would be fine) of the Fed CA useable deck space.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, June 11, 2015 - 05:36 pm: Edit

I was playing around with a little side project and hit upon a great idea. I'm at the point where I can start to rough-in turbo-lifts and corridors. In the past, I used a standard line using purple for the turbo-lists and cyan for the walkways. The problem is a thin line can (1) get lost in the mess and (2) not show you a real idea of scale. My program allows me to define Walls to any thickness I want. I tried and sure enough I can define a wall as three-meters thick, and as a bonus I can give walls a pattern-fill as well as a color. So now I can use "walls" to rough-in the passageways without the two problems above.

()


Garth L. Getgen