thibaultron

I’ll watch you for a while 😁

Resisting is futile Glenn! 

Those small details are lots of fun to add but you'll never see them on the final model, especially when encased. But some future observer will be delighted when they use their home Target brand home endoscope.

I am not sure if I will add those details yet.   I am still mulling it over.   The reason why we builders add those fun details is to set our models apart from the many that will end up being made.   It also means I have to build another set of every table and chair again so I can write the instructions for them...LOL.
 
But the Speedwell project moves forward at any rate.
 
Now working on fcastle details.
 

 

 

Mostly due to the size and available (or I should allowable based on my wife’s review) display space I’m really trying to convince myself Speedwell is not my next project.  With each new innovation that gets harder and harder to do…..I mean, to scale door handles and books on a table in the cabin, wow.

I quote a retired civil engineer (I hope she won't mind) who designed bridges world wide:
 
I saw the newsreel of the bridge collapse in Baltimore yesterday. I had always felt that these American 'girder bridges' were too lightweight (part of America's planned obsolesce design practice in place in those years). But I was astonished to see how little protection was provided to the main supports. It's a no brainer - if you knock out a main support, the bridge collapses! And the main supports next to the navigation channel require special attention. On the Queensferry Bridge, which was downstream of the Forsyth Naval Dockyard where they build and maintain aircraft carriers, we carried out a study, including model simulation, of just such an event and designed the main pier caissons not to fail. Luckily, the Americans loved simple span construction for their approach viaducts and this acted as a fuse . . . [for] progressive collapse of the whole crossing! . . . .  what happened using 'the past is a foreign country' adage. It was opened in 1977! I was working on the Itchen Bridge then in a similar, but not as exposed, location upriver from the port of Southampton. Our River piers were protected by a massive caisson that extended out from the main columns by sufficient distance to guard against the superstructure hitting the bridge even as the hull of the vessel crumpled onto the caissons.
 
So, there you have it.
 
 

One of my employees was awakened by the noise of the crash and actually witnessed the collapse. She lives less than a mile away and felt her house shake. I believe Andy is correct in that abutments would have deflected the ship and probably prevented this disaster. I believe they are discussing dredging the channel to make it more compatible with today's modern ships. The Port of Baltimore is seriously outdated and they will hopefully use this tragic opportunity to not only rebuild the bridge but better accommodate deep water ships.

It doesn't have to be a big ship to cause havoc. In 1975 the 7,272 gross ton SS 'Lake Illawarra' brought down the Tasman Bridge over the Derwent River, near Hobart. Unfortunately, 7 of the crew and 5 people in cars on the bridge died. The Master was found to have not handled his ship in a proper and seamanlike manner!
 
John
 

SS Lake Illawarra

The damaged bridge just after the collission. The headlights of two cars teetering on the edge can be seen.

A better, long term and cost effective solution that could be applied to any potentially vulnerable bridge, no matter how old, is to put stone fill around the base of the piers abutting the channel. This would deflect any ship that strayed too close, regardless of size. The warning signs were there when the Sunshine Skyway collapsed in 1980 due to a ship strike. 
 
This is the LaViolette bridge across the St Lawrence river at Trois Rivières, about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City:
 

 
You can see the stone armouring around the main piers. 
 
Andy

I wonder if this will prompt calls to have tugs nearby when any ship goes under some of these crucial bridges. MV Dali was registered at 116,000 DWT and was almost as tall as the bridge itself, nothing like the ships that were being used (or even considered) when the bridge was being designed and built. It's not even clear to me what exactly how you would engineer against a quarter of a billion pounds of anything striking a pier.

I heard that the Ukrainian Navy wants to hire the ship ...

When this bridge was built, container ships were not as big or as heavy as the current container ships. The designers built it for the size of container ships of that day. This ship was well over 900 ft long. 
 
I too have driven over this bridge many time to visit family near Annapolis.  The locals avoid this bridge during periods of high winds; they get really scary vicious on the bridge. 

As far as CAD goes, you do not need a high core count CPU! All, I repeat all, CAD programs are single thread programs! I fell into that mistake when I built my new computer, last year. I have a 12 core CPU and none of my CAD programs were using more than 4 cores! When I investigated, all the 2D and 3D CAD program vendors state, if you look hard enough, that any CAD program has to be single threaded, as, basically, you start from one line,than follow it to the next line etc. CPU speed, on the other hand does matter, as well as how the CPU handles code.
 
I went from a decade old 4 core setup, with a clock speed of about 4GHz, to the latest 12 core AMD 7900X with about 5GHz. In single thread the old one got a score of 450, the 7900X 2400. So it is about 4 times faster. The "Scores" are relative to that particular Benckmark program, the ratios do, however, indicate the relative performance. In multi core tests the old one got about 2K and the 7900X 27K. I have detuned my 7900X to run at a slightly lower total wattage, to lower CPU temperatures, and it runs about 3 to 5% slower, but now stays in the low to high 70C range of temperature, under full load, rather than the 90 to 95C limits the manufacture allows it to run at, for maximum performance. Intel runs in similar temperature ranges. I could have saved some money and gotten the 7600 or 7700 CPUs, as the CPU intensive work I do is mostly CAD and, not video or picture editing. I don't know if Blender falls under the single thread limit.
 
