Plating Begins!

Kyle here with another little update!

With the plating strakes plotted out and translated to the hull mesh, I've already begun to extrude the hull plates, one strake, one plate at a time. I've started with the innermost plates along the bottom, strake "B" to be exact. So far I've made it out to strake "E". It's still not perfect and the plates I've extruded still need a tiny bit of work, but it's very satisfying to see the plating take shape like this.

The process for each plate is roughly: Separate section of hull mesh constituting a strake or row of plates. Adjust as needed to fit previous row of plates. Add cuts for plate end overlaps. Add cuts along curved areas of plating/hull as needed. Deleted extra vertices that resulted from earlier hull mesh smoothing. Separate the single strake segment into individual parts for each plate in that strake. Extrude some edges to account for overlaps with other plates. Extrude each segment to the thickness needed. Add additional smoothing/divisions and bevels to each plate. Bevel edges for a semi-finished plate. Additional steps later will include fine adjustments once the surrounding plates are there, a final round of smoothing, and adding materials, along with other steps as needed, like UV mapping. Many plates along the upper hull will also need holes cut, but that's for a later time.

One small tidbit: I'm actually extruding each plate to its thickness according to the 400-1 shell plating plan. The real plating had varied thicknesses mostly ranging from 1 inch amidships to around 0.75 inch towards the ends of the ship, with some bottom plating being thicker still. These thicknesses are reflected in the model. Since each plate has to be extruded one by one, it's virtually no extra time to quickly check the plating plan and enter the needed value when extruding. It's a fun detail that people would probably never notice, but's there. It does, however, affect some areas to a degree, like the stem where the thinner plating is riveted to the stem bars.

Once I've more or less rounded the curve of the bilge with plates, I'll shift focus to working out the double bottom and tank top, and after that begin making frames for the rest of the hull.