[MOC] Interstellar Ranger, 10266 Apollo 11 alt-build

Astatine-209 · Friday at 08:38 PM

I've scaled the model to the drum lacquered wedge plates, so it isn't minfig-scale, and can't fit minifigs. No landing gear either. Enough parts were left to make a nice stand.
It's surprisingly dense, due to the mostly plate-based construction, and weighs almost half a kilogram.

Some thoughts on the design process:

Spoiler

If you're working with a mostly rectangular plate-based brick palette, it's important to choose your battles.

When designing the canopy of the Ranger, one might have a tendency to proceed in a manner like this:

This causes problems in multiple ways. The front side-plate intersects the rear side-plate, as well as the floor.

With the 10266's part collection, there's also the problem of attaching the side plates to the central plates without causing either big gaps or, again, interfering with the floor. (You can conceive of certain shenanigans to get this to work, but at that point, you should be reconsidering your approach.)

The obvious-with-hindsight solution to all of these is to have the side panels combined and attached to the floor, with the interface (by interface I mean the place where different assemblies meet) being moved from the floor to the panel-canopy intersection. This allows us to work with 3 planes, each rotated around max. 1 axis (aligned to the common grid), instead of working with 4 planes, with one of them (#3) being rotated on 2 axes (aligned to the common grid). This is a massive improvement.

Furthermore, in the case of the Ranger, we can use the 3rd plane to attach the 'wings' in a simple and sturdy manner. In the end, we're approximating most of the shaping of the ranger with only 4 planes, rotated on axes aligning with the grid.

So choose your interfaces wisely.
(You can actually see this 'design principle' in many X-wing MOC noses, including all of mine)