Archive through February 09, 2018
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: DECK PLANS PROJECTS:
Fed Police ship:
Archive through February 09, 2018
Nice. Photobucket is quite the ad-addled website now, though.
Thanks. And yes, I'm fed up with PhotoBucket. Someone told me to look into Google-Photos.
As I said, I'm working off measurements from my deck plans to the nearest .125 meters. All of the major components are done, so now I can play around with adding the doodads such as airlock doors and nav lights.
Getting the front phaser bumps on was a bit fun. The technique I use is to draw a quarter-circle with a stem on the vertical axis. I put a horizontal circle on the end of the stem, then use the Follow Me tool to spin the quarter circle and turn it into a ball. Works great, but how the *bleep* do you draw a line perpendicular out of a plane that is sloped?? Well, after fifteen minutes or so playing with it, I stumbled on the trick. I accidentally drew a line on the face of the plane, so I drew three more to make a square. I then used the Push/Pull tool to make a cube on the face. I deleted the top and three sides, leaving the vertical plane I needed to draw the quarter-circle upon. Ta-da!!
I'm sure someone will come by and say "Here's an easier way to do that", but what the Hey! it go the job done.
Garth L. Getgen
Got more done on the 3-D project: added airlock doors (nose one has blast doors shut), the nav lights, and some creative stuff to engines and tail end.
Top-front view
Lower front view
Top aft view
Garth L. Getgen
Against my better judgment, I added windows to the ship. These aren't marked on the deck plans, but I did line them up with crew-quarters.
Front-left view
In the parallel-projection mode, it looks "funny" in some angles. Here's the same camera view in normal perspective mode.
Perspective view
I still need to add several maintenance ports (fuel, water, air, water-drain, bio-waste extraction port, trash shoot) and other doodads. After that, I need to figure out how to give it a "skin" and paint the name & logo on it.
Garth L. Getgen
Sorry Garth -- I'd *love* to look at them, but Photobucket is a spammy ad-filled site that takes forever to load a Cable speeds...
It's coming together into a really nice model, Garth. Neat to see the exterior matching all the work you've done on the deck plans.
Hey, is that for showin' or for growin'?
My first thought was that this was to make your deckplans Shapeways compatible so we could print them out in 3-D... as dollhouses if we want!
Yeah ... no, Jack. My wife asked me the same thing. That's not going to happen anytime soon.
And for the record, I'm doing this for my own fun and to learn how to use Sketch-Up. SVC said he has a Shapeways model already (the Mongoose version??), and besides Sketch-Up doesn't appear to be "water tight". Or maybe that's just because I don't know what I'm doing. The best I can hope for is if Jean wants to post the finished version on ADB's Facebook page.
Garth L. Getgen
I added a VASI landing light system for the shuttle craft. I was inspired by the Tenneshington decals.
Landing Light
I had created this really complex system with three rows of lights. It was great ... until I zoomed out and look at it. It was massive. Way too big. It had to go. This is much cleaner, and works just as well, if not better.
Also, you might notice I re-did the windows on the forward hull. I had them only in the officers' quarters living rooms, but they looked too sparse, so I added ones in the bedrooms as well. My wife asked if I was going to put curtains in ... don't need them as the "glass" can be darkened at the touch of a button.
Garth L. Getgen
I watched a training video that showed how to import an object into your drawing. I was browsing around the Sketch-Up warehouse and found a ton of Star Trek ships. I pulled down the first "okay" version I found in the proper scale just to see what wound happen.
Police Cutter and Heavy Cruiser
Also, I found the file for my Armed Priority Transport project. Do note that this model is NOT "right". If memory serves, I discovered that the body is about ten-twelve meters too short. Still, it's in the ballpark.
Cutter and APT
Garth L. Getgen
I'm really on the fence about this one. Please take a look and give me your gut reaction.
Aft maneuvering thrusters
None of the previous artwork had thrusters shown, but I figured I'd give it a try to see how they look. What do you think?
Too big? Too small? Too many? Too 1960's? Too obtrusive? Does it even need them, or would a simple hole in the ship where the jet exhaust comes out suffice?
Garth L. Getgen
They look too much like the pop-to-pod end docking latches on cargo pods to me (the ones around the perimeter of the end caps in the original FJ art). The Pol looked a lot like it was made from cargo pods to begin with and I wouldn't reinforce that.
Depends on how much thrust each unit has, may need only four on the rear and four in the front to allow for some decent maneuvers...
