Welcome to 4NDY's Shipwerks! 4NDY is not your typical LOM droid in many ways, his bug eyes have been replaced with 3PO eyes and Lekku mounted to his head frame, and of course he builds ships instead of dealing in protocols. Not content with your standard, off-the-shelf, variety starship, he spent much of his time working out how to improve on existing designs or otherwise fit them to their owners better.

I'll be posting his progress in my local game as well as (and much more often) the designs and plans he thinks up in his free time. After all, it takes much less time and resources to draft up an idea than to build it. Since he's not a *ahem* biological, he always appreciates input on his designs when it comes to comfort (he's been known to over compensate at times) and constraints such as realistic possibility or such nonsense. He's also always welcome to new clients as every new job is a chance to learn new methods and ideas.

Currently the only ship in drydock is a YT-1300 with Hutt markings and a non-standard center cockpit. At first glance it seems to be the factory "heavy armored" variant except it sits too high and has windows. Blueprints and schematics laying around nearby show it's even less standard, though still conforms to "factory statistics" where needed.

Side Sketch: http://img01.deviantart.net/4a5e/i/2015/320/c/7/side_view_sketch_by_lord_malachi-d9gvqty.png

Current Deckplan: http://lord-malachi.deviantart.com/art/Rental-YT-1300-Deckplan-569152898

To the side a small rotating hologram of an ancient XS Light Freighter flickers surrounded by notes and more schematics. The droid has been displeased with how cramped the YT-1300 is with the large crew he's a part of and apparently decided the best way to combat it is to weld half of an old freighter to the port side of it! (I'm using a half sized scaled for the XS rather than the official "MMO" scale, which every knows is drastically oversized. I've found a perfect 50% reduction is scale is just right to bring things down to size. So a 44m ship rather than 88m)

Living Quarter Addition Idea: http://lord-malachi.deviantart.com/art/Living-Quarters-Addition-EotE-Ship-572547119

(I'm taking advantage of being an interior design student and having both AutoCAD and Photoshop to work on deckplans for my current mechanic's ship. I'd love input as I work on it, and if anyone has requests ((of a reasonable scale, nothing larger than a medium freighter please, and I'd need at least some kind of overhead reference to work from.)) I'd be willing to try them out. I've of course seen LibrariaNPC's fighter and freighter threads but those are for stats. I haven't seen any threads for deckplans other than searching for specific ones, so hopefully this is something new and/or useful. I would also appreciate suggestions on how to implement various changes from experienced GMs and players PoV's. Such as costs, difficulty/number of checks, actual changes to stats if appropriate, etc.)

Can you describe a bit more about your workflow?

I'm *very* experienced with AutoCAD, and have enough familiarity for Ps for photo retouching (minor stuff like improving my photography, not drastic edits or ground-up renders). I'd be interested in combining the two for a more visually appealing set of deckplans, as the ones I've cranked out of AutoCAD in years past have been...somewhat sterile.

Can you describe a bit more about your workflow?

I'm *very* experienced with AutoCAD, and have enough familiarity for Ps for photo retouching (minor stuff like improving my photography, not drastic edits or ground-up renders). I'd be interested in combining the two for a more visually appealing set of deckplans, as the ones I've cranked out of AutoCAD in years past have been...somewhat sterile.

Sure!

I took a decent screenshot of the YT-1300 deckplans on the net that I liked, ran it through PS to remove the white for a transparent background, then imported it into ACAD as an image and turned off transparency. Then scaled it to the correct length of a YT-1300 (I forget what that is now, but anyway). After that trace the bits I need like the hull and everything, make sure I have several layers in ACAD because it'll make things much easier come PS time. Once the plan is done in ACAD I gave each important layer its own bright color to make it easy to magic wand in PS. So Lines and Hatches per deck had their own layer and color. Then I went to paper view and fiddled with it until I got as much of the ship on my screen at once as I could and took a screenshot (using the Snipper Tool in windows) and opened the screenshot in PS.

Supposedly you can do an actual export to PNG, but not once have been able to do it. I always get blank files.

Once in PS I start separating the layers by color, magic wand the poop out of it and layer via cut until you're left with like 10 layers (I'll post a pic of my layers in a bit.) Then just start coloring. Since I like to have all my lines on 1 layer I'll go to that layer with the wand on Contiguous, then start Shift+Click'ing everything I want to be my walls, switch to the wall layer, and Non-Contiguous paint bucket in the selection with my wall color. Rinse and repeat for everything else.

