Hi all. I haven't been on the forum for a while, nice to see all the new builds. I've been busy myself with work, projects and study, so I haven't been able to devote time to custom TARDIS builds for quite some time. Technically, that's still true. Nevertheless, I'm going to give it a bash, see if I can't make some headway before the new semester starts...    

I've been interested in making a War Doctor Console Room for quite some time, my reasons for that being many and varied. One of those reasons is that I'm kind of going to cheat     . I realise that the original 2005-2010 console is not EXACTLY like the War Doctor's, however, to my mind it's close enough. This is NOT a build diary about the console itself, more about the console room. Sorry if that revelation disappoints. I am somewhat time-poor (the irony abounds), and compared with my earlier builds, this is going to be somewhat cheap and nasty.

I'm also trying something a bit novel for me; rather than making a gallery post for a build diary as I have done in the past, I'm actually attempting to make an actual build diary! So this will actually be in the right place for once... I hope. Apologies to moderators and administrators if I've mucked it up again!    

The elements I will be working on are essentially the walls and the raised daises on the floor. The console and struts will be provided by a CO TARDIS playset. I have no intention of modifying them... well, at this stage. Let's progress and see how we fare...

Research for this console room is... well... a bit limited. Overall screen time is less than a minute (!!!!!), set shots are hard to come by (although it turns out some exist), and the views that we DO have of the interior are very limited. So I will be taking SOME artistic license with this build...  

Starting off, I perused the forum to see what gems of information I could glean. There's not much, however what I did find out has been extremely useful thus far! Kingpin's post, http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=5037.msg58625#msg58625 has been very useful in viewing shots of the console room that you don't get from screen-grabs of DOTD, in particular the roundel wall that is neatly covered by a strut when it's in-shot that reveals the wall to have a break down the centre. The different camera angle also helps gauge position, distance and wall angle, especially given that it's a mirrored shot of wht you actually see on screen. Thank you kindly sir!

In the same post in the comments section, both kiwidoc & galacticprobe make mention of some details in a blog by purpleblancmange of some console room details. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the blog, but galacticprobe kindly mentions that the walls used are the same as those used in An Adventure in Time and Space, the recreation of the Hartnell / Brachaki console room (Thanks Dino!). So, for wall and roundel dimensions, I have returned to the http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4825.0 plans, kindly provided and painstakingly researched by the great Tony Farrell. I also referenced those plans when I was making the http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=6249 . My hat goes off to you yet again sir!  

For those of you unfamiliar with the builds I have previously worked on, I model everything I plan to make in Solidworks first. It not only gives me extraordinary flexibility when designing and altering, but since my models are 3D printed, I can then move straight from computer model to printed model without any fuss.

I started with the main walls. First, the continuous roundel pattern:







... and then the broken pattern, reminiscent of the main door wall (which remained essentially the same right from 1963 all the way through to 1989):







... both as I said, based on the Brachaki design, size and layout.

As I mentioned, information for this console room is quite limited. We have no idea, really, of how many walls this console room has, their varying sizes, or their relative positions to each other. For a display model, we do need a bit more than what we are given in DOTD. How to proceed then?

Another reference I found interesting on the forum was the http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=6243.0 , by RazzaMataz, who has modelled the walls (very similarly to mine, nice work!), and begun to arrange them in an octagonal array. This is actually very clever! The 2 walls I have modelled are not the same width. Geometrically, that creates a problem if you want to create an "encircled" console room, but not if it's octagonal in shape. As long as parallel and perpendicular walls are the same width, then walls at 45^o can be a different width entirely. Like so:





... the angles don't even have to be 45^o (or 135^o as would make more sense for this image) in order to form an irregular octagon. So, I started working on this type of a layout. Not sure I'll stick with it, but it's a good place to begin!

I added chamfers to the broken pattern wall to begin with. The idea is when the model walls are fitted together, you can abut them against each other, and the chamfers provide the correct angle (something I have done on all my models, to great effect). These also provide joining surfaces, for ease of assembly, but we'll get back to that later on in the build:







... notice that the angle is only 70^o. The chamfer on the adjoining wall will make up the other 70.

Anyway, that's the start. I will post more updates as I progress!      

D.

Wow! You have been away for a really long time, d33j r093r5! (By the way, do you know just how hard that is to type in? It's almost as hard as... warmcanofcoke! )

Anyway, it's nice to see you back. You always did great work and it, and you, have been missed. (Do try to poke in a little more often, even once every other week, just so you're not gone for so long again.)

