Steve's going to shoot me, but I redrew the sickbay. Well, half of it at least. It's way better now, with more trama / surgery beds, a waiting area, better offices with private exam rooms, and not so much wasted space. Steve said "don't change anything", but this needed to be done. I sent him images, and I think he'll agree. If not, I have the original version stll on-file. Other than adding a table and six chairs in an empty room he pointed out, I haven't changed anything else.


Garth L. Getgen

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 06:58 pm: Edit

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Quote:

Gary, they're for the basic POL, with notes for the Plus refit. Some of the varients are more straight forward than others, and that would reflect in deck plans.

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By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 07:44 pm: Edit

I take it you want the Aurora frigate. That's actually easier to do than the three-engine PFF.


Garth L. Getgen

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 08:09 pm: Edit

Actually, I was wondering; what kind of template do you have for shuttles, and how easy (or difficult) is it to adjust them?


The FRA have a type of shuttle bomb detailed in (OJ5.0), which operates like a miniaturised suicide shuttle.

When the Aurorans started exploring their new near neighbourhood, they found several other star systems that had been dumped there by the same anomaly which had transplanted their own system in Y130. One of these systems had a world whose inhabitants had long since been wiped out by some sort of plague. On that planet was a factory which happened to produce the unit the Aurorans would adopt into the first shuttle bombs.

From Y149, they can trade in a single admin shuttle for two of the original shuttle bombs. From Y182, a more refined model allows for three shuttle bombs to be traded in for each admin shuttle instead. (No currently-published FRA ship takes shuttle bombs as standard; for the time being, each trade is paid for separately.)

There is no art yet showing what these shuttle bombs look like. But then, there's nothing to say what they don't look like either, except to note that there is no room for a pilot (since they are controlled remotely).


So, on the off chance that there's be room for an FRA frigate at some later point, perhaps adding a note referring to these shuttle bombs might then be worth considering.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 08:46 pm: Edit

My shuttlecraft icon is a 98% match to the image in the FJ Tech Manual. It was the first Trek thing I ever drew with Floor Plan Plus.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 01:44 am: Edit

Some free advice:

1) Make a back-up copy of the master file.
2) Do not overwrite both the master file and the back-up copy with the same "temporary" changes.

As you may know, I'm drafting in Floor Plan Plus v2, which cannot directly export files that ADB can read in. It can export to DXF, which TurboCAD can read in, and TurboCAD can write to PDF, which I could swear Leanna told me is a format they could use. However, somewhere during the conversion process, all the walls and window icons (which I'm using for doors) change to poly-lines. The windows didn't "cut" an opening in the wall like they do in the native FP2 file.

So, I spent a couple hours in Floor Plan Plus tracing partial walls overtop the full-length wall, manually leaving the opening for the doors. I exported to DXF, then pulled it up in TurboCAD and manually deleted all the full-length walls, leaving the partial walls and window icons. It worked perfectly. Well, almost, for I discovered that some of the partial walls "joined" to some of the full-length walls, causing then to shift and thus in turn shifted many of the doors. I had to manually put them back in place.

Once I had everything fix, I saved each deck to a separate PDF and e-mailed them to SVC. He replied back that he cannot import PDF into his publishing program. Aaargh! And the PDF is so crisp on the screen -- you can zone all the way in and count the keys on a computer keyboard.

So, I went back to the original plan to kludge the images to JPG. I opened the master file in Floor Plan Plus and found the same moved-doors problem. No problem, I'll just open the back-up copy.

Guess what.

Somehow, I had saved the modified master file to the back-up copy. Both versions had the same moved-doors problem. {sigh} So, each night this week, I spent a little time going thru one or two decks deleting all the partial walls and fixing everything that had moved, as well as other little items that I had missed before (e.g., a table & chairs out of line with all the others).

Earlier tonight, I finished that last of the fixes. The next step was to get it to JPG format. To do that, I open Paint Shop Pro, then go to Floor Plan Plus and highlight a deck (drag-left-click to select) and Ctrl-C to Copy, and then go to Paint Shop Pro and Ctrl-V to Paste As New Image.

