TOS-era 3D printable deckplan project

[Vagabond Elf]

Hello Friends!

Well, I hope we’ll be friends.

I like deckplans but I’ve learnt I also like 3D representations of 3D objects, and now that I have a 3D printer and some basic CAD skills I’ve decided I want to work on a 3D deckplan that can be 3D printed. Since starting with the Big E is a bit... ambitious, I’m starting with a smaller ship, one whose story I’ve been sketching out (in theory for an RPG I might run but really just because I like world-building).

The U.S.S. Delphi, NCC-806, is a Mark VIII Explorer, a mid-size ship that falls between the Mark IX Cruiser (the Constitution-class and her sisters) and the Mark VII (In My Star Trek Universe, the Saladins, Hermeses, and Akulas are all Mark VIIs). I’m using FASA’s TOS style Derf-class as the basic hull, and using JBot's excellent deckplans as a starting point. Though of course I’ve been making changes to suit my own desires.

This is being modelled in Fusion 360, at 1:100 scale. Based on JBot’s notes, the interior height is 2.44 metres tall (8 feet) with another 30cm (about a foot) for the deck itself. I decided to start with Deck 4. On this deck the “main” area isn’t impacted by the outer hull, but it’s a lot smaller than Decks 5-7. It seemed like a good compromise.

This is what I’ve got so far:

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On JBot’s plans, Deck 4 is Junior Officer’s Quarters, but I’ve changed it to be passenger quarters. An Explorer will need lots of lab space, so Decks 2 and 3 will be all labs. But it will also need to occasionally host diplomatic parties, whether they be from a newly contacted world or from the Federation itself, and so having a dedicated space for a small number of passengers to live and work seemed like a good plan. This version of Deck 4 will probably make it onto my version of the cruiser, as well, whenever I get there.

Here’s a labelled layout:

You can see that I’ve replaced the inner set of cabins with a rec room / cafeteria and a pair of semi-private lounges. On the Delphi, the crew has access to these lounges when there are no passengers aboard, and they’ve become a quiet, calm space prized by the more introverted members of the crew as a place where they can socialise in small groups. Obviously, when passengers are aboard, crew are expected to avoid Deck 4 unless they have duties there.

JBot has what appears to be a senior officer’s cabin on this deck labelled “YO” but I’ve been unable to determine what “YO” means. I’ve replaced this cabin with an office for the Supply Officer – who would be responsible for attending to passenger needs and so should be located in proximity – and with a briefing room. Intended as a more “formal” working space for the passengers, it is normally used as a group office for the ship’s Yeomen, who are under the Supply Officer’s authority.

On JBot’s plans, the outer cabins are all two-bunk double occupancy. I’ve preserved the nominal double occupancy, but two of the cabins are set up as “Partnered Quarters” to be used by a pair of individuals in some sort of acknowledged relationship. They can also be used as a “luxury” cabin by a single person. These can be identified by having only one larger bed.

I’ve made two more changes to JBot’s plans. First, I’ve added an access crawl-way around the outside of the cabins. This allows the crew to actually reach the water pump machinery if need be, and probably also allows access to electrical, ventilation, and other such things.

Second, I’ve added three stairwells down to Deck 5. I agree that even if we never saw them, there should be stairs in a starship for emergency or short-distance use, and I also agree the ladders aren’t sufficient. JBot has stairs connecting Decks 2-4, and more stairs connecting Decks 5-7 (I can’t remember about lower decks) but nothing connecting Decks 4 and 5 but ladders. So I added stairs. There are three stairwells because the Turbolift network functionally splits Decks 5 and 6 into three sections. (This does mean that the shortest path between some parts of Deck 5 is to come up the stars to Deck 4, and then go down a different stair back to Deck 5.)

This closeup shot of a Partnered Cabin shows how the furniture is roughly modelled. This is enough to give a sense of what’s in the cabin, without being difficult to actually 3d print. I’m personally very proud of that divider grill. Since taking this snapshot, I’ve added a slight indent to the wardrobes to suggest their doors.

You can also see a triangle archway in the corridor; like so many others before me, I’m using this as a pressure bulkhead that seals in an emergency. (Since taking the snapshots, I’ve added a pressure bulkhead to the foot of the stairs to Deck 3, so the entire stairwell becomes a single airtight compartment if needed.)

In this short, you can see the Passenger Rec Room and lounges. I’ve deliberately not modelled in all the tables and chairs since those would be hard to print, and also aren’t actually attached to the deck. To make sure the lounge’s role was clear, though, the upholstered bench/sofa thing is modelled in. The food dispensers are sketched in and I’m quite happy with their result.