Your War Doctor console room is off to a great start. I might use it for inspiration. (By the time I get a place with enough room to build something like this, and get enough help to do it without breaking my already bad back, I'll be old enough to look the part!)

Dino.

Hey Dino, thanks for that. Although, gotta tell you, my handle is easier than my actual last name, which has 7 letters and only one vowel!  In any case, I'll try to stay in touch on the forum, even when things get mad hectic (which, come March, they will!).

Since I posted I've been through a few iterations; as simple as this one is in a lot of ways, it's also potentially the trickiest. Hopefully I'll have at least the design down before I return to Uni. In any case, I'll give a proper update once I've sorted out the current technical hitch... es...   

Cheers,

D.

... ok... time for an update methinks...  

There are aspects of this build that are more difficult than ones I have made previously. I already mentioned that information regarding this room is scarce at best. Another is that, while it does seem kinda obvious that this TARDIS was cobbled together hurriedly for the 50th Anniversary, it becomes even more so when you attempt to model it. More on that later...

The other reason is a bit closer to home. When I have modelled previous TARDISes (TARDISii??), they have been my build from start to finish: Walls, Doors, Console, Columns, etc... They look good enough, and I made them to be that way, effectively dioramas that look more or less like the sets. You would be hard pressed by looking at them to fault dimensions or appearance (even if I say so myself), but if someone were to come in with a vernier, protractor and tape measure, discrepancies would abound! But that's ok, they look how they're supposed to look, and no one is supposed to measure things to the nth degree on them.

And everything fits together. If something wasn't right or didn't look right, I could adjust the dimensions and angles until they did, and everything else accordingly. QED

This one is different. Because, as I said, I'm cheating! The console and the coral plinth/columns (what the heck do you call those things anyway?) are pre-existing pieces that I'm using from the Electronic TARDIS Playset. So, everything I make, has to fit THEM...!




... already disassembled... well, and partially reassembled again as well. Part of the ongoing process of checking things like dimensions and how things fit together.

As I mentioned, I like the idea of the octagon for the WDT (War Doctor's TARDIS), because of the flexibility of the sides at different lengths. Well, that's slightly problematic as it turns out. See, the design of the playset is essentially hexagonal. And it doesn't matter which way you turn it, you can't get a hexagon to fit an octagon, even an irregular one!...




... as you can see from the top, there are 5 plinths in the playset, but they're arranged as if there were 6 at equidistant (so grown up!) points around a circle. Does this matter? Well, a bit. See, when you look reasonably closely at the existing shots from DOTD, the plinths abut exactly up against the walls of the room AND the centre dais on which the console sits. If the room is octagonal, you can't get them to do that. And in my case, that's actually important. Because the plinths HAVE to meet up with the console in the centre AND fit into the existing slots...




... and you can't NOT have them do this either. The console is the height that it is, and to trim those plinths so they don't adjoin would look... well... wrong...




... sooooo... after mucking around with the octagon for a while, I decided to try a hexagonal TARDIS shape. I wasn't thrilled about the idea. I've played with TARDIS geometries before, and they tend to work best when you can open them up, and have wide, very obtuse angles between the sides. The hexagonal shape was somewhat limiting...

In addition, due to the symmetry of the plinths and their positions, each wall WOULD need to be the same width, and the shape they form necessarily be a regular hexagon in order that they abut properly...! (Insert Exasperation)...




... you see what I mean. It looks awfully scrunched. Not that it is mind you; those exterior walls cater to the outer most edges of the plinths which, if you refer back to the images of the playset, is actually quite a large space. In this arrangement you would have 4 of the plinths included, one each butting up to the centre of each wall, and to the centre dais. Yes, I did the measuring, it works...  

That actually brings me to another interesting hiccough. When I first design a model, I make it full scale, to get the measurements as near as dammit to the original. Once I'm happy with that, I scale the whole thing down to 1/13th size (to match the CO figure range), add joints and separations for printing and assembly, and then print. You HAVE to start with full scale walls etc. Most accurate way forward. However, the plinths and console are already at 1/13th scale, and I have to make them fit into my final console room. So, as you can imagine, there's a lot of tedious calculation in scaling everything up and down in order to make sure everything fits. Apart from the octagon/hexagon issue, that's probably taken the most time so far. The software I use helps though; Solidworks is good in that you can enter in the dimension you have, and then multiply it by whatever your current scale factor is, and it will automatically size it for you, but you still need to perform the calcs first, to make sure you get it right and don't generate unpredictable results. Old and trusted engineering adage: measure twice, cut once!