I'm leaning towards taking them out. Not sure what, if anything, needs to go back in place of them.
Garth L. Getgen
So-far, Nick Blank's deck plans have pretty much been the only place where reaction control thrusters have been depicted.
They didn't show on the tv ships, so I always assumed they were behind panels, or otherwise normally hidden.
I looked at the FFG plans and wanted to do something like that, but as there's only the top view I had no reference how to make them 3D.
I'd also consider putting them on the side of the cylinder instead of on the tail cone, but the drone launcher / Ph-3s are in the way of a couple of them.
Garth L. Getgen
I believe Nick was channeling the trek motion picture filming model a bit, with how he did the maneuvering thrusters on his FF deck plans. Those wrap the upper and lower edges of the saucer lip, giving ports on both the outer and upper/lower faces, at the four "corners" (N/NW, S/SW, S/SE, N/NE directions from center).
But again, unless you are going for a hyper up-detailed close-up model, they're usually not actually depicted.
Not hyper-detailed, but I figure if you can see it from a hundred meters or so, I should add it to the model.
Garth L. Getgen
Don't trust those plans too closely. I did the maneuvering thrusters along the outer rim of the saucer. If you look at the deck plans there is internal space devoted to them. Each of the four cluster has five thrusters, away from the ship in the plane of the saucer, up and down, and left/right along a tangent to the saucer edge.
At the last minute someone complained that there were no maneuvering thrusters on the top of the saucer or maybe underneath too (hint, none are needed as some of the rim thrusters point up and down), so SVC added the images on the top (that have no internal space devoted to them, so they are really just images painted on the upper hull). I never got to approve those before publication. As far as I am concerned, those thrusters on the upper surface of the saucer are non-cannon. They don't exist on my plans. 
That pounding noise you heard clear down in Texas was me beating my head against the wall up here in Nebraska. I could not figure out why I was unable to get the model "water-tight", and why the windows on the left side don't exactly match those on the right. I just discovered that early in the drawing I point one end-point 0.05 meters too high, which threw off the rest of the forward hull, as well as the façade on the front of the aft hull cylinder. It's lop-sided, just three to five centimeters, but that's enough to screw things up. There is no easy way to fix it without ripping half the ship apart.
I've watched some more how-to videos, so it might actually be best if I scrap it and start it over using better techniques such as Groups and Components. Someone told me that they split their ships in half and make them mirror-image Components, so whatever they do to one side (say, add windows) is automatically done to the other. I want to try that.
Garth L. Getgen
There is some precedent in having a two sided(that is, two different sides) ship. I forget the name, I ***think*** it was the U.S.S. Adams, but it might have been the U.S.S. John Adams... that the ship wright had finished one side of the ships hull structural members, then died. His successor, did his own set of plans that resulted in a different hull form on the other side of the hull.
The result according to officers notes and log entries indicated that the ship sailed better on one tack than on the other in the same wind conditions.
You could just go with it and indicate on the SSD sheet that the ship costs less energy to complete a HET if done on the right side than compared to the left! Grin.
Not kicking you when you're down, Garth. But, yes, lesson #1 in CAD (and this is a tough one, if you don't have someone to tell you, up-front) is never build more than half of something that is symmetrical. Almost any CAD program can mirror things seamlessly.
Lesson #2 is never build more than one of something that you can pattern or clone. Another strong suit for CAD.
Both of these are a major reason why CAD killed manual drafting pretty quickly. Not having to manually create or draw repeated or symmetric features is a massive time-saver and also avoids many opportunities for error.
Garth, saw one of your images over on TrekBBS, good work Sir!
If you concerned about too many windows visible on the 3D views, you can always just show some visible, saying the others are closed with no visible panels which would end up with a less cluttered look? But you can still have them on your deck plans.
Thanks. Glad you liked it. No, the windows aren't on the deck plans, but I did line them up with rooms. On the forward hull, there's a label "SECONDARY SENSORS" along the sides (officer's quarters) and "SOLAR SAIL" in the front (observation rooms). There's nothing shown on the aft hull (enlisted quarters). The large grey windows on the bow -are- on the deck plans as that's where the astronomical telescopes / main optical sensors are located. The light-purple "windows" along the lower deck of the forward hull are the phased-array lateral sensors (PALS), something I created to fill the wedge (which was too small for air/water tanks). PALS is a set of hi-res / hi-def short-range sensors that cannot be used while at warp speed (too much blur / uses too much power) developed for freighter-based (auxiliary) survey ships. You can't pick out the one Vulcan on a ship full of Romulans with it, but you can map the geology of a planet in a matter of hours ... or locate a lost life-pod in an asteroid field. It's very handy for search and rescue (SAR) missions.