You can also see the forward stairwell – which needs a door of some sort, I’ve just realised – and the ladderway. If you look closely, the three rods that are actually holding the ladder to the deck are visible. I assume that a hatch slides out of the deck at that point in case of a pressure loss.

The stored turbolift car is visible as well. This is actually a separate object, and the plan is to print them as separate parts and stick them where I need them. Something that just occurred to me as I type this is embedding magnets in the turbolift cars so I can easily move them around.

In this closeup, you can see the lavatories for the Supply Officer’s office, and for one of the passenger quarters. JBot has two toilets in his plans, but two people can easily share one toilet, so I reworked the lavatory a little. It’s harder to share sinks, though, so there’s still two sinks/vanities in the passenger lavatory.

And finally this shot shows how the briefing table and the office desks are just blocks rising out of the floor; this is of course entirely a compromise for ease of 3d printing.

So, that’s where I’m at. I’m pretty happy with deck 4. The only thing I’m not content with is the “Equipment Locker” aft of the stairwell. (Compartment "M" on the labeled plan.) I don’t want to leave that as empty space but I’m not quite sure what it should look like. Any suggestions, screencaps, or other references people want to share would be welcome!

While I intend to keep working on this and hope to finish the entire ship, I don’t have a time-frame or deadline. I’m working on it as the mood strikes me, so it could take a while. But art wants an audience, and this is a kind of art, so I wanted to share.

 

[DEWLine]

Not bad!

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Nice work looking forward to seeing other decks and the project progressing

 

[Vagabond Elf]

SO, I've been working on deck 3, and while I'm not quite ready to share that, it did give me ideas for how to fill the equipment locker on Deck 4. And so I have just now finished this:

The principal use of this space is storage for cleaning supplies and minor maintenance items for the passenger quarters; it will probably end up supporting Decks 2 and 3 as well. There are two workbenches with a small shelf for frequently used items, and then the actual locker/cabinets.

The aft portion of the compartment has hard suit storage. These suits are intended for use by the stewards and yeomen who are responsible for the passengers. Trying to get a panicking civilian or foreign dignitary into a hard suit during an emergency would be very difficult, and storing enough suits for all of them is impossible anyway. Instead the passengers, like most of the crew, would use some sort of emergency pressure bubble or possibly the force-field belts from TAS. (I haven't yet decided if those should exist in MSTU.)

Usually the Delphi doesn't have have passengers, of course, and so all those stewards are cross-trained in various skills that allow them to support Engineering or Sciences whenever there's a need to be EVA.

Finally, you can now see the pressure door added at the base of the stairwell. I actually really like how that turned out.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Right, then. Here's Deck 3!

The Delphi is an Explorer, which in MSTU is a ship fitted out for extended duration survey and exploration missions. As such, she has a full set of science labs. In MSTU, the TOS-style ships are "Fourth Generation" starships and these are built to much more standard patterns than the earlier designs. On Fourth Gen Explorers and Cruisers, most of the science labs are on Decks Two and Three.

Once again, I've based this on JBot's excellent deckplans but have again made some changes. Most notably, I've removed the Officer's Lounge JBot places in the bow of this deck. I'm still thinking about whether or not a dedicated this-room-serves-alcohol-but-only-to-officers facility even needs to exist on a Star Fleet ship; and even if I do include and Officer's Lounge, it certainly does not belong on the same deck as a bunch of people trying to do serious, complex work.

Using the volume thus freed up, I've added an actual Botany Lab. JBot only has the Florarium, but I wanted something that could plausibly be the room Sulu is in during "The Man Trap." Also, I see the Florarium as a compartment open to the crew in general for when they're feeling a little bit of cabin fever. So there needs to be a place to do the actual work of studying Botany.

(Regarding the name: Arboretum is a space for displaying trees, specifically. Conservatory sounds like a Victorian murder mystery to my ear, Nursery sounds like it should have babies in it, and Terrarium is too close to "Terra" for a setting that has many worlds and is trying to treat them all equally. So Florarium, as a place to display plants (Flora) was chosen.)

The actual function of the Florarium is to study how plant life found on survey missions interacts with that from Federation worlds and behaves in Federation world environments. In MSTU, most ships in Star Fleet in this era are predominantly crewed by a single member nation. The Delphi is primarily an Alpha Centauran ship. (To my mind, the Centauri are one of the many, many species we saw in TOS that weren't actually human but had no real makeup to make them look different. I've not yet decided if they are a Preservers transplant or something more like Babylon 5's Centauri. I like mashing universes so lifting B5's physiology for my Centauri is amusing, though of course the culture doesn't work for Trek.) As a Centauri crewed ship, the Florarium replicates temperate conditions on Aurora, the Centauri homeworld.