I have decided on the Living Quarters pod that I like to color the floor layer beneath pretty much everything except walls because of how it interacts with the layer effects.

Once everything is colored, I hit every layer with at least 1 layer effect. Usually the Bevel and Emboss effect which is usually set to Chisel: Hard and the size reduced to 2 or 3. But that really depends on taste and the scale you're working at. The "Lines" layer I instead give a drop shadow. Windows and water are set to 50% opacity and the bevel is reversed. The Seating layer bevel pattern is one of the zigzag ones rather than the default, then its size is punched into the 200%+ range, play with it to taste. I originally discovered it made a super easy depth effect to flags in a different project and it works alright for bedding and such too. The Hull layer was given a reverse bevel as well just so it stands apart a little better. And the engines given an outer glow.

It's not shown, but I repeated that whole process for another room and gave it its own Layer Folder in PS so I can toggle it off and on, and I did it all again for the living pod, and will again for everything I add or change.

Layers in PS: http://orig06.deviantart.net/50ef/f/2015/320/6/8/layers_1_by_lord_malachi-d9gw2xn.png

Layers in ACAD: http://orig11.deviantart.net/d16e/f/2015/320/c/0/layers_2_by_lord_malachi-d9gw33o.png

The ACAD layers are in drawing colors, not crazy ones for exporting, but you get the idea.

I feel like I rushed this and could have easily missed something, so let me know if I covered everything or if I should go back and cover something in more detail?

By the way, just to show how big an effect those layer effects have, here's the deckplan in PS with only color added.
http://orig06.deviantart.net/3058/f/2015/320/9/0/layout_default_color_flat_by_lord_malachi-d9gw3ng.png

The only question I have is, can you use a different font color? That copper color doesn’t show up too well on the light grey background:

Thanks!

Oh wow, your Ps skills blow my own right out of the water. I have a very basic rough idea of what you're doing there, but nowhere near the know-how to employ the same methods myself.

As far as the carry over from ACAD to Ps, have you tried an export to PDF? I'd imagine that would give you some good solid lines as well.

The only question I have is, can you use a different font color? That copper color doesn’t show up too well on the light grey background:

Thanks!

Ok, is back to standard colors, sorry about that!

Oh wow, your Ps skills blow my own right out of the water. I have a very basic rough idea of what you're doing there, but nowhere near the know-how to employ the same methods myself.

As far as the carry over from ACAD to Ps, have you tried an export to PDF? I'd imagine that would give you some good solid lines as well.

I could do a walk through? I swear it's much easier than you think once it's in PS. I can try exporting to PDF when I get home, but it's less about getting clean lines and more getting a higher resolution than just what I can fit on my screen. I could zoom way in and piece meal it I guess... I used to do that with the guns I designed...

Ok, is back to standard colors, sorry about that!

Thanks!

If I think of a ship, I'll be more than likely to ask you! Keep up the good work, and do feel free to heist my stats (with a nod to my work, of course) if you want to add stats to your custom ships that don't exist yet (or feel free to ask if there's something you'd like me to cook up for your project; I'm always in the market for requests, even when I'm swamped).

So, for doing my art, I don’t use either AutoCad or PhotoShop.

For me, I find that AutoCad is much too complex for what I want to do on the vector side, and if/when I do export to bitmapped graphics, I find that PhotoShop is much too expensive for what I can do with it.

In doing some vector art for the supplement “Spark of Rebellion” from Rancor Publishing Group, I found that exporting EPS files didn’t work so well. We used SVG instead.

I’m sure that Ps would be great at importing EPS files, but I’m not 100% convinced that AutoCad would be so great at exporting good EPS files for Ps to import.

If I wanted to spend thousands of hours and track every single bolt, nut, left-handed lock washers versus right-handed lock washers, etc… then AutoCad might be my program of choice. But when I’m doing vector art, I usually want quick-and-dirty, and I don’t want a program like Illustrator that thinks everything is a brush and needs to be turned into a Bezier spline.

Simple 90, 45, and 180 degree lines are plenty for me, along with some simple grids. On a plain 8.5”x11” or A4 page, basic millimeter-level accuracy is fine for me.

