nice work

Good morning John

Very nice work both the station and stock yards.  

A question on how you use your 3d drawing program. Being the printer is limited to 6in,  do you draw the initial design as a 'whole' building then break into pieces or do you draw a bunch of 6in sections and make them adjacent?  I'm just learning Sketchup. 

Thanks

John

Design of the Two 3D Projects

Thanks for your comments. Now for answers to your questions-

Stockyard/Feed Lot: That design was based on the paper sketch that I did (shown in one of the first posts about that project).  I used the actual stock car spacing to set the centers for all of the ramps and then used their position to develop the spacing for the rest of the fencing. Several pictures of stockyards plus some overhead views provided guidance on how to lay it out.

Union Station Passenger Waiting Room: Last year I made a mock-up in foam board that gave me some of the dimensional data that I needed, i.e., spacing of the building supports between the pairs of tracks.  I have pictures of the actual KCUS station that provided some ideas on what it looked like plus I had some kits that could be parted to help with the project.  Once the size was determined (based upon the mock-up), I had to try to break up the sections to be printed within the boundaries of what the printer could do.  I worked on one side first & found that the spacing of the doorways for the stairways was a little too wide.  I did some trimming with the "hole tool" , re-printed, test fit the new ones & found them to be correct. Once I had determined the print size for the right side, I used the mirror function in the design program to create the left side. That way, I knew they would be exactly the same. Now the design tool does allow me to put all of the pieces together to see what it looks like.  For example, the picture below shows my first design for the lower section of the lower level of the main station building.

You will see that it is a lot bigger than the print area shown in blue.  There are a total of 9 pieces in the picture.  The main one in the middle could be printed alone and the pairs of the right & left versions could be printed together. The holes for windows & doors are done using the hole tool and are either for a custom designed window or something that I had from a kit.  All of the walls are 4mm thick not counting any moldings or sills.

Some items, for example, the ridge for the roof was printed vertical since it was in the shape of a "V" and I figured that would be better than trying to print with the shape down.  I've got about 175 hours of use on the printer now and learning more every time that I use it. Hopefully, I have answered your questions....John

thanks

Thank you for the explanation and helping me get started.

John