<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Daleus:
Pointers to resources [on how to make deckplans], or your own procedures would be appreciated.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Hello.
I've made some deckplans, and they can be an interesting challenge. My first bit of advice would be to look at lots of deckplans...see what the official ones look like, even the broken ones, and see what other fans are doing. It can also help, if you can find them, to look at real plans for maritime vessels and buildings to get a feel for putting things together.
I usually make a sketch, then use a spreadsheet to divvy up the different parts of the ship by function. I use the numbers to see how much of the ship should be drives, how much should be bridge, that kind of thing, then I block out similar-proportioned areas on my sketch. For example, if I see that 25% of the hull volume should be drives, I block out about a quarter of the sketched ship for drives.
Once I've blocked out areas, I start thinking access. Major hatches from the outside for cargo bays, for example. I might try a rough 3D sketch of the ship to figure out where multi-deck items (very large weapons, power plants, hangar bays, etc.) will be and how they'll effect the decks around them. I'm not doing any details right now, just blocking out areas based on guesses for volume.
Next I try and firm up the dimensions of the ship. I'll sometimes try to get really detailed at this part, reducing the ship to primitive solids and precisely calculating comparative volume, but really a close guess is OK. At this stage, since I'm determining how long or how thick the ship is, I can make a good guess as to how many decks that measurement divides up into.
I sketch the proper number of decks onto the earlier "block-out" sketches - paralell to thrust direction or perpindicular ("airplane or skyscraper"), whichever works best for the design. Now I can see a pretty good basis for working out the internal arrangement.
Now that I have the exterior dimensions and the general internal layout, I start working details. Major compartments first, string them together with horizontal and vertical accessways with a nod towards traffic patterns, then fill out minor compartments in appropriate places between the major ones. Add in a few chrome details, like a small EVA prep area near the main airlock, or an armory right between Marine Country and the Boat Deck. Push a bulkhead here, trim a nacelle there, tweak the deckplans until I get the best balance between following the ship design and getting deckplans that look good to me.
Deckplans are really more of an art than a science, which is a good thing.
Walt Smith
Who really has to get his last two designs on the web.