I do find that I tend to work at relatively high zoom factors, and I usually save exporting to a bitmapped image to be the last thing I do, if I do it at all.

I mean, if I’m working in a vector graphics program, I want to keep as much resolution as possible regardless of what type of device might be used for output, or how far in they might zoom.

But I’m sure that I’m in the minority when it comes to the selection of tools for doing artwork.

IMO, YMMV, and so on.

I'm not worthy.... I'm not worthy....

I use Paint.

I won't post anything...

It looks too pathetic in comparison.

I will go to my corner and sulk.

So, holy cow, that publish to PDF idea was the best thing ever, you're amazing. If I change my paper size to giant it'll export that big and I can set the scale to 1/4", which once imported into PS means I can even get in and color 1" wide shower curtains or drawer handles.

That said I'm gonna do PS walkthrough quick on just a room. And it'll skip ahead to assuming you have your lines already in, maybe you drew them there, maybe you imported from something else, idk. I'm not sleeping tonight so maybe I'll do an MSPaint walkthrough too. It's been a while since I did pixel art but I still remember the basics lol

Alright, tutorial is up, walkthrough is in the description. I have a larger resolution version if anyone needs it, but I'm pretty sure this is good.
http://lord-malachi.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-Deckplan-Tutorial-572847223?ga_submit_new=10%253A1447815216

Edit because otherwise triple post.

So rather than do my furniture project for class, I bring you a preview of my current design. There are many assumptions in play, namely that we'll have to fit the entire party in this ship, and that I won't just be using it as a salvage ship. I still have 2 entirely unused rooms, one on the main deck, and one in the sub deck just off the loading bay. (I noticed the YT1300 has these deeper pits in a few areas of the ship, and by Gumby I'm using them!) So if anyone has ideas on what to put in those rooms, feel free to mention them lol. I'm thinking the sub deck room could be an EV Prep room? The main deck one though I have no idea, unless just more storage.

http://img12.deviantart.net/98f9/i/2015/322/c/3/preview_by_lord_malachi-d9h3e9x.png

So rather than do my furniture project for class, I bring you a preview of my current design. There are many assumptions in play, namely that we'll have to fit the entire party in this ship, and that I won't just be using it as a salvage ship. I still have 2 entirely unused rooms, one on the main deck, and one in the sub deck just off the loading bay. (I noticed the YT1300 has these deeper pits in a few areas of the ship, and by Gumby I'm using them!) So if anyone has ideas on what to put in those rooms, feel free to mention them lol. I'm thinking the sub deck room could be an EV Prep room? The main deck one though I have no idea, unless just more storage.

http://img12.deviantart.net/98f9/i/2015/322/c/3/preview_by_lord_malachi-d9h3e9x.png

It honestly depends on who was tampering with the ship. They could be storage (including tool storage), space for mechanisms to be stored, armories, refresherss, galleys, brigs, VIP rooms...the list can go on. Extra space can be whatever you need it to be.

One of my groups turns a HT-2200 into a small militia ship by turning one of the cargo holds into a small barracks, while the other half held cargo/armaments/vehicles (at one point, one cargo compartment held a Z-95). Doesn't really need much work when you think about it, just add a bunch of bunks and voila, storage into cabin!

Just a thought for you; don't ever be afraid to think outside the box with spare space :-D

Ill probably leave the main deck room empty as a cargo hold for now. The sub deck room will be an EV room with extra hidden armory space. (The center airlock has rows of concealed weapons lockers already, but never too much dakka.)

Its the maintenance Droid doing most of the tinkering,but trying to do so keeping an 8 man team in mind. The real problem is not knowing what the party does for a living yet, we're still in our intro adventure.

So, holy cow, that publish to PDF idea was the best thing ever, you're amazing. If I change my paper size to giant it'll export that big and I can set the scale to 1/4", which once imported into PS means I can even get in and color 1" wide shower curtains or drawer handles.

That said I'm gonna do PS walkthrough quick on just a room. And it'll skip ahead to assuming you have your lines already in, maybe you drew them there, maybe you imported from something else, idk. I'm not sleeping tonight so maybe I'll do an MSPaint walkthrough too. It's been a while since I did pixel art but I still remember the basics lol

Hahaha, you're definitely way more knowledgeable about Ps than I've ever imagined becoming, but I do like to think I'm pretty handy within the context of AutoCAD (to be fair, I *have* used it to make a living for quite a few years now, so I guess I should be at least decent with it!). There are a few other options for hi res raster exports, but for what you were explaining, I figured a plot (or export) to PDF might be a quick & dirty means to an end.