... back to the current design. Even if you turn it 30^o it still doesn't look quite right...




... and you only get 3 walls! You also end up with only 3 plinths, and one of them is at the back. Design-wise, this wasn't doing it for me, although I was almost resigned to making it hexagonal. That's more or less when I called it a night...

... this morning I started thinking about octagons again. Surely, I could have my cake AND eat it too? And even if I can't, I'm sure I can find a happy compromise... so I started sketching...




This was the current arrangement. It actually made the walls abnormally long, and they did look odd (refer back to the previous hexagonal design images). All dims are in mm. Those Circle diameters represent the outside of the far leg of the plinth and the inside of the close leg of the plinth and where the dais begins. In reality, not a little room...



   


... two alternative arrangements. The large circle still represents the outermost edge of the plinths. The hexagon represents the layout for the plinths, while the octagon represents the layout of the walls. The hatch lines represents the positions of the plinths in the arrangement. Neither are ideal as the plinths don't go all the way back to the walls, except in the image on the left; the 2 horizontal ones WILL abut the wall.

2 problems I have with that first arrangement. It IS wider and hence less scrunched than the hexagonal arrangement, especially with that nice wide, flat rear wall. But, in order to get 4 plinths in, it needs 2 side walls, and that just bugs me. There's no visible doors on this console room, so restricting it with those walls makes it feel like a cage. And while it IS nice and wide, unfortunately I see and feel scrunch. The other issue is that while TWO plinths hit dead centre where they're supposed to be, the other 2 are kind of floating in space somewhere. They're ALMOST in the corners!

So, I went with option 2. The 2 horizontal plinths would not have a wall abutment at all (there would be a gap anyway where the corners of the walls would meet), and the other 2 would be ALMOST centred. There would still be a gap between wall and plinth, but negligible. And it opens the whole thing riiiight up! So I proceeded on that basis...







... looks pretty good, more or less the way I wanted it. But how will this design go with the plinths? *sigh* I had hoped NOT to do this, since I already HAVE the plinths made. Fortunately, they're not terribly complex. So, I drew 'em! So I could see how this design would look with them in...





... not a bad effort, again if I do say so myself!  

Million dollar question: How does it all look...?

...

...

...

...




... ok, even I was surprised at how well this turned out! It's nice and open, the plinths actually don't look out of place, either in contrasting design or their relative positioning, and there is a really nice sense of scale and scope! Unless I get any more bright ideas in the next few days, we're going ahead with this version!      

... and just to finish off, an overhead view...




... I will probably trim that floor a bit, we don't need the entire octagon, and maybe tweak a few things here and there in the coming days...

... gonna wind down now. Been a long day. Will update again soon...  

D.

Wow. You really do have your work cut out for you on this one! I wish you the best of luck with it, and look forward to seeing the end result. And I agree that the War Doctor's console room was not given half enough screen time, though it was nice to see the old "travel promo console" given a redress for this new lease on life after all of the promo stuff was said and done.

The walls? Well, they had them on hand from "An Adventure In Space And Time", so why not make use of them? (After all, it was nice to see "the round things" again.) But with all that said, I do wish they would have given this console more screen time. I would love to see some publicity-quality photos of this console so we could know what she looked like on all sides, and not just medium-to-long shots of one side of the console, and barely a good look at three of her panels and ribs.

Quote from: d33j r093r5 on Jan 16, 2018, 08:31 am
...TARDISes (TARDISii??)

TARDISes. It's even been used in on-screen dialogue in both the Classic and New Series.

Classic Series:
"Logopolis"
(Ep 1 - The Doctor and Adric in the Cloister Room:)
Adric: "Earth's the planet with all the oceans, isn't it?"
the Doctor: "That's the chap."
Adric: "Wet."
the Doctor: "Britain is. That's the one place where we can find these blue boxes."
Adric: "TARDISes?"
the Doctor: "Yes, but they're not. No spacious accommodation, no viewer screens. They don't even time travel. Just elementary Earth communications devices, and more or less obsolete by the time we'll be arriving there. There's some in the North that are still in use."

(Ep 4 - As entropy starts taking affect and the Logopolitan structures begin collapsing:)
the Master: "Doctor, we must form a plan. I propose one, we withdraw to a position of temporary security. Two, we reconfigure our two TARDISes into time cone inverters. Three, we create a stable safe zone by applying temporal inversion isometry to as much of space-time as we can isolate."