Both the old and new computers use a maximum use 4 cores with my 3D CAD and Sketchup programs. Yes the program is single thread, but I guess some of the tasks can run in parallel.
 
For Graphics and most other processor intensive programs the more cores the better. Also more cores allow you to have multiple CAD programs running without one bogging down the others. For Instance to copy an item from one Sketchup file to another, you need to have two or more Sketchup programs running, with each having one of the items. You copy an item in the first program, then switch to the other program, and paste the that item into the second. You can also have two SU programs running, and have one doing something complex, that will take a long time, and work on a second project, in another SU program while you wait for the other to finish, without slowing everything to a crawl. The CPU intensive operations in my SU work are generally grouping and ungrouping the lines in an object, and importing some non SketchUp file formats. I have an older free version (2017) of SketchUp, so I don't have the other programs that come with the full version.
 
With my old computer, some of the operations might take overnight, on the new computer, a couple hours. Most now finish in a few minutes.
 
With the larger number of cores you can also open other tasks, say a different CAD or Graphics program, and work on those while the SU program calculates.
 
Graphics programs can use multiple cores, so the speed gains are greater.
 
I don't do gaming or video editing, so don't need as high an end a GPU either. I bought the AMD 7600 GPU, and it barely sweats with my workload.
 
If you get a laptop with a replaceable Nvme SSD, you will also see greater speed gains than one with a regular hard drive style SSD drive. That also allows you to replace a failing drive, or expand your capacity.
 
I would highly advise against a MAC! The SSD sticks in them are soldered in, and of a proprietary form factor. Also the most common MAC laptop failure is for the chip that converts the power supply voltage to the different ones needed internally to die. When it does a vast majority of the time, it sends 13 volts to the SSD, frying it, causing the irreversible loss of all your data! No I'm not making it up, I did a lot of research. Apple is increasingly making it impossible for outside vendors to repair them. The latest trick was to start using a "Smart" switch to detect if the laptop is open. If it fails you can buy a new switch to replace it, but not the program needed to program the smart part of the switch! Only an Apple owned repair facility has access to the program. Without that program the computer will not recognize the replacement part.
 
Whichever computer you buy, buy an external drive and frequently back up your files! Even if you have multiple internal drives, and back up the data to another internal drive, a major computer failure, say the power supply, can destroy all the internal drives!
 
Also the minimum RAM I would recommend in a Windows PC is 16GB, with 32 or 64 if you are doing anything other than browsing or word spreadsheet work. As before, if picture or video editing the more memory the better.  I understand that professional video editors regularly run 128GB of RAM. As an example, here is a screen shot of the set of Bogard cannons I am CADing in Sketchup, with this program and the browser I'm writing this response on, I'm using 11GB of memory. Opening a slightly older version of the same file, it goes to 14.6GB. So 32GB would be the minimum I need. I have 64GB, but the additional 32GB of memory came with the bundle deal I got when the CPU, motherboard, and memory bundle I got when buying the components from MicroCenter.
 
 

 
In the graphic above the cannons farther from the center line are the latest version of that particular size. I build them in stages (make the body, add cypher, add trunnions, etc.), saving each stage as I go.
 
 
 

I grew up in Maryland and remember the opening of the FSK bridge.  Since then (now a Pennsylvanian), I've used it a number of times to avoid the tunnels or heavy traffic on the long western loop of the Baltimore  beltway.  'Guess in the 70s, no one did a 'what if' scenario to cover this type of collision.  Other bridge designers have considered this and built massive pier guards fore and aft strong enough to withstand a direct hit by a massive ship.

As far as CAD goes, you do not need a high core count CPU! All, I repeat all, CAD programs are single thread programs! I fell into that mistake when I built my new computer, last year. I have a 12 core CPU and none of my CAD programs were using more than 4 cores! When I investigated, all the 2D and 3D CAD program vendors state, if you look hard enough, that any CAD program has to be single threaded, as, basically, you start from one line,than follow it to the next line etc. CPU speed, on the other hand does matter, as well as how the CPU handles code.
 
I went from a decade old 4 core setup, with a clock speed of about 4GHz, to the latest 12 core AMD 7900X with about 5GHz. In single thread the old one got a score of 450, the 7900X 2400. So it is about 4 times faster. The "Scores" are relative to that particular Benckmark program, the ratios do, however, indicate the relative performance. In multi core tests the old one got about 2K and the 7900X 27K. I have detuned my 7900X to run at a slightly lower total wattage, to lower CPU temperatures, and it runs about 3 to 5% slower, but now stays in the low to high 70C range of temperature, under full load, rather than the 90 to 95C limits the manufacture allows it to run at, for maximum performance. Intel runs in similar temperature ranges. I could have saved some money and gotten the 7600 or 7700 CPUs, as the CPU intensive work I do is mostly CAD and, not video or picture editing. I don't know if Blender falls under the single thread limit.
 
Both the old and new computers use a maximum use 4 cores with my 3D CAD and Sketchup programs. Yes the program is single thread, but I guess some of the tasks can run in parallel.
 
