Chair size on deckplans

[nats]

Being an architect it constantly grates on me that everyone seems to show chairs too large on deckplans. When you look at the Highguard 2d deckplans for example ALL of the chairs are shown around 1m wide! Now I can almost believe that an acceleration couch could be that large although its pushing reasonableness even at that - but for all the chairs in the staterooms to be that large is frankly ridiculous. This constant oversizing of chairs tends to make the whole deckplan look so small and crushed when in fact it is not. For example it makes it look like you could only fit one person into a 1.5m wide corridor when in actual fact you could easily get two people passing side by side in a corridor that large with plenty of room to spare.

Its aslo about time we got away from these 1.5m squares as I think they ruin everything. Everyone always plonks down one chair per square without thinking when in fact a 1.5m square could almost get a double bed into it never mind a chair. And now that we are using metres for combat and not squares we should really be using rulers to judge combat range and movement anyway - so there really in absolutely no need for these squares anymore. true they make it easier to judge the initial sizing to suit the tonnage but if you use Autocad etc to draw the ships you can calculate areas very easily without squares anyway using the 'Area tool' so there really isnt any need for the squares at all in that case.

 

[steve98052]

Being an architect . . . if you use Autocad etc to draw the ships . . .

I'm with you on the point that people often get the scale of deck plan objects wrong. I sometimes measure my own furniture when visualizing things. (I used paper cutouts to visualize a rearrangement of furniture in one room of my house too -- much easier than lifting a recliner onto furniture wheels!)

But Autocad is many times too costly for anyone other than someone who already owns it for work, unless they're uncommonly wealthy and willing to spend on tools for their hobby. Neither Inkscape nor Blender have area tools, so counting squares is likely to remain standard practice. On the other hand, it's not difficult to put the squares in a grid layer and hide that layer before printing -- and also not too difficult to print to PDF both a squares and a no-squares version of a deck plan for sharing with people who don't use the same image editor.

 

[AndrewW]

But Autocad is many times too costly for anyone other than someone who already owns it for work, unless they're uncommonly wealthy and willing to spend on tools for their hobby. Neither Inkscape nor Blender have area tools, so counting squares is likely to remain standard practice. On the other hand, it's not difficult to put the squares in a grid layer and hide that layer before printing -- and also not too difficult to print to PDF both a squares and a no-squares version of a deck plan for sharing with people who don't use the same image editor.

Using Inkscape's grid that doesn't even show up, you would need to draw in your own grid if you wanted one.

 

[Infojunky]

Because it's traditional.... 1.5 meter square are pretty much 5 foot squares, and as we all know from another largely available RPG it is the standard.

But, you are free to draw deckplans in any scale you wish with any grid you wish and One meter grid isn't all that bad a starting point. Though with a 1 meter grid you start having the urge to draw in the missing bits that are generally glossed over with the 1.5 meter grid.

Also consider what you are going to be using a deckplan for, including using counters or miniatures with said deckplan.

When I sit down to start a deckplan my 1st thought is how will miniatures fit on the plan, as such my base ground scale is 1/100th which matches the 15mm bases on my figures, Furniture and the like are sized to match that scale as well.

 

[Condottiere]

You can always quarter existing squares, that gives you four 0.75 metre subsquares.

 

[Reynard]

For the longest time (decades) when I use any map types and I'm drawing fantasy maps or scifi deckplans, I often draw an overhead person, large ellipse for shoulder width and chest depth) with a smaller oval on top for a head, drawn to scale for an average person so I can have a sense of scale. I might have the arms outstretched to show 1 meter (center of chest to tips of fingers) and 2 meters (fingers to fingers). Amazing how it give perspective. It's upstairs right now but I found an excellent books years ago describing all sorts of ergonomics in detailed and measured illustrations. Helped imagine living/work spaces with furniture and equipment.

 

[steve98052]

Using Inkscape's grid that doesn't even show up, you would need to draw in your own grid if you wanted one.

My installation of Inkscape included a grid tool that generates a configurable grid that fills an arbitrary rectangle. It's kind of handy, but when I went outside the bounds of my original rectangle I found it inconvenient to expand the grid rectangle.

My solution was to create a fill pattern that consisted of a vertical grid line and a horizontal grid line. I just use that as the fill pattern for a bounding rectangle, or even use it to fill just the open space inside a deck plan.

In some illustrations, I've made fill pattern with diagonal lines to add crosshatch patterns to large boring spaces. That's particularly nice for things I intend to photocopy, because crosshatch copies better than gray scales. (Sure, I could just print extra copies of the pages, but inkjet ink is expensive, and sometimes I just like the artistic effect of crosshatch.)

I've also made hex fill patterns, but over long distances they develop rounding errors, because the unit cell of a hex grid has an aspect ratio of 1:sin(60°), which is an irrational number. One solution is to approximate the sin(60°) with a ratio that can be represented exactly with base-2 computer floating point numbers, such as 14189/16384, which is only about 3 parts per million larger than sin(60°). I haven't done that because I only came up with the idea just now -- the thinking it took to explain why my past results were off inspired this approximation solution.

 

[AndrewW]

That's particularlynice for things I intend to photocopy, because crosshatch copies better than gray scales. (Sure, I could just print extra copies of the pages, but inkjet ink is expensive, and sometimes I just like the artistic effect of crosshatch.)

I prefer laser toner, cheaper for the amount you get.

Though had in mind if you wanted a grid for a guide but not a grid on the finished product would be useful for that purpose.

 

[steve98052]

I prefer laser toner, cheaper for the amount you get.

True. I use my wife's laser printer if I am printing enough pages that it's worth moving the cable to my computer. But if I want color, inkjet makes more sense -- color laser printers cost a lot more, and good color laser is absurdly expensive. Also, I have a tabloid size inkjet printer, so I use that if I want big pages (nice for deck plans).

Though had in mind if you wanted a grid for a guide but not a grid on the finished product would be useful for that purpose.

The grids I described -- the tool included with my Inkscape installation and my fill patterns -- can be their own layer, so I can hide the layer if I don't want them to show, or leave them visible if I want them to print. I don't really even have to put the grids on a layer; any container can be switched on or off.

 

[AndrewW]

But if I want color, inkjet makes more sense -- color laser printers cost a lot more, and good color laser is absurdly expensive. Also, I have a tabloid size inkjet printer, so I use that if I want big pages (nice for deck plans).

Color lasers have come down in price from what they where.

The grids I described -- the tool included with my Inkscape installation and my fill patterns -- can be their own layer, so I can hide the layer if I don't want them to show, or leave them visible if I want them to print. I don't really even have to put the grids on a layer; any container can be switched on or off.

Aye, layers can be handy.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

I agree that chairs are large on the deckplans, but I see them more as icons making the deckplans easier to read, chairs and tables = common rooms, cargo crates = cargo hold, weapon racks = armory and so on. Not necessarily the exact layout of the room, more of a Quick reference.

 

[EldritchFire]

I agree that chairs are large on the deckplans, but I see them more as icons making the deckplans easier to read, chairs and tables = common rooms, cargo crates = cargo hold, weapon racks = armory and so on. Not necessarily the exact layout of the room, more of a Quick reference.

QFT.

The deck plans are not exact representations of what is there, but an abstraction of 'this is about here, and that is there-ish.'

 

[AndrewW]

I agree that chairs are large on the deckplans, but I see them more as icons making the deckplans easier to read, chairs and tables = common rooms, cargo crates = cargo hold, weapon racks = armory and so on. Not necessarily the exact layout of the room, more of a Quick reference.

Yup, they aren't to scale. Can be easier to see what an item is on smaller images if the items themselves are done at a larger size.