I moved Communications to the compartment opposite the Botany Lab. This compartment only needs to house workstations, not the actual subspace coms equipment, so it doesn't need to be large.

The crew working here have two main jobs. First, they monitor and communicate on the various subspace nets. See, in our modern age of cell phones and multiplex radios we forget that a radio can only broadcast or receive on one frequency at a time. Your cell phone is actually two radios working at the same time, and a computer program joining them together. Also, your cell phone is only communicating to the local tower, which then switches to some other method for carrying the signal further. And all of this is using dozens of different frequencies and encoded and labelled data packets so that your conversation isn't interfereing with everyone else's.

But there's no reason to make TOS-era subspace coms that flexible. Instead, I see this as more like 1970s or 1980s era com nets. One cannot broadcast and receive at the same time, and if two stations are broadcasting at the same time they interfere with each other. At short ranges the system adds headers to function like a modern radio, so multiple ships near a base or in a squadron aren't stepping all over each other, but at interstellar distances the bandwidth is too low to make that practical. All of this means that a starship needs to be able to comunicate on four or five different networks more-or-less simultaneously. And so the Coms Department has four and a half workstations, each "netted in" to a different set of channels and with a crew member working there. All of this feeds up to the Bridge's Communications station, which isn't actually netted into any of the transceivers and like all the Bridge stations is more of a terminal connected back to this mainframe than an actual computer, and can therefore swap between channels and networks as needed.

Of course, as an Explorer Delphi doesn't spend much time talking to other ships or even new civilizations, so this room also serves as the Linguistics Lab. All Communications Department crew are also trained as Linguists, and under normal conditions there will be two souls on duty here. The section is only fully crewed when there's a need to communicate with many stations at once.

Finally, that last image also shows the last change I made: a bigger bathroom. JBot's plans have a single toilet on this deck - a deck which should have around 12 souls working on it, plus however many drunk officers are in the O-Lounge. That seemed... insufficient. So I've changed it. The compartment that was the lavatory is now a simple storage closet.

I've slightly rearranged which labs are on this Deck from JBot's plans. This shot shows, from left to right, History/Sociology (which, being largely reading and writing, simple has two desks, some cabinets, and a veiwscreen against the hull) Geology, and Chemistry. The furniture is inspired by FASA's 15mm deckplans.

Here's a reverse angle showing the veiwer, and part of the Equipment locker just aft of History:

On the portside, I removed the second Equipment Locker and gave that volume to Physics. Since Physics involves a lot of "let's build it and see what happens," I wanted to give them room to do so. I didn't take any close-up pictures, though. Oops.

Here's a closeup of the ladderwell, something I didn't do for Deck 4:

The triangular "rungs" are meant to evoke a ladder whilst not needing a major overhang to print.

And here are the stairs from DEck 4 and up to Deck 2. The Deck 4 model is turned on here so you can see how it all fits together:

Because the openings are much smaller, I didn't want to narrow things down too far with the "pressure doors" and so these are "half triangles" instead of the full doors.

And that pretty much covers it! Deck 2 is next. This will involve some thinking on my end as I figure out how to account for the outer hull and also the way the bridge impinges on Deck 2. But I'm happy so far.

I haven't started printing anything because I want to run a Jeffries Tube from Deck 3 to at least Deck 5, and I can't really do that until I have Deck 5 built. So this is all just 3d models for now. But it's being a fun exercise.

 

[Jim Botaitis]

Hey, it is great to see these deck plans, and to know they will be 3D printed too. Wow! And thank you for the callouts and the references to my plans. I am glad to read that you like my drawings.

I’d like to discuss a few things:

DECK 4: #1
YO is the Yeoman's Quarters. That entry is in the ABBREVIATIONS section on the last page of my blueprints.
We see Janice Rand's quarters in THE ENEMY WITHIN; I drew the details in this room to match.
In fact, there is another YO on Deck 20 with the same details. I theorize it is THIS room that we see in THE ENEMY WITHIN.
Remember, in THE ENEMY WITHIN, Fisher calls on the intercom, "Geological Technician Fisher. Deck twelve, section -" but then Kirk grabs him and hits him, hard.

(ASIDE: In MUDD'S WOMEN, we hear Kirk say, "If that captain can walk, I want him in my cabin immediately. Correction, I want him there whether he can walk or not. Kirk out."
Spock then escorts Mudd and the 3 women from a Transporter Room along a corridor to a turbo-elevator, where Spock says, "Deck twelve.")