(Several lines later:)
the Doctor: "No, no, no, no, listen. Reconfigure the two TARDISes into time cone inverters? It would work. What a brilliant mind."

New Series:
"Time Crash" (Comic Relief)
(The 5th Doctor, in the 10th Doctor's console room after an alarm sounds:)
5th Doctor: "That's an alert, level five, indicating a temporal collision. It like two TARDISes have merged, but there's definitely only one TARDIS present. It's like two time zones or more at the heart of the TARDIS. That's a paradox that could blow a hole in the space time continuum the size of... Well, actually, the exact size of Belgium. That's a bit undramatic, isn't it? Belgium?"

(Shortly before the ending:)
the Doctor (10th): "Right, TARDISes are separating. Sorry, Doctor, time's up. Back to long ago. Where are you now? Nyssa and Tegan? Cybermen and Mara and Time Lords in funny hats and the Master? Oh, he just showed up again, same as ever."
5th Doctor: "Oh no, really? Does he still have that rubbish beard?"

"The Doctor's Wife"
(After the 11th Doctor's landing on House:)
the Doctor: "Ah. So you've met Time Lords before?"
House (voice only): "Many travellers have come through the rift, like Auntie and Uncle and Nephew. I repair them when they break."
the Doctor: "So there are Time Lords here, then?"
House: "Not any more, but there have been many TARDISes on my back in days gone by."

(When the Doctor and the Idris/TARDIS are talking in the chamber, after he lets her out of the cage:)
the Doctor: "But why? Why pull the living soul from a TARDIS and pop it in a tiny human head? What does it want you for?"
Idris/TARDIS: "Oh, it doesn't want me."
the Doctor: "How do you know?"
Idris/TARDIS: "House eats TARDISes."
the Doctor: "House what? What do you mean?"
Idris/TARDIS: "I don't know. It's something I heard you say."
the Doctor: "When?"
Idris/TARDIS: "In the future."
the Doctor: "House eats TARDISes?"
Idris/TARDIS: "There you go. What are fish fingers?"
the Doctor: "When do I say that?"
Idris/TARDIS: "Any second."
the Doctor: "Of course. House feeds on rift energy and TARDISes are bursting with it. And not raw, all lovely and cooked. Processed food. Mmm, fish fingers."

(Some dialogue later:)
the Doctor: "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Go? What do you mean, go? Where are you going?"
Auntie: "Well, we're dying, my love. It's time for Auntie and Uncle to pop off."
Uncle: "I'm against it."
Auntie: "It's your fault, isn't it, sweets? Because you told House it was the last TARDIS. House can't feed on them if there's none more coming, can he?"
Uncle: "So now he's off to your universe to find more TARDISes."
the Doctor: "It won't."
Auntie: "Oh, it'll think of something."

(In the TARDIS junkyard:)
the Doctor: "A valley of half eaten TARDISes. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Idris/TARDIS: "I'm thinking that all of my sisters are dead. That they were devoured, and that we are looking at their corpses."
the Doctor: "Ah. Sorry. No, I wasn't thinking that."

"Hell Bent"
(After the 12th Doctor rescues Clara from the Raven:)
Clara: "No. Why would you even do that? I was dead! I was dead and gone. Why? Why would you even do that to yourself?"
the Doctor: I had a duty of care. Listen, I'm nearly through here." (clanging and odd noises as the Doctor opens a hatch) "If I'm right, there should be a service duct under here. We'll be able to get to the old workshops. They'll have TARDISes there."

There are probably more, but I think this is more than enough to establish it from the source: the plural of TARDIS is TARDISes.

Quote from: d33j r093r5 on Jan 16, 2018, 08:31 am
The console and the coral plinth/columns (what the heck do you call those things anyway?)

The easy one first: the "columns" going from the floor to the ceiling have been referred to as "buttresses"; at least here on TB it's the term we've been using. Now for the not-so-easy one...

The console. This console has no "plinth proper", like all the consoles before it, or the 2013 console; neither did the 2010 console for that matter. The main console part always had those curved coral bits referred to as "ribs", with the bottom supports being "legs"; again the same for the 2010 console, only this console's legs ended on the glass floor with "feet".