I'll have to try out your walkthrough at some point, for sure, though, as I'd love to be able to generate such visually appealing deckplans. In the mean time, though, if you need any help on the AutoCAD end, I'd be happy to offer whatever assistance I can!

The biggest thing on the AutoCAD end would be a better way to handle all the curved walls involved. Either I end up constantly remaking circles and trimming them away, or doing arcs with mismatched angles...

Drawing them and trimming is likely to be the best way to do it.

One thing you may consider trying, though, is to have a Construction Line Layer that you've set to be visible, but not plot. You can strike circles on this layer at common reference diameters, from which you can offset for the various inner and outer wall lines that you need to trim into the various rooms. Really, I'd probably just draw those reference circles on the layer in which you plan to use the finished lines, and just go back and delete it (or switch it to a non-plot layer prior to export). Also, Polar is your friend. I'd set it to 15 degree increments and go from there. If you need a sweep shorter than that, or at a weird intermediate amount, you can always do a manual rotate from 0-degrees.

Arcs are somewhat "dangerous" to use as there's a lot more variables to be thrown out of whack (not the least of which being your center point).

For parts that are *very* uniform, you can also use a block or Xref (you should already be using Xrefs *extensively* for this kind of work), or even a polar array, thanks to the Edit-in-place abilities of recent versions of AutoCAD. Just get one of the rooms exactly how you want it, and polar array it across whatever sweep you like (so for 3 evenly sized rooms across the aft of the ship, you'd do one, then polar array about the center of the ship, 3 items, 180 degree sweep).

Keep in mind for trim & extend that those commands will respect the radius of all arcs, while offset will respect the center point (or points, in the case of compound curves and splines). This means that for concentric walls, offset, trim, and extend will pretty much do exactly what you want them to do. For the radial walls, you're going to have to rely far more on centerlines out from the ship center, and offsetting from them. Osnap-wise, you'll want tangent, perpendicular, intersection, and of course the "essentials" like endpoint, midpoint, and center.

Another tip would be to save the center of the ship for last, detail from the outside in. This is to keep the area of your ship's center point free of other lines and objects, so that the only osnap point in the area is your ship center.

I forgot all about the construction lines, that would make things much cleaner I think.

I've had my polar set to 5* increments for a long time and I like the level of control I get. Its really helpful for the start/end/angle arcs that my cad teacher insisted is the superior arc lol (but I find myself using the 3point arcs for curved doors)

I'll have to double check what nodes I have activated tonight.

The from center radial lines were super annoying, but at least I know that's the right way.

Yeah, the trouble is because the walls need to obviously be two lines, but neither of the lines you end up with are true radial lines (their paths do not intersect at the circle center point and are not perpendicular to the part of the circle where they intersect).

I've found that, for me, 15 degree is best (though many of my friends use more or less as fits their comfort level). I find that this allows me to use the polar (and the polar track and object track) 95% of the time without needing manual input, but doesn't result in the computer "grabbing" at an angle I don't want.

I'm kind of surprised your teacher showed any kind of bias on a draw method for anything, least of all arcs...any instructor I've had presented it more as "there's a bunch of ways to get it done...choose one of the ones where you know all of the input variables"...so for an arc, if you already know the starting and ending points, pick a method that will prompt you for those. For curved doors, since those arcs will be concentric with those of your walls, I'd use center, start, end (or start, center, end...but that requires you to start drawing, then pan/zoom away, then pan/zoom back)...or more likely, just shoot in my circle, strike a chord across the doorway, use the midpoint of the chord to draw a short radial where the two halves of the door would meet, offset the circle to the thickness of the door, them use the endpoints of my chord to draw the radial ends of the door, and trim out everything I don't want.

