My first deckplan - Scout in Excel

[Renard Ruche]

Please comment on my first deckplan, found here:

http://www.TravellerRPG.com/CotI/Gallery/images/1508/1_My_Scout.gif

I used Excel to make it....took a couple of hours, but I think it came out pretty good. I basically copied the MgT scout since the size and shape seemed to make it easy to work with.

Feedback will be appreciated...think I will copy it into Apppleworks Paint and clean it up a bit, but if there are any errors I missed, I would like to find out before I do that.

Enjoy!

 

[DaveChase]

Nice job

Color coding is very nice to have. But a large glob of one color can make things a bit hard to look at very long. Nothing wrong with it on the smaller ship but it might be come a bit much on larger ones.

Otherwise welcome to the deckplan building club. Not sure how many members there are, but we just keep poping up all the time.



Dave Chase

 

[BillDowns]

Ditto - pretty nice

Uh, one thing, tho, where's the upper portion? You have iris valves in the ceiling on the main deck, and a lower deck, but where's the upper? Or does it go straight into a gig or something?

 

[travellernoob]

Very nice, I'm such a noob, I didn't know Excel could do that.

 

[Renard Ruche]

Ditto - pretty nice

Uh, one thing, tho, where's the upper portion? You have iris valves in the ceiling on the main deck, and a lower deck, but where's the upper? Or does it go straight into a gig or something?

There is no upper deck in the MgT plans, but there is a turret where the iris would lead...and which I forgot to put in - opps!

Didn't know it could do it either, but someone had mentioned it on a post here long ago...thought I would give it a shot.

 

[Icosahedron]

Hmm, that's pretty good. Got a link to some 'how to deckplan in Excel' instructions?

 

[Ranger]

Hmm, that's pretty good. Got a link to some 'how to deckplan in Excel' instructions?

Yes, I agree on both counts as well. It is a very nice deckplan, and it would be great to see how that's actually done in Excel.

 

[Renard Ruche]

Thanks everyone! Glad you like. I am working on a new set of plans, but I could probably cobble something together on how I do it in the near future. In the most basic way, I make the cells into a grid and then use Borders for most bulkheads and fill in with lines from the Objects menu. I make all of my fittings from shapes in the Objects menu as well. Hope that helps you guys get started.

 

[Icosahedron]

Objects Menu? I didn't know there was one. Thanks, that's worth a little investigating...

It probably won't make for a full deckplan drawing tool, but could be ideal for sending out quick sketchplans of ships, streets, buildings, etc, to my players.

 

[Renard Ruche]

Check in 'Views' I think....you want the Formatting Palette. A box with a bunch of drop-downs should pop-up...look for Objects there.

 

[Ranger]

First question, what did you set the width and hieght of your cells at?

 

[BillDowns]

An old fart like me would set them to .36 x .36

Although .18 x .18 works, too. Just a bit small for my bifocals. And don't forget, you can always adjust the zoom factor. And add hyperlinks to point within the document for more details, or stat blocks for a piece of equipment.

 

[Ranger]

Well, the problem I am facing is that the version of Excel I am using wants you to set the width in number of characters (based on font size) per cell and hieght on the number of "points" of type. And, I can't find anywhere in the help file anything which will tell me how many Arial 10 characters to an inch, or how many points to an inch.

If there is a toggle I can use in the program to switch it over to inches or cms. That would be so much easier.

 

[BillDowns]

Ah, my fault - what you need to do is a two-step process:

1) select all the rows you want to draw in, right-click and select Row Height. Then set it to whatever you want.

2) select all the columns you want, right-click and select Column Width. Set it to match.

That will get you the raw background. When you draw boxes or use Auto-Shapes, the grid now provides a uniform scale.

I use this technique to document software because so many clients do not have Visio.

 

[Ranger]

Ok, I've done a nice little deck plan using Arial 10 font with a colum width of 5 and a row hieght of 30 which gives a nice 1cm x 1cm grid (at least from a rough measurement on my screen). So, how do I save that as an image file?

 

[Renard Ruche]

Hey Ranger, sorry I haven't responded to you. Sounds like Bill got you on the right track. I set my columns and rows at .18 and use zoom when I need to do fine work.

have you posted your deckplan??

 

[Renard Ruche]

save it as a jpeg and you should be able to upload it.

 

[Ranger]

save it as a jpeg and you should be able to upload it.

Well, that is the problem. It's not giving me that as an option. I have the image, but I can't seem to transfer it to a graphic format.

Edit to add: I think the issue is that I am using a much older version of Excel. I've turned on the option that should allow me to save it as a .png file, but I still don't get the option when I go to save as. Oh well.

 

[Ranger]

save it as a jpeg and you should be able to upload it.

Thanks for the inspiration to use Excel. I have given up on being able to convert it to an image in the antiquated version of Excel that I have, so I just posted the file in the deckplans section of the file library. I must say it is a very nice method to use making deckplans, especially if you want to print them out in hard copy.