The 2005 console didn't have "feet" since its legs disappeared below floor level and we never got to see the bottoms of them. However the War Doctor's console did have its legs end, but not on "feet"; they all joined together at the bottom in what I can only describe as a "foot ring", and it was all sat on a raised, round, lighted platform.

Well, enough babbling, but at least I hope it helped with the terminology so it can avoid confusion in future.

Dino.

I agree that TARDISes tends to be... well... canon. And linguistically it's more correct, although that seems to be becoming less and less relevant as well. Which is why I would be in favour of saying TARDISii; the rules don't matter and I like the way it sounds   ... anyway, for simplicity and lack of confusion, lets stick with TARDISes...  

I think I got my terminology mixed up by referring to the buttresses as "plinths" ... because of course, they're not. The (traditional) console base is, you're absolutely right Dino. So, base of console will be plinth and the odd coral columns will be buttresses from here on out! Cheers Dino...  

One of the things about the console I will be using (from the playset), is that the plinth is actually huge!



I think this was a reflection of how it was in the show, although not exactly. As such, in the playset it disappears into the floor, again, same as in the show, but this means that in order to have the console at the right height on the dais (and also so the columns... sorry, buttresses... meet up with it in the centre properly) the console needs to be sunk into the dais... AND the floor. That's why you may notice I've made the floor so thick, precisely for that reason.

Anyway, enough with my babbling as well. I'll get back to modelling. The sooner I do some more, the sooner I can post another update.      

D.

Hi all, brief update before I chuck it in for the night...

Something I forgot to mention a couple of days ago; while trying to decide what shape the room should be, I toyed briefly with making the walls circular:




... this was only a roughie to gauge how it would work... obviously the roundel spacing would need to be worked out better, and positioned so that they were always parallel to the tangent of the walls, but I just wanted to see the overall effect... the thinking was of course to solve that hexagon / octagon problem...




... I could see it wouldn't work, the effect I wanted to create (which I finally did in the final design) just wasn't there. But, I did like the effect a round wall with roundels gave me. So, something to play around with in the future I guess... Maybe a custom jobbie at some point...?  

... anyway, that idea is shelved for now... onward and upward with the current task...!  

I wasn't going to do this because, again, like the buttresses, I don't have to. But, I needed to see what I was doing, so I went and did it anyway. And then added WAAAAYYY more detail than I needed to because, you know, I'm... well... picky, but in a lot less polite way...  




... I was tempted to add more, but my subconscious was screaming at this point that it's after 1.30am, and I'm wasting my time adding more detail... coz, you know, I don't actually need to make the console... *sigh*

I spent half a day on it too, just getting the details right! One of the reasons why I had avoided making anything post-1996 was simply the size and scale of everything. And a lot of the shapes, in the 2005 console room in particular, were really organic and difficult to model / make. That's why the CO range is there isn't it? They were nice enough to make both the 2005 console room (really beautiful) and the 2010 console room ( not as beautiful, kinda feel they let the side down there a bit), so it seemed pointless for me to try and make 'em...

One of the things that got me though was tie-in to the classic era this console room provided. It was like an itch that needed to be scratched!! Anyway, I digress...

There's not much more to do at this point, except to scale down the model, sub-divide for printing and assembly, and add the attachment points...

...

... ooohhhhh, you want to see how it looks?   :







... Will update again soon...

D.

I mentioned at the end of the last post that there was only scaling, sub-division and joinery left. Well, turns out, I was fibbing...! But not intentionally...  

I forgot at least one very important piece of ANY DW Console Room: The all-important Roundels! Ahhh, it was late, I was tired, etc, etc...

I again went back to Tony Farrell's http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4825.0 for info on these. We're still essentially talking about Hartnell era style walls and roundels, so it makes sense to try and get them as close to that as possible.

I started by modelling them 1-to-1 as Tony describes them:




... it's only half the profile of the roundel you see here. It's actually the easiest way to model roundels: draw half the profile, and then revolve-extrude it. I made the wall thicker than on Tony's plans, as once scaled down to fit a 1/13 model, the original thickness would only come out to about 0.2mm. The printer CAN technically do it, but it will be fairly flimsy, and why take the risk? The 0.3125" thickness on these drawings when scaled down translates to about 0.6mm. The roundel actually needs to be scaled down again after that to allow for the size of the roundel holes in the walls, which at current full size are about 21", which is 4" smaller than on the Brachaki plans. That means, after everything is scaled to the final print size, those wall thicknesses come out to 0.5mm, which is what I was aiming for. Not too thin, just thick enough without being too thick...







