FRANZ JOSEPH
Booklet of General Plans

U.S.S. Constitution Class

REMASTERED

CAD Illustrator: Will Garmer
Original Illustrator: Franz Joseph
Digitized Edition: ©2024
Original Edition: ©1973

Summary:

These plans are titled Franz Joseph Remastered, named after the Star Trek TOS Remastered video release, because the concept is much the same - Franz Joseph's 1973 drawings were digitized, i.e. precisely recreated using a modern Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) software, resulting in a clean, sharp new version, and a few enhancements were made without changing the aesthetic of the original. This version is intended to look like what FJ might have produced had he been using CAD software rather than drafting by hand.

The digitization process corrected a few basic drafting errors like line gaps and overlaps, and a few misaligned or mis-oriented gangways on Decks 7-8 (in the Entertainment Center) and Decks 6-7 (in the outer corridors). Franz was a master draftsman but he was working with old-school techniques, and nobody is perfect, so some of the original repeating symbols had natural variations in size or shape, but all repeating symbols in the Remastered version are identical throughout the drawings.

Subtle details were added to the Remastered drawings, such as more accurate biobeds in the Sickbays, and details on Bridge stations in both hulls. Keeping strictly in line with the spirit and aesthetic of FJ's original work, many of the added details came directly from the FJ's other master work, the Star Fleet Technical Manual. It is much easier to duplicate more detailed symbols hundreds of times drafting with modern CAD software than it was for FJ drafting by hand.

Along with the original FJ plans, the same Remaster treatment was given to Geoff Mandell's fantastic nacelle drawing from 1978.

Finally, the finished product was used to assemble a poster in the same configuration as Patrick Cumby's brilliant five-view poster, except that in the Remastered poster, Geoff Mandel's nacelle is featured in the Inboard Profile.

These plans represent a loving homage to the work of Franz Joseph Schnaubelt, which changed the course of my life. After I received my first set of his Constitution Class plans and the Star Fleet Technical Manual as a young teen in the early 1980s, I became so enamored of the world of technical drawing that I studied drafting in high school and later attended a trade school, beginning what would eventually become a lifelong career as a draftsman. Although Franz himself left us in 1994, his brilliant work will live on forever among Star Trek fans.

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