That being said, though, that's what fits my style. If there's one thing I've learned after using the program for so long, it's that everyone has a different style. Some (usually old school guys who cut their teeth with a pencil and T-square) are 90% keyboard, 10% mouse. Many of the Millennial crowd are more even, but favor the other way, being 75% mouse, 25% keyboard. Personally, I'm about 50/50, but I make use (heavily) of custom commands built into right-click menus, context-sensitive hotkeys, and a general workflow that makes heavy use of trim, stretch, and O-snaps/tracks. Sometimes, I'll end up doing more overall commands because I can do a stretch, copy, trim faster than I can strike the new line I want using the line command. Definitely have one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse 90% of the time, which is what I'd suspect you'd end up doing too, being a Ps user.

I imagine if I had a proper AutoCAD class there'd be less bias, but it's more of a drafting class with pencil and cad and Google sketchup in a single semester. Not only that but the interior design course only has 3 teachers, 1 of which barely known how to turn on a computer, so the other two each agree on a single method to teach, and then teach their own biased methods instead.

I think the only thing I use the keyboard for is esc, delete, dimensions, and enter. Or shift if I select too much. I don't touch commands, it's all clicking icons on the ribbon for me. And I'll draw lines manually instead of entering dimensions more often at school than at home because my mouse tends to spas out at home. I was working on an English manor last year and a ways in I couldn't get anything to line up anymore. Turns out when I was clicking on the various snap points I use it was jittering and clicking a half inch or so off. I normally wouldn't notice that small of a change but the manor was massive. That half inch off can become several feet down the line.

The trim and extend tools are my best friends though. Forgot stretch existed.

Don't forget that the chamfer command, set to a distance of zero for both values, doubles as a nice trim & extend in one (in that it will send both selected lines to (but not beyond) their intersection point).

One of the reasons I do use the keyboard is to avoid all of that back and forth to the ribbon. 95% of the commands I use from the keyboard are one or two letter commands (typing a quick "tr", "Enter" to get trim, for example), and longer commands for which there's not a quick easy button on the ribbon and that I don't use often enough to justify a position on my quick access bar ("DIVIDE" in order to add evenly spaced nodes along a line to divide it into a user defined number of equal segments...VIEWRES to adjust the resolution of the display (to resolve fine detail or eliminate the polygon appearance of some circles, etc.)...REGION to create a single selectable shape from a shape made of individual lines, which allows you to quickly get areas...PEDIT if I'm working with a lot of poly lines...).

I've added Stretch to my right click menu when I have an item selected, then hotkeyed 'h' to it, so that I can left-box select a line or lines, quickly right click and press H, then do my stretch to and from points.

Really, the only thing that I can think of that'd offer much more of a speed increase for me would be if I got a custom keyboard that included an extra row in the number pad with symbols for feet, inches, degrees, and the diameter symbol.

...or if customers would just tell me what they want in the first place instead of needing 3-4 revisions...but that's a matter for another time.

Thats what chamfer does? I may have to look into that...

I'm a heavy mouse user in all I do, once I find a place to keep my left hand (in cads case it's hovering near Enter, RShift, and the foot symbol, easy reach to delete) I hate moving it for any reason. It helps I fingertip my mouse so traveling to the ribbon is only a cm or so of movement for me. Anyone that uses a full mouse grip would understandably want to cut down on mouse movement.

I'm thinking of macroing a couple things to my mouse's thumb buttons actually lol

Well chamfer is really intended to knock sharp corners off of objects:

In the 2D autocad world, it's meant to take a sharp corner and add a single line in place of that angle (thus resulting in two shallower ones). Sure, you could do it by drawing lines and trimming, but the chamfer command is a quick way to do it multiple times. Like the arcs, there's a bunch of ways to set it up, you can specify holdbacks (tell it to break .25 inches from the corner on the first line selected, and .375 on the second, for example)...typically holdbacks will be even, you can also specify an angle and one holdback, forcing the other one, etc.

The part where you can put this to your trimming and extending advantage is that whatever two lines you select, AutoCAD will create their corner for you, wherever they intersect (the command will fail on parallel lines). So, if you set the hold backs to zero, it creates a sharp corner at the two lines' intersection point, no need to trim or extend!

As an additional FYI, to take the sharp edge off of a corner, but to do it with a rounded edge, there's chamfer's companion tool, fillet (which I use far more often).

Oh ok, I was going to say, I use fillet all the time set to 0 radius to do exactly that, especially after offsetting things.

Extend I mostly use on perpendicular lines if I've messed with them after drawing (like moving or resizing a doorway) or getting things to line up with an arc. Actually same for trim. I think I just use offset a lot and make a lot of doorways xD