So how can Kirk's quarters be on Deck 20 AND Deck 12 AND Deck 5? (Deck 5 was mentioned later in the series.)
If the Primary Hull separates from the Secondary Hull, there is a Bridge in each section. Similarly, there is a Captain's Quarters, and a First Officer's Quarters, and a Yeoman's Quarters in each section.
If the Primary Hull has separated, the decks in the Secondary Hull would be renumbered starting at the Separation Plane located at the top of the neck.
On my blueprints, I show Deck 9 as also being called "Deck 1 Secondary Hull" (see Page 22). So Deck 20 becomes "Deck 12 Secondary Hull".

DECK 4: #2
- I love the baffles as you have drawn them in the water storage tanks on Deck 4.
- I like the extra stairwells that you added. I have lots of ladders on this deck, but yes, I do admit that the deck-to-deck connectivity is a bit weak on this level.
- I am not fond of the access crawl-way, but hey, these are your plans so what I think does not matter. :-)
- I also think of the triangular archways in the corridors as pressure bulkheads, or isolation doors, or damage control, or sector identifiers.
- I am glad to see alcoves for spare turbo-elevators to wait until called upon.
- I really like your equipment locker details aft of the stairs.
- The pressure bulkhead at the bottom (or top) of the stairs constricts the stairwell, making it less efficient. I designed these extra-wide stairs as a means to escape the Primary Hull after an emergency landing. These stairs lead to the hatch on Deck 2 behind the Bridge - that yellow rectangle with the red outline on the hull of the studio model.

DECK 3: #1
Three pressure bulkheads of two different widths across the tops of the stairwells look odd. Perhaps make the central stairs not-as-wide so that the pressure bulkhead does not affect stairwell use (but this means the walls on either side have to be thicker).
Or perhaps delete the pressure bulkheads from the exact bottom (or top) of the stairs and place them so they include a bit of the deck at the end of the stairwell?

On my blueprints (in grey), I envisioned the port / starboard stairwells to have railings, so for this example I thickened those lines to turn them into walls and added the pressure bulkheads on each side (in colour).

DECK 3 #2:
I put an Officers’ Lounge at the front of the deck to justify the 2 round windows. It is better than calling those the Photon Torpedo Launchers.
If you have toilets there, will you delete the 2 windows?

Yes, there should be more toilets adjacent to the Officers’ Lounge; I simply forgot to draw them. I did draw them on my 1341-foot long version of the ENTERPRISE. I put 7 toilets on Deck 3.

**********

Overall, I like what you are doing. Let me close by mentioning 3 things:

1. Keep in mind where the windows are. You don’t want them to conflict with the walls.
2. Keep in mind where the maximum ceiling line is. The hull curvature might limit access to toilets, spacesuit storage lockers, inspection corridors, etc.
3. Please note the correct spelling of Matt Jefferies’ last name, as in Jefferies Tubes.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Oh, wow! Thanks for the comments! All that follows is intended in the spirit of an entertaining discussion about why I've made choices and what my opinions are and is not meant to sound like "I'm right and you're wrong in all contexts."

I suspected YO was a Yeoman's quarters, but that abbreviation isn't actually in the list for the Derf or Surya class plans. I did just go look, and it is in the Abbreviations list for the Enterprise plans, but it looks like it didn't get copied over to the lesser ships.

On the Enterprise plans calling out Yeo. Rand's quarters makes sense, because we know who she is and there's a scene set in her quarters. On any other ship, I don't think it does. Yeomen are the administrative staff of the ship, there are going to be at least half a dozen of them even on a small ship like a Derf, and we aren't calling out any other junior officers / senior warrants / senior Other Ranks. So, just in case you decide to go correct the missing definition on the not-Enterprise deck plans, in my personal opinion the best thing would be to remove the YO label on the quarters, and the alternative would be to define YO as "Captain's Yeoman's Quarters," which avoids the implication that there's only one Yeoman for the entire ship.

In any case, In My Star Trek Universe a Yeoman is a middle to senior Other Rank and would bunk down with all the other middle to senior Other Ranks on Deck Six.

The quarters' location chaos is something I can thankfully ignore, since I'm setting things up for my fan-universe rather than trying to explain what actually happened in the show.

I'm quite proud of the equipment locker myself, so thank you for those kind comments!

The pressure hatches do constrain the stairwell, true. But this is the sort of inconvenience that becomes minor for day to day use, and is a case of conflicting needs for emergencies. (I really like your idea that the yellow detail is an airlock / emergency hatch and do intend to implement it.) Having the stairwell unobstructed assists in evacuation, but having it open increases the risks of a hull breach. I've simply decided that Star Fleet considers the risk of a hull breach on decks 2 to 4 greater than the risk of an injury during an evacuation following a crash landing.

