Miniature Scale

[JimTheRedShirt]

Woohoo! The new 1:7000s are out. After so long!

I want to ask a legit questinon about the scale. The first ones are 1:7000 scale. One of our group members has some older ones. We've been trying them out in game, and... while I like them more than I thought I might, even for their small size, they seem small.

A Google search says the Constitution class is 1" at that scale. Shouldn't it be 1.62"?

The Enterprise is known to be 947 feet (288.6 m). As they say in the Federation Commander, the Heavy Cruiser is, "The workhorse of the Federation, and the most famous ship in science fiction." If it's the most famous ship in science fiction, surely its overall length is one of the most well-known and settled items amongst those of us who care about such minutiae! In fact, the only real debate I've seen is that, if anything, it should be bigger, based on interior sets!

If the big E is small (or Connie, or CA in the SFU), how can we be confident the other ships are scaled with it? Especially when you get to ships that aren't Star Trek ships, but SFU originals? If we flip it around and call me ignorant, is there something about model scaling I don't understand?

I'm not looking to be controversial, I'm actually really interested to know what's happening, if anybody's in the know.

[djdood]

I'm not sure what you Googled, but the Federation heavy cruiser model for 1/7000-scale is 1.623 inch long.

[JimTheRedShirt]

I'm not sure what you Googled, but the Federation heavy cruiser model for 1/7000-scale is 1.623 inch long.

Awesome sauce! Happy to stand corrected! I don't have one in hand right now, so I was on thin ice.

Next question. Many of the ships were models before, but once they get to some that weren't, how is size/scale determined? Does the artist submit a design to ADB and if they approve it, that's the size of the ship?

[djdood]

I was the chief engineer for the ADB Shapeways project and determined sizing for most (not all) of the ships that were put up for sale that way. Considerable effort was expended to rationalize the sizes, but "match the metal" was the primary directive. There were years of discussions on the legacy BBS to vet sizing decisions with the community.

For anything new to-be done with the new vendor, only ADB can answer those questions.