At that point, a box comes up saying the image will be 75x296 pixels, but it gives me the option to change the image size. I ran an experiment by making a few copies each with a different pixel count. I left one at 75, made another 150 (x2), another 375 (x5), and lastly one at 750 (x10). When I print fit-to-page, they're all a mess, but the x10 is Noticeable "better" (relatively speaking) than the x5.

After some more experimenting, I found that x25 is acceptable for 8-1/2 x 11 print, and x40 is near-perfect. One thing, though, is all the text changed fonts to something that just awful. Ergo, all labels will have to be added after the conversion. I'm inclined to leave them off and let SVC add them before punlishing; that way, he can make sure they fit in the space available.

Tomorrow, I need to send a couple text files to SVC to see which multiplier is the most optimum one to use. Obviously, more is better, but there's going to be a point of diminishing returns, and the file-size goes up substantially. I don't know what size paper he's going to publish on, so my testing on 8-1/2 x 11 only proves that the concept works but not what the multiplier needs to be -- x40 worked for me, but he may need me to export to something ridiculous like x100 for publication. We shall see.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 09:09 am: Edit

You remind me of a story you might enjoy:

Sometime after the ST: Generations movie came out, my brother suggested doing a blueprint of the B-ship. Since I'd bought his old computer with his old version of Word Perfect, I chose to do it in their graphics program. This involved recording my mouse movements to a macro, and editing that to change the coordinates to numbers that would satisfy my sense of accuracy (scaled, IIRC, to a printout on 8 1/2 by 14 inch paper). I had the top view of the whole ship, and laid out several sheets-worth of the outline of decks, but I only designed about three or so before I lost patience with the process.

The moral is either, "It could be much worse," or, "Someone who's tried it appreciated the work you're doing."

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 03:58 pm: Edit

Garth -

I don't think JPG is going to necessarily be a solution either. I'd read previously that SVC wants to reserve the ability to make needed last-minute changes to the drawings (presumably in Freehand, on the OS9 Macs).

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 04:07 pm: Edit

Will, I know, but he said he wants JPG or TIFF, not PDF. If you know of a better way, please let me know.


Garth L. Getgen

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 04:45 pm: Edit

JPEG or TIFF is editable in Photoshop as well. I'd think TIFF would be better (less lossy) but what do I know of this particular thing?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 08:36 pm: Edit

The way Garth did those, there is simply no way for us to make "native edits" as we don't have the software. Which means we'd have to do "photoshop edits" which are a whole nother critter. All of which means that we have to have the finished drawings a month before printing, spend a ton of time checking them, get revisions made by Garth, then hope like Hell nobody notices anything else.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 09:25 pm: Edit

So then what would be the best way to do and submit deck plans? What software can you use and edit?

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 03:30 am: Edit

FreeHand. I bought an old copy of FH9, specifically to be more compatible to ADB, someday.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 03:52 am: Edit

Okay, so if push comes to shove, I send a bunch of GIF images to Will McCammon showing all the details and measurements of everything I drew, and he duplicates it into a format that ADB can read in.

{grin ... duck ... run}


Garth L. Getgen

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 08:47 am: Edit

Freehand can (theoretically) open DXF files.

So, Garth sends Freehand files to Will, along with a Bitmap version to check against. Will imports them, makes sure they're editable, and sends them on to SVC for the final editing and labeling.

No doubt gremlins will appear in this process, and setting up the process chain will be difficult the first few times - and involve a lot of work between Garth and Will, and eventually a lot of work between Will and SVC.

Whether there's enough interest to make setting up a new process for this kind of data transfer is something I do not know, but I know it's possible.

DXF is the "RTF" format for vector graphics.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 09:09 am: Edit

Yes, but is that feature in the older version the SVC is running? I think that's something that was added in the last or second-to-last release. But if it can, I can export to DXF easily. That's how I got the files from FPPv2 to TurboCAD.


Garth L. Getgen

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 09:31 am: Edit

Garth, it might not be in the version SVC is running - but it might be in the version Will is running, which is why Will is the intermediate step.

