Shazam.
The next issue of APR is still a long ways away. But I’m thinking of making the drawings available sooner.
Oct 302013
Oct 242013
Oct 222013
OK, most of what was lost has been redrawn.
Oct 212013
After the CAD screwup, I’ve been working on recovering what I lost. The image below shows status as of a few minutes ago. The TIII/156 is back. The TIII/early is back. The TIII/operational is mostly back. The Dyna Soar overview and DS/Transstage overview weren’t lost. The inboard profile lost much. Now lost are the Saturn, “Skylab,” 932-102 and 934-606. They’ll have to be redrawn from scratch. The other ones listed will need to be created more or less from scratch, but weren’t lost in the screwup. There will be others as well, to be created not via 2D AutoCAD but via 3D Rhino. That model, fortunately, was unaffected.
This has been a schedule-bomber. If you want to see me obsessed, see me after I lose something I didn’t want to lose; I tend to go “grrrr” and devote myself to getting it back, at the expense of whatever else I needed to be doing. It messes with my sense of the way the universe aught to be. Of course, sometimes what’s lost *can’t* be recovered (go ahead and *try* to bring back the dead, for example), and that can make a permanent mess of things. I get caught in sort of a neurological do-loop; “just get over it” not being a function built into my programming.
Oct 202013
So there I was, workign on the X-20 drawings for V3N4. Something burped in AutoCAD, and the drawing closed on me. Sadly, it closed right after *everything* was erased. And when it closed the drawing, it *saved* the drawing. With nothign in it. And it also saved it as a new BAK (backup) file, also with nothing in it. So apart from a few scraps in separate files, I’ve lost all the X-20 2D drawings.
Wonderful.
Gone:
Oct 192013
Oct 192013
For what it’s worth:
I’m constantly tinkering with line settings, but I’ve largely settled on the results shown below. I do my drawings in AutoCAD 2000 and then further processing in Paint Shop Pro. The lines in ACAD are split into several layers:
1) “Outline:” This is for, obviously, the main outlines. This includes major overlaps, such as engine nacelles in front of wings of fuselages and such. Also used for sharp intersections, such as some wing/body intersections, when the angle of intersection is greater than 45 degrees. “Outline” is White (which prints black) with a lineweight of 0.40 mm.
2) “Details:” used for things like control surfaces, doors, windows, etc. Also used for intersections at less than 45 degrees. Also White, with a “default” lineweight.
3) “Lines:” Used for panels lines, faint intersections and the like. uses Color 253 (medium gray) and a default lineweight.
The process for going from ACAD 2000 to a good raster image is more complex than it would seem to need to be; I imagine more recent versions of ACAD have cleaned the process up. Anyway:
1) Plot the drawing as an EPS file at ANSI C size (22X17 inches)
2) Open the drawing in Paint Shop Pro at 200 dpi, grayscale, no transparency.
3) Crop the image just at the outer border
The image just as-is is then saved as a GIF or PNG (not JPG, as that entails loss). It can then be plastered directly into a Word document. The drawing will print out (on paper) at a chosen scale if the border was drawn at a specific size, and when put into Word the image is formatted to be that width. If you want to print at a specific scale but don’t wnat the border, you can still go through the whole process with a border, and then simply erase it /paint it out at the last step so that the image has the right size but no border.
I’ve found plotting the CAD drawing at larger sizes initially helps smooth out curves. But this means that the image is way too big for basic online posting, and the line weights get really thin and faint when the image is just resized smaller. So before resizing smaller one or both of the following:
1) “Erode” the image. This expands line widths. At full rez it looks pretty crappy, but when resized it works well.
2) “Blur” the image. This widens the lines and helps smooth it out, but makes everything lighter. The image can be darkened via gamma correction or brightness/contrast.
Something else to consider: “Drawing Order.” With multiple line colors, it matters what lines are “over” and “under” what other lines. After the drawing is done in ACAD, the “draworder” commend lets you pick what lines are in front, what are in back. It’s best to have the “Outline” layer in front, and the “Lines” layer in back. This way, when a black Outline line intersects with a gray “Lines” line, the black line is unbroken. Sometimes I forget this step, and the results can look *wrong.*
The image below of the Lockheed CL-1170-6-2 was from issue V1N3 of Aerospace Projects Review, reformatted in AutoCAD to print out on 11X17.
Oct 182013
X-20 Dyna Soar. Model being made for the purposes of illustrating the next issue of APR. Dunno if there’s enough interest in a physical model to make a stab at it, though a cutaway model showing the truss-structure innards – a thing only possible via 3D printing – seems appealing. Note that the heat panel lines are being modeled in place, so they should appear on any theoretical 3D print, and definitely appear on rendered illustrations.
Further progress on the Prometheus, mostly tinkering on the engines. You know what? These components are nightmares. But the final model is gonna be *awesome.*
So if you’ve been wondering why my blogging about old aerospace projects has fallen off of late… here ya go.
Oct 132013
The ebay listings for the F-23 derivatives, Lockheed Archangels and A-12 Avenger II diagram booklets will end Sunday… 13 hours from this writing. Bid now! Bid often! Bid insanely high! Bid like this is a mafia money laundering operation!
Oct 062013
I’ve put a few sets of 11X17 diagrams on eBay:
Northrop F-23 predecessor and derivatives diagram booklet
Lockheed Archangel Diagram booklet (SR-71 predecessor designs)
McDonnell-Douglas/General Dynamics A-12 Avenger II Diagram Booklet
I don’t really know if these’ll do at all well on eBay, but what the heck. I’m hoping they might serve as a bit of advertising, though. The Archangel set is very likely a one-off, a result of the printer actually spitting out two copies rather than one.
For those of you who were generous a good long while ago and have been wondering “what the hell?!?!” the technology and techniques I’ve been developing and requiring recently will prove relevant.