Garth L. Getgen
As it stands right now:
POL Deck One - Aft: Shuttle Bay w/ two shuttles and room for third to land, Spare Shuttle, two Shuttle Control rooms (one converts to Phaser-3 Control room), tool locker, Dorsal sub-space radio and Targeting Sensor, shuttle spare parts = converts to Drone Rack for Plus-refit, water tanks. Phaser bumps mount above shuttle bay.
POL Deck Two - Aft: Hydraulics and Fuels systems under Shuttle Bay (one-meter high space), T-bomb storage, aft Transporter, two upper-aft Airlocks, two eight-bed (four two-tier bunk-beds) Barracks space (typically used for storage), two Locker Rooms w/Showers, Gymnasium, two gym equipment closets, two emergency supplies lockers, air tanks, Deuterium Slush tank.
POL Deck Three - Forward: High-powered Sub-Space Radio (aka The Siren), Conference room, Bridge, Transporter, Tractor Beam, Armory, two small conference rooms, six two-room officer suites, two public restrooms.
POL Deck Three - Aft: Sick Bay with ten recovery beds and four trauma / surgical beds, eight one-plus-one enlisted crew quarters (16 beds) w/ shared lavatory, security offices, two ten-cell Brig, main HVAC system, two aft Targeting Sensors, Deuterium Slush tank.
POL Deck Four - Forward: two Phasers, Phaser control room, center-line turbolift horizontal shaft, eight admin offices, two twenty-four seat auditoriums, two Damage Control parts & tools lockers, two small conference rooms, six two-room officer suites (CO and XO have adjoining office), two public restrooms
POL Deck Four - Aft: Fourteen one-plus-one enlisted crew quarters (28 beds) w/shared lavatory, "Black Box" flight recorder, APR/AWR, two Dilithimum Chambers, two twin AC-Power Generators with circuit breaker banks, Main Engineering Control, Impulse Engine high-bay.
POL Deck Five - Forward: Nose airlock, Astrophysics Lab, Forensics Lab, Main Computer server farm, two forward Targeting Sensors, two Optical Telescopes, six two-plus-two Junior Enlisted Quarters (typically used for storage), two forward side airlocks, two public restrooms. [The two-plus-two quarters is the space I originally intended to put Life Boats / Escape Pods.]
POL Deck Five - Aft: Two two-room officer suits w/ private lavatory, eight sing-room Chief's Lodging w/ private lavatory, eight one-plus-one enlisted crew quarters (16 beds) w/ shared lavatory, "Black Box" flight recorder, Engineering Computer Bank, aft Battery compartment, two small storage closets, two small restrooms, two fabrication machine shops, Emergency Bridge, two aft sub-space radios, Impulse Engine bay.
POL Deck Six - Forward: Photon Torpedo, Probe Launcher (drops out hatch in bottom of ship), Forward Battery compartment, Storage Locker with access down to Deflector Dish, Aux-Con, Gyroscopic Inertial Navigation System, two forward Sub-Space Radio, two Phased-Array Lateral Sensors (PALS), two forward Circuit Breaker / Power Distribution compartments, two forward HVAC systems, two water recycling systems.
POL Deck Six - Aft: Fourteen one-plus-one enlisted crew quarters (28 beds) w/shared lavatory, four common rooms / break rooms w/TV, etc, two laundry rooms, two common-use computer rooms, two meeting / gaming rooms, two Ship's Store facilities, Bio-Waste Processing Systems, Deuterium Slush tank.
POL Deck Seven - Aft: Cargo high-bay, two Food Pantries (up to 180 day supply), Galley, two Service Lines, Mess Hall w/ seating for 68, Officer Ward Room w/ seating for 16, two public restrooms, two lower aft Airlokcs, Trash Compactor "big enough to put a person in!", air tanks, Deuterium Slush tank.
POL Deck Eight - Aft: Cargo Bay (10x20 meters) typically filled with emergency supplies and rescue equipment, Cargo Transporter, Ventral sub-space radio and targeting sensor, aft Phaser control, main water recycling system, water tanks.
The ship is mirror-image symmetrical, which makes for a few redundant items. Some of these could be converted to something else, as the GM sees fit.
Garth L. Getgen