From you (DXF) to Will.
From Will (Freehand native) to SVC.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 09:47 am: Edit

It used to be when PD first made it's appearance, SVC required deckplans to be in .EPS file format for Mac compatibility.

Back then Nick Blank and I used an application that has gone away now. SVC/ADB's current file requirements are something I am NOT in the loop with.

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 09:49 pm: Edit

If I am just acting as an import/export conduit, I'm happy to help. I can't commit to a lot more than that though (got a lot going on with day-job, Tenneshington, and trying to get my workshop up and running).

I think you will want to keep deckplans in a vector (real, adjustable points/lines/planes/text geometry) format, such as DXF, DWG, SVG, CGM, or one of the encapsulated formats like EPS. Dumping them out to a raster (bitmap, jpeg, png, etc.) format means any changes will require either a turnaround back to you, or kludgey Photoshop editing. The ideal is to have the data get to ADB in a format that SVC can revise small things (especially labels), as-needed and quickly.

Any version of Freehand is an old version, as Adobe bought out Macromedia and ended development of Freehand (in lieu of Illustrator), years ago.

I have FH9, which was the second-to-last, version I think. It's year 2000 vintage.

It can indeed open DXF (AutoCAD) files. However, every program is a bit different and exports to DXF differently, which then has to be opened and translated in FreeHand. I've seen some things import fine and some things go kablooey to various degrees. Arc and circular shapes are the usual culprits (they "untrim" and become complete circles or ellipses).

I don't know which version of FreeHand SVC runs at ADB, but since it is Mac OS9, it will be yet another import thing to fret on.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 10:04 pm: Edit

No rush. SVC is busy with Origins prep. If he needs a page for a teaser in CL-47, I have all the decks saved off as JPG at 1875x7500 and 3750x14800 per deck. I need to re-save them all as TIFF. I can't seem to get it to go any bigger due to memory limits.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 02:28 am: Edit

Garth, send me on of the middle full length decks.

Will had it right. Do it in freehand is perfect as I can make changes.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 02:37 am: Edit

Steve, will do, in the morning after 7-am. I'll send Deck Three, which has the main bridge and sick bay.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 10:04 pm: Edit

For the life of me, I was unable to duplicate the end-view of the drone rack. I needed that as it will be the top-down view for a vertical launch system. Last night, I scanned in the clip-art from CL-18 and zoomed in real close, and I figured out the mistake I kept making. Ergo, I now have a reasonable approximation of a drone rack. So, what I'll do is send ADB two versions of Deck One: one as the non-refit POL and the other as the refit POL+ with the drone rack.

As far as other variants, the easiest one to do would be the PV with the hanger modules added (no change to the basic ship), but SVC would rather I do the POV from CL-30 instead. He suggested how to do it, but after looking at the SSD, it looks like the changes are more substantial then we thought. Instead of just redesigning Deck One, I figure it will involved major changes to Decks One, Two, Seven and Eight. That's more work than I want to put into it at this point. Maybe later. I don't know of any other variants that are worth doing drawings for.

Steve did ask me to consider doing another project, and after looking at some of the variants, I think I'd like to do it. I need to do the basic ship first, but one of the variants looks like it'd be fun to draft and more useful for PD.

Another ship I'd like to see deck plans for, but I will not be the one drawing them, is the Klingon G2 police boat. I have no idea what SVC has in mind, but if it were up to me (which it's not), I'd suggest a product that includes plans for the Fed and Klingon police boats, an Orion LR (and the CR would be cool, too), the Free Trader, and this other one that SVC asked me to do. I'd love to re-do the Skiff plans because, in my not-so-humble opinion, the Travller ones are kind of sucky.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, June 02, 2013 - 08:07 pm: Edit

I got side-tracked by stupid stuff and real life, but this morning I sent TIFF images for each deck to SVC. That way, in case I get hit by a truck on the way to work tonight (not that I plan on that happening -- it sounds too painful), he's not left in a bind with only one of eight decks to print.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, June 02, 2013 - 10:31 pm: Edit

And a computer glitch destroyed the one with the labels. Need resend. For the record, I need the labels, on every copy, and have no need for the ones without labels. Ever.