... I had hoped to mount them in much the way they did on the show: from the rear, with the large, flat section up against the wall, mounted with screws or glue. 2 issues with this. The first is screws or glue. 4 walls, 30 Roundels per wall, 4 screws per roundel. That's 480 tiny, little screws that I will need to be fiddling with, and complicating the print of the walls AND the roundels. Nuts to that noise! Besides which, practically speaking, the thickness of the roundel  and it's ability to print like that and not look awful, let alone print successfully (120 times, mind!) is a path I've been down already and don't need to re-learn those lessons. As to glue, wellllllll.... super-glue is useful for mending broken items, but aside from that, not really a fan. I can imagine the mess, and that does nothing for me. So,just no...

... having said that, I did seriously consider biting the bullet and taking the screw option, for the sake of realism. However, the potential problems with the print quality finally killed it. Besides, I can get almost the same effect with a lot less effort by doing it the way I traditionally do it; mount the roundels inside the wall openings instead. Here's what I ended up with...:




... pretty much the same design, except I thickened up the outer ring to match the inner ring. This gives me a good mounting edge for the roundels to fit into the wall gaps, and also means I don't need to worry about printing support for the overhangs (which is always a mess, and never works properly), and gives me a nice, large surface area at the back. Also stiffens up the whole roundel, so it won't be flimsy...




... and from the front, you won't really be able to tell the difference...




... and the Half-Roundel...:





... arraying the roundels into the existing assembly is a pain in the proverbial, so I created new sub-assemblies for the task...






... I have 3 sub-assemblies of this kind, one for each of the 3 different walls in the main assembly. Once these were done, it was easy enough to swap them out. Solidworks is actually really intuitive and easy to use in this regard; it searches for the same geometry as the part being swapped, and replaces the part with the sub-assembly when it finds it...





... ok, that's looking a lot more complete now...      

... one of the aspects of the original walls, is that, when viewed from the rear, the mounting of the roundels is very apparent, and the indented section sticks out significantly. I didn't want to lose that completely with my alterations, so I made my model that the roundels only insert a certain distance into the wall. The effect isn't really the same...:




... still toying with whether I should go in this direction or not. Not entirely sure it's worth it. If anyone has some suggestions, feel free to advise...!    

D.

Looks great!

A simpler way of doing the roundels might be to print the inserts as a single flat(ish) sheet and just drop the wall section on top of it. You'd lose the protruding rear view, but you'd only have to assemble two pieces per wall as opposed to thirty individual inserts.

Depends how important the behind the scenes view is to you, I guess?

Another possibility could be to extend the "flange" (that part of the roundel that mates with the wall) just a little. Then instead of having to insert the roundels into the walls' openings, you could attach them to the back of the wall in the same manner as the originals. (See Tony's drawings again just to make sure what I'm saying is coming across as what I want it to, and not that I'm mucking my words up.)

The only difference would be that you'd be tacking the roundels on with glue (and not the screws and bezels of the originals... unless you're really a glutton for punishment and like working on that small of a scale; personally, I'd go blind!). But you could lay the wall face down, position the roundel, touch a drop or two of whatever glue works best on 3-D print material, and then let the walls stay like that until the glue is set firm.

Once you're done, when you stand the walls up you would have the look you're after, and if your render is anything to go by it's going to be astounding! (Then all you need to do is upscale it to full-size so when I hit the lottery I can 3-D print the entire room. )

Dino.

Hey Dino, you mean like this?:







... sort of, more or less...? It was good timing, I was finishing these off when I saw the comments... brilliant minds think alike. It's a good idea... I know it's not precisely what you meant (I know which images in Tony's manual you're referring to as well, I kept referring back to them in the initial stages of roundel work-up), but essentially I have extended the flanges. I can't really make 'em flat. The roundel has to have enough meat to print it as reasonably solid. Doing that means the roundel takes up more than half the space in the roundel slots, which doesn't look right. So, they have to protrude out the back fairly significantly, irrespective of what else I do. I *could* potentially have the back protrusion stick out further as it is in Tony's manual, but it would mean in printing that the flange would be hanging over air with nothing to support it. Turning it upside down means the "bowl" shape then has the same problem. I need to print the back flat, unfortunately.

The other alternative is to print the flange and the rest of the roundel separately. That could work, but then the assembly stage becomes more difficult. I don't know if you've noticed, but I generally don't like making things difficult for myself. I'm fairly lazy   I always liked that adage "have something difficult to do? Give it to someone lazy to do; that person will find an easier way to do it!"   ...

