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Starship layout - Excel experiment

T

TheEngineer

SOC-14 1K
Hi folks !

Finding that the measurement and the distribution of all the dtons is quite a pain during ship design, especially then doing large multi deck ships, I started to torture Excel yesterday evening.
Now a intermediate result is an Excel sheet, which can be used to graphically layout a multi deck design, while Excel functions let you control the volumes of the main components.
Well, it even provides front and side view profiles...

So, one option here is to produce a shape freely and scale its volume units until it fits to the actual design.

I will put that on my website download area, but if anybody is intrested, just give me a PM.

Regards,

Mert
 
Hi !

So, here a view:

SnapShot.jpg


And here's the spreadsheet (it seems to work with Openoffice quite pretty):
http://www.vuraldi.de/Traveller/Shiplayout.xls

Guess I will change the orientation of the deck drawing areas, because the number of columns is a bit limited in Excel...


A VERY SHORT DESCRIPTION:
Go in each deck layout frame and make a rough design of the deck by entering a character like x for hull, p powerplant, m manuerver drive, f fuel etc.
The spreadsheet counts the nr of appropriate squares and uses a multiplier (which could be entered and altered in the upper left) to calculate actual volumes.
The spreadsheet created a side view and behind view profile, too.

So, you can either just design soemthing and use the square unit multiplier to scale it up to the desired dtons, or you can try to roughly recreate a design you already have (but no real proportions) and use the sheet to distribute the components more easily.

Just remember, this is the first shot, but it already helped me to figure out the interior design of the BB-13 battleship...


Any cmments and enhancements are very welcome.

regards,

Mert
 
I've been playing around with it but don't really know what I'm doing!

Forgive me for being stupid but could you explain it further? The principle of the spreadsheet looks really interesting.

Question:

Do the numbers in column AI1 represent the total volume of each component? eg. Total hull volume, total powerplant volume etc? They do not seem to change if I change the 'square unit' or if I build a ship in the deck areas.

Oh, and what do the numbers under 'Square' mean?

Great job btw. This will be very handy particularly if used in conjunction with the other spreadsheet application out there on staship design which gives you the volumes.

Ravs
 
Hi raws !

Usually I dont no what I'm doing, too


Yes, the numbers represent the total volume of all squares with a defined char in it.
E.g. behind the despriptive label Hull there is a character "x", so the formula calculates the total volume of all squares with a "x" inside.

The number in B4 should contain the total volume.
Guess thats wrong in the actual download version, as here it just sums up the seperate tonnage values. This might not be correct if there are other chars used in the layout area.

The first number below square is the 3rd root of the unit volume, thus represent the length of one side of one cubicle.
Yeah, thats perhaps a constrain: actually I treat the volume units as cubes. So if I choose a volume unit of 27 each square in the layout area represents a volume of 3 * 3 * 3 (meters, cubicfeet, whatever).
In order to verify some deckplans, I just started to use 0,25 dTons, so that one deck in the layout view is just 1,5 m high and I have to use two decks in the layout to get one "real" deck of a Traveller floorplan. Anyway it allows to be a bit more accurate


Its really just a dirty prototype, so please excuse some handling difficulties.
Guess I have to protect some cells...

Hopefully it really will be useful for anybody except me. At least it should easily integrate in those spreadsheet based designers, as it could be simply copied inside.

regards,

Mert
 
This is very cool, and I'm going to tie it into my own design sheet. Been trying to work up a deckplan for a trade ship IMTU (preliminary sketch of the engineering section has been posted to my blog), but I'm constantly having to revise it to make everything fit.

I can see this tool being enormously helpful in planning deck layouts.

Thanks for posting this!
 
Ah....got it.

Gr.= Gross volume.

I understand the reason for the cube root (^3) now, thanks.

What I don't understand are the circle figures in the picture below. The more I look at this the more incredibly useul I think it is going to be for ship design.

Many thanks!

Ravs

spread.jpg
 
Brilliant, thanks Engineer!

You should think about putting this in the FL library. I can't believe I'm the only one who finds it incredibly useful as a method to produce first draft layouts which conform to volume specs.

One suggestion! Using Angus McDonald's T20 starship design sheet, we can get the tonnage of each component of the ship.

Would it be possible on your sheet to have 'target values' next to each of the components, which will change depending on the unit of length involved (use 'GOALSEEK'?)

So if using Angus's spreadsheet I see that I need, say 24dt for hull armour I can enter that in your spreadsheet and it will tell me how many squares of hull armour I will need given the unit length I have chosen.

Does that make sense?

Ravs


Ravs
 
Hi Ravs !

Youre very welcome.

Well, I will add a third column in the component list, so that there are three:
- actual volumes in the layout (calculated)
- a target value in dTons (manually entered)
- the target value in layout squares

Did I understand it correctly ?

regards,

TE
 
Yes! The target value in layout squares is calculated by reference to the target value in dtons and the unit length.

regards

Ravs
 
superb! Thanks Mert...I'm off to have a play!

cheers

Ravs

:Edit: Had a play - I take it that the numbers under 'Goal' are so you can work out the length, width and height?

Great work! Thanks - this will be really useful. I only wish I'd had it 6 months ago!

Cheers

Ravs
 
And 200 dTon Hiver exploration vessel deckplans will be on the Spica site in just a few hours.

I had chossen a basic layout in a roughly 1,25 m scale (2 m³ per square).
This led to a somehow intresting multi-deck design, with splitted decks and just walkways to get from one deck to another
 
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