OK, maybe it won't be a race, but I intend on beginning on Construction October 1, so it will be nice to see both of us making progress on a regular basis so we both can start operations as soon as possible :-)

Ken L.
 

Alan,

Already I'm suitable impressed, you have clearly been doing some serious planning.  The 1:1 scale drawings look really good, I wish I had done this because it really gives you the correct perspective of how things will fill the real space certainly not like trying to picture it of a computer screen.

Already I'm liking the feel that your layout is going to have, the only thing that I am going to say that you need to improve is:   MORE PHOTOS PLEASE... :P

Keep up the great work and keep posting updates.

Jas...

Alan-

I'm impressed with your full scale printouts.  A question for you however:  how did you get them to fit together so nicely?  It may just be my printer but even with reduced margins I found that it was difficult to fit my pages together after trimming.

Any insights you can share with the rest of us as your mockups look to fit together much better than mine.  I jsut ended up wasting a lot of paper!

Rich, printing from XTrk at 1:1 is not user friendly. The only paper size it supports is US Letter. And, it puts a banner across the bottom. My solution:

Print using a) Ignore margins; b) Print engineering data; c) Print rulers

The working surface on my shop work table is a piece of 3/4 melamine particle board. The general purpose, abused side is face up. The back side is in pristine condition. I flip the work surface over when I need a super flat, super clean working surface.

Across this I placed an 8' steel rule to which I could align the XTrk pages. Careful alignment and scotch tape until a horizontal row of 12 pages were assembled. The rule was then aligned and clamped across the bottom of the page row using the printed engineering data to locate it. Another row of 12 pages scotch taped. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

My work table is 4'x8' so I was limited to 12 pages wide (8.5" letter edge to edge) but the height (11" letter edge) was unlimited much the same way a seamstress would feed cloth through a sewing machine.

Your printouts look great.  I found that having a full size printout was an enormous help, I am sure you will too especially as yours are so detailed.

Rich, printing from XTrk at 1:1 is not user friendly. The only paper size it supports is US Letter.

I think that may have something to do with your printer driver.  I have printed successfully on 11" x 17" paper using XtrkCAD many times, in fact that's my preferred paper size to use.  If I set the output device to a roll plotter it gives me the option to print all the way up to ANSI F, which works ok but you end up wasting a lot of paper.  You just need to click the 'Setup' button on the print dialog and when you select the plot device you can then use the 'page size' pulldown and choose any of the paper sizes that your chosen device supports.

Marc, I am sure you are right about paper sizes and printer driver. I have 2 inkjet printers, a 24" roll fed and a little desktop unit, both Canon units. XTrk continuously gave me the error "Maximum page size is 8-1/2x11" regardless of the configuration I used with the roll printer. I eventually threw my hands up and just printed on the desktop unit hence the letter size pages.

In the end it was advantageous as I needed to do a little surgery here and there to get the plan to fit the room exactly. The small page size allowed me to adjust the XTrk drawing slightly and then re-print only the affected pages which I then replaced on the blueprint. Had my roll printer worked as intended it would have been much more difficult to replace the corrected areas. Although I sure would have saved a bunch of scotch tape. Thank goodness for the economy 10 packs at Office Depot!

Alan,

Looking good.  Glad to see you get started.  This will be a double deck layout, right?  Have you printed out the upper level? You will need some tricky supports to hold the upper level printouts :-)

Looks like fun.  Good luck to you as the plan starts to materialize in 3-D.

George, you are correct this will be a double deck. The blueprint on the floor is the upper deck. At first, I am using it only as a reference point for locating benchwork shape and location as I work from top down. Both decks have the same size and shape benchwork. After I get the peninsula wall constructed (first actual sawdust for the layout)  I will build in order: Upper Valence, Upper Deck, Lower Deck, Helixes, Lower Valence. I will be able to construct the lower deck benchwork before printing the lower deck plan. Cool, huh?

The decks will be bracketed from the exterior and peninsula walls so no legs (except under helixes and a portion of the Kitzmiller area). The benchwork is drawn with angled lines at the corners but will be curved in the construction. The blueprint will allow me to accurately locate and curve the upper fascia to match the yet to be constructed benchwork.

At least that's the plan for right now!