... also, I'm still trying to avoid glue and screws. I like assembly with dowels! I did all the previous consoles purely with dowels, and interference fits. Makes assembly and disassembly fairly quick and easy...

... phillbarron, I like the idea, not entirely certain I'm envisaging it exactly as you are, but I think I got the gist of it. It would certainly be reasonably simple to print a flattish sheet with some roundel-like protrusions and then stick it to the back of the wall, although I got the impression you're more referring to a kind of insert, where there's a gap in my wall to slide a sheet inside it (?). Not certain if that would be simpler for my method of producing the console room walls, it would make some things a bit harder, but it's a cool idea, and certainly just adding it onto the back could work really well. It's not really the look I'm after though, and I like the idea of the individual roundels - that's what they were in the show after all. But appreciate the suggestion, it's given me a few ideas...    

Thanks for the kind words guys, really appreciate the encouragement, and the suggestions...

D.

Yeah! Like you say, not exactly like in Tony's drawings, but it's still in the spirit of it. The look should be pretty close to what you're after, and that render does look pretty snazzy. (People still use that word, don't they? Snazzy? If not, I'll go with smurfy! )

Dino.

... well, I still say "snazzy"... snazzy plays I'll take smurfy too, if you prefer that... 

... anyway, one last quick update for the evening, then I'm off to bed...

D.

... decided to make my life difficult and add some extra detail to the room...:




... I trimmed the floor, as I said I was going to, finally got around to it. Also added the markings on the raised dais (I can't tell from all the screen-shots, photos and other people's renderings exactly how many sections are in there... I went with 16, it seemed about right). But those are relatively simple things to model and produce on the printer. No, what I did to make my life problematic, was to add all those wonderfully untidy cables that are on the floor!!

... actually modelling them wasn't THAT hard. It's a little more involved than your standard cuts, extrusions and revolves, but again, the software simplifies it enormously. And the printing shouldn't be too bad either, they will be the last things printed on the base, the whole thing will be pretty stable by then, it has enough support, and they're not overly complex. What WILL cause me grief is that, in order to get the colours as you see them here, I'm gonna have to mask and paint! It's the one thing I try to avoid at all costs, coz I ain't-a-paint-a...   ... however, in the interests of detail, I'm gonna bite the bullet and give it a go. It just didn't seem complete without the floor clutter. Fingers crossed I haven't bitten off more than I can chew...

... one last brief note about the floor cut. I wanted to leave the entirety of the dais , even though I'm trimming the room back to the walls. Hence the reason it looks as it does. I did try it out briefly with a hexagon shape around the dais, but it didn't look right... well, at least, it didn't work for me. As much as hexagons do seem to play a starring role in most console rooms, the circular approach in this instance seemed to be more in keeping with the general theme of this particular version...

... ok, I'm done for the day. Night all!  

D.

Ok, where do we start...  

... a little further on what I posted a few days ago, the floor clutter. The image I posted was fairly simple, just a bunch of pipes running across the floor with no terminus. I wasn't happy with that, so I went back and made them all connect to something; walls, centre dais, the floor, other pipes...:




... you can't see anything here but floor and pipe, but the 2 grey pipes join the centre dais. One goes into the floor, the other joins a blue pipe. On one end of that blue pipe it goes into the floor, the other joins a fatter blue pipe, one end of which goes into the floor near the base of the NE buttress, the other goes into the eastern-most wall, etc, etc... it looks better on the assembly...:









... easier to see the detail on the last image there...   .. it's not EXACTLY like the DOTD screenshots, but it doesn't have to be, as long as the floor has clutter...

... what I DON'T have currently, which is glaringly obvious when you think about it, especially if you go take a look at some screenshots of DOTD, is the dangling cables from all the buttresses. At this stage I'm not sure I'm going to put them in. And even if I think that I will, I'm not entirely certain as how to go about doing it. Again, advice, suggestions, all welcome!

... the markings I added on the raised dais I wasn't satisfied with either. Originally, I was just going to leave gaps to indicate their positions, and then maybe fill it in with paint-marker. Decided against that because, you know... paint!     ... and instead I made an insert for them. Not entirely certain how that will come out, we'll know more when it comes time to print. I'm reasonably confident... reasonably...     ... for a given value of "reasonably"...  