For Graphics and most other processor intensive programs the more cores the better. Also more cores allow you to have multiple CAD programs running without one bogging down the others. For Instance to copy an item from one Sketchup file to another, you need to have two or more Sketchup programs running, with each having one of the items. You copy an item in the first program, then switch to the other program, and paste the that item into the second. You can also have two SU programs running, and have one doing something complex, that will take a long time, and work on a second project, in another SU program while you wait for the other to finish, without slowing everything to a crawl. The CPU intensive operations in my SU work are generally grouping and ungrouping the lines in an object, and importing some non SketchUp file formats. I have an older free version (2017) of SketchUp, so I don't have the other programs that come with the full version.
 
With my old computer, some of the operations might take overnight, on the new computer, a couple hours. Most now finish in a few minutes.
 
With the larger number of cores you can also open other tasks, say a different CAD or Graphics program, and work on those while the SU program calculates.
 
Graphics programs can use multiple cores, so the speed gains are greater.
 
I don't do gaming or video editing, so don't need as high an end a GPU either. I bought the AMD 7600 GPU, and it barely sweats with my workload.
 
If you get a laptop with a replaceable Nvme SSD, you will also see greater speed gains than one with a regular hard drive style SSD drive. That also allows you to replace a failing drive, or expand your capacity.
 
I would highly advise against a MAC! The SSD sticks in them are soldered in, and of a proprietary form factor. Also the most common MAC laptop failure is for the chip that converts the power supply voltage to the different ones needed internally to die. When it does a vast majority of the time, it sends 13 volts to the SSD, frying it, causing the irreversible loss of all your data! No I'm not making it up, I did a lot of research. Apple is increasingly making it impossible for outside vendors to repair them. The latest trick was to start using a "Smart" switch to detect if the laptop is open. If it fails you can buy a new switch to replace it, but not the program needed to program the smart part of the switch! Only an Apple owned repair facility has access to the program. Without that program the computer will not recognize the replacement part.
 
Whichever computer you buy, buy an external drive and frequently back up your files! Even if you have multiple internal drives, and back up the data to another internal drive, a major computer failure, say the power supply, can destroy all the internal drives!
 
Also the minimum RAM I would recommend in a Windows PC is 16GB, with 32 or 64 if you are doing anything other than browsing or word spreadsheet work. As before, if picture or video editing the more memory the better.  I understand that professional video editors regularly run 128GB of RAM. As an example, here is a screen shot of the set of Bogard cannons I am CADing in Sketchup, with this program and the browser I'm writing this response on, I'm using 11GB of memory. Opening a slightly older version of the same file, it goes to 14.6GB. So 32GB would be the minimum I need. I have 64GB, but the additional 32GB of memory came with the bundle deal I got when the CPU, motherboard, and memory bundle I got when buying the components from MicroCenter.
 
 

 
In the graphic above the cannons farther from the center line are the latest version of that particular size. I build them in stages (make the body, add cypher, add trunnions, etc.), saving each stage as I go.
 
 
 

Based on popular demand and multiple requests, a package of smaller door handles is now available.   This multi-pack gives you 30 each of the 3/16" tall handles and now 1/8" tall handles.
 
In addition ....a multi pack of smaller door hinges is also available.   You get 16 each of 1/8" and 3/16" tall Hinges.   In both styles....
 

 

Very interesting, me thinks ...
 
 

Mike,
 
If all you wanted to do was use email and browse the Internet just about anything would do (even a cell phone).
 
But if you are thinking of doing CAD work a higher clock speed (3+ GHz) and more cores (6+) is better. A video system that supports hardware acceleration (and the software drivers to work with it) is a plus.
 
If you are going to do a lot of photo editing and storage more storage space will be needed (1 Tbyte or more).
 
****
 
A fundamental problem with laptops is heat. All that electronics generates heat, and laptops have a totally inadequate cooling system. So when the processor and power supplies heat up the processor shuts down momentarily to let the cooling system catch up. So even the fastest clocked processors can end up running at a snails pace.
 
Before buying read the reviews on line. Remember that 25% of the reviewers are morons who can't (won't) read and understand instructions and maybe 10% really know what they are talking about. But if a product has less than 70% 5 and 4 star ratings it is probably junk.

About a year ago I bought a used Dell Precision 7720 17.3" Laptop: Intel i7, 500GB SSD, 16GB, P3000 for about £650, including a 1 year warranty. It copes just fine with Fusion 360 and the various graphics packages I occasionally use. I wanted the big screen for 3D modelling, so while it is indeed a laptop, I wouldn't want to be carrying this around a lot. But as a portable hi-spec computer its' great.

Good morning all. Just a quick question: Since my knowledge of computer related stuff is pretty much nil does anyone have a good recommendation for a decent laptop computer? Sometime soon I want to get a decent laptop that isn't going to break the bank but yet can also be used in conjunction with photo uploads with a SLR digital camera and maybe even 3d printing or modeling software in the future. I'm currently using a borrowed game console for internet access as I don't have the room in my tiny place for a full blown computer setup. I also really don't want to go the smart phone route either.