Remember that Risk equals Consequence times Probability. Described in terms of dead or injured crew and passengers, the Consequence of a hull breach is at the very least equal to that of a delayed evacuation. And the Probability that a starship will have its upper hull breached is much, much greater than the probability that the saucer (for a Mark IX Cruiser) or the entire ship (for literally every other Fourth Generation starship) will be on the surface of a planet and require evacuation.

(Extrapolating from my experience as a school bus driver, even if the ship/saucer was crashed most of the time the crew would remain on-board. If a school bus is in an accident, you keep the kids aboard, even if you're still in traffic unless a) the bus is on fire, or b) there's a risk of being hit by a train. In any other circumstance, inside the big steel box that's designed to have cars pass under it is the safest place for the passengers, and that logic seems to me to apply to the crashed ships as well.)

Thus, it becomes far more important to be able to seal that stairwell quickly than to have entirely unimpeded access.

I do hear what you're saying about the half-pyramids on the Deck 3 to 2 stairway hatches. A full pyramid was just too small, though, and I didn't want to completely rebuild the stairwell. I also wanted to be able isolate each stairwell individually, so that a problem in one can be contained (the bulkheads would also serve for gas leaks, security threats, fires, and so on) whilst keeping the other in use. So this was the best result I could find. Your idea would also work, at the cost of making the entire stairwell a single compartment.

Aaand... typing that paragraph has given me an idea, although it will make the stairwell even less efficient for an evac. Though it will also resemble your over-sized deckplan version, I'm realising now. Either way I'm inspired me to return to the project! So net good news.

Oh, and I do figure there's handrails on the stairwells (though I think you meant the sides were just open?) but that's too small a detail to easily print so it's not modelled.

I'm mostly ignoring the two round "windows." Actually, I'm not convinced they're windows at all. They're much, much smaller than the regular windows, and whilst I've not pulled out a ruler or counted pixels to check, it seems to me that they'd actually line up with the Deck 2 floor rather than a compartment on either side. I do concur they're not the torpedo launchers, but I feel they're not a window either. Probably they're some sort of opening for a sensor system that runs through the deck plating and the outer bulkhead. Or heck, maybe they're how the water gets into the water storage tanks - remember this is TOS so point-to-point transporters aren't that reliable. Yeah, I like that. IMSTU, those round markings are were the water hoses hook up, even if they're a smidge too high to really work.

For windows in general I've decided not to get too excited about making sure things like up. There's a limit to how much brainpower I want to expend on this, and that's a detail I chose to sacrifice. I'm honestly not sure how often we see windows from the inside anyway, so I feel this is one of those "model and sets aren't consistent" moments. So if they don't quite make sense with the internal fixtures, I'll live with it, and justify it by saying "well, I guess Delphi's windows aren't quite in the same place as Enterprise's."

I am modelling the external hull curvature, and yeah, in a couple places it's tight. But anyone using the toilets will either be standing in front of them, or sitting - so worst case, they might have to lean forward. That's annoying, but less of an issue on a working deck than on a living deck. On Deck 4, well, there's a reason it's a crawlway and not a corridor. If you look at the way the bulkheads slope down you can see how the ceiling height is affecting all that.

And no disrespect was intended to Mr. Jefferies, 'twas but an error!

In conclusion, then - thank you for giving me a chance to actually discuss, rather than merely describe, this project. Getting "likes" is grand and all but it's harder to stay interested when no-one wants to talk about it. I love the work you've done on the deckplans - there's no way I'd be willing to tackle this starting from scratch - so your opinion definitely carries weight with me.

I really enjoyed reading your post and writing my response. You've re-ignited my interest, and given me an idea on how to clean up the stairwell hatches. Ta!

 

[publiusr]

I think the two dots were used as phasers in TAS.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

I think the two dots were used as phasers in TAS.

Could be - but that's very inconsistent with the depiction in TOS, so I'll have my phasers down on deck 11 like Jim did.

 

[Jim Botaitis]

Could be - but that's very inconsistent with the depiction in TOS, so I'll have my phasers down on deck 11 like Jim did.

Keep in mind, I tried to explain all my steps. My guides were THE MAKING OF STAR TREK, the WRITERS' GUIDE, and all we can see and hear in the episodes. I am sure Franz Joseph did the same thing. Your results may vary.
It does not have to be "like Jim did" although I appreciate referring back to my drawings. I guess it implies that I did it correctly . . . so thank you for that.