You'll also notice in the last couple of images that the top section of the raised dais now looks like chequerplate. It's not an accident, I'm going to try and print it that way....... I'm "reasonably" confident........   ... moving on...

I decided it was time to start selecting filament, since I'm pretty close to a finished, ready-for-printing product. Since I last did a build, things have changed a little. Actually, they've changed a lot, but most of it isn't relevant. What is relevant is I have more space to work in and play with. That's because I moved house a little over a year ago. My place now, no longer renting, YAY!

... I inherited a second printer, so I can now print builds twice as fast!:





... old faithful...






... new baby brother. Technically speaking, this one is marginally older than the other one. Same make and model though, so print quality should be very similar, if not identical.

As to filament, I already had a substantial amount of that, but I inherited a great deal more along with the printer:




... that's a lot of filament. I'm kind of spoilt for choice now!

As it is, there are a few go-to colours for TARDIS interiors:




... top colour is standard white. I used as the main colour of my original http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=5689 , my first build, and as the walls in the http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=6249 . I was considering using this for the top section of the centre dais. However, it's a bit too stark for that, and given that it's now chequered, I'm leaning toward the silvery-coloured grey (3rd from the top). This is supposed to give a metallic sheen to the filament... I used this for the top section of the console in the http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=6277 ... it SORT of works... still debating... I WILL use this colour for the patterning on the lower dais though...

The colour I will use for the walls in this build is 2nd from the top, and is the same colour I used for walls when I updated the 80's console room and the Season 18-20 Console room. It's near enough what it needs to be.

The very dark colour I previously used in the updated 80's console room, as part of the detailing on the plinth, and the underside of the console. I will use a good portion of this in printing the base of this console room. Ideally it should be a bit lighter, but it will be good enough for this purpose.

2nd from the bottom is what they call "natural". Technically it's clear, but on an FDM printer nothing ever prints clear. It's essentially a colourless filament that will print translucent. This is going to be used for the roundels. It is now my go-to filament for ALL roundels since I had great success with it in both the Season 18-20 console room and the updated 80's Console room...

The last colour here, 3rd from the bottom, is a mid-darkish grey, darker than the grey for the walls, lighter than the base. It will be similar in hue to the silver, maybe not quite as dark, and without the metallic sheen. This will be for the larger lower-dais section...

While I was sorting all this out, I received a package... I was waiting for this for a few weeks, and it was sort of the catalyst for me making the decision to model the War Doctor Console Room in the first place...:




... this is always fun!    







... TA-DAHHHHHHH!!!!

This is a re-release of the 10th Doctor console room from... well.... ages and ages ago. I bought it new way back when, and had been eyeing the new one for a little while now, for a few reasons: 1) My old one was a little weather-worn and dated. It had been through a few moves, little kids playing with it, detailing coming off, etc etc. 2) Having a new one means I can use the old one for spares AAAAAND... building the War Doctor Console Room, something that I had considered for a while, and finally 3) A small detail, I know, but THAT WHITE COAT AND HAT-RACK!!!! I NEED THAT FOR MY S18-20 and 80's CONSOLE ROOMS! True, I could have simply found one on ebay or something, but people are charging like $20 - $30 for them! Sod that! Given that I only paid about $55 for the whole Console Room, I think it was money well saved and spent!

... that price-point was really the... well... selling point for me when I saw it. People and stores (online or otherwise) are still trying to flog it for about $200. At $55 I could afford to buy one, and thus replace the old one and start this current build. Win-win...

... anyway, if you're anything like me, when you get a new box of goodies, then you don't just leave it in the box! I mean, I KNOW I already know what's in it, but still...!  






... wasn't just gonna leave it at that...!  












... all the bits are pretty much exactly the same, they haven't really changed anything in terms of design. But why would they...? ... the original was brilliant exactly as it was! There are a few MINOR differences that the slightly obsessive amongst us will look for immediately. The newer version has much more obvious detailing; the cracked plaster effect stands out a lot more on the new console than the old:



... new...



... and old...


.... the hat-rack is now white instead of brown...:

 

old left, new right...


and the buttresses have a slightly darker shading, and slightly different detailing, but are pretty much identical...




...as mentioned before, the older console and buttresses will be used in the War Doctor Console Room, and the remaining parts will be used for.... something, I'm sure an idea will present itself at some point...  

... ok, I think I've probably taken up enough of everybody's time by this point. Time to get on with scaling the model down and adding the attachment points that I keep saying I'm going to do, but instead keep modifying what I've already got...!  

D.