A large section of the early part of the term (every thursday) was spent photographing parts of the school to make the panoramas. This consisted of taking photographs at regular intervals on a tripod, at three levels. A series of high shots, mid shots and low shots. A few problems occurred during this process, namely obtaining times to do such, people getting in the way and capture angle settings.
Taking panoramas of some areas proved to be difficult, as such areas were in use often and unavailable. The main case of this was with the music department, whose HOF did not take kindly to our activities without appointment. This problem was solved in not a technical way, but merely by taking a diplomatic approach to organize a time.
People often got in the way when trying to photograph an area. This is a problem because it breaks the panorama when it comes to stitching it. This was solved with patience and kind words.
Getting the angle of the camera and the degree rotation correct first proved an issue. We couldn't get a consistent way of taking the exact number or images necessary, or get the angle of capture consistent. The solution was fairly simple, we realized that if we needed 20 images in a circle, simply divide 360 by 20. Thus we took images every 18 degrees, which we measured from the turn base. Most people then had significant issues stitching them together, Huggin needed a finer margin to allocate control points properly. We had to rephotograph some areas, increasing the number of images in one rotation from 20 to 40.
The 90342 content of term one consisted of tracing the WHS topography maps to create classroom maps which would be joined later in the year. At first it seemed simple, tracing lines and joining them together. But then I ran into some problems, namely in filling the walls. Each wall had either side drawn, then joined to fill them, leaving solid walls. But my walls wouldn't fill properly, and it greatly slowed down progress. Fortunately, the problem was quickly identified through some error isolation, and it seemed the walls hadn't been connecting properly. With some more practice I was able to fix the walls, and continue my set of maps to completion.
The freehand map consisted of taking the freehand drawings that the class had made during the first term and connect them all together, by creating corridors etc.
The freehand map was a long, uphill battle. Pretty much everything that could of gone wrong, did. It was made more bearable by breaking the task down into chunks, doing each chunk slowly and carefully.
The first chunk was the linkwells, which I did back in term 1. Initially I was going to draw it from measurements, but when a map was discovered we decided to use that. I traced over the map and accounted for the parallax errors of the lines (using some basic geometry). By using door width as a scale, I managed to connect the Main and science blocks of all floors with the linkwell. A problem raised at this point with the science block, it appeared very small. I then realized that the door width in the drawing was wrong, and I followed Terry's suggestion to half the door width size to make it correct.
The second chunk was connecting the Art, Food and Fabrics rooms to the existing part of the map for level 2. There were no existing drawings for the corridors that joined these rooms, so Finn and I measured them then drew them in freehand, using the Art corridor width as the scale. One problem that became immediately apparent, was that the foods room was far too small compared to the Arts block. This was because of an inconsistency between reality and the WHS Topography of which the map was based off. The solution, was to use the doorways as a comparison between the two blocks. As all the single doorways are the same, by comparing doorways in each block we could get them the correct size.
The third chunk, I did in term 2. It was by far the biggest challenge, involving difficult room shapes, a lot of measuring and a mathematical ratio scaling system. The first part of this involved joining all the com labs together. As they all had part of a curve which would make up the circle of the fishbowl, I expected this to be very easy and straightforward. I could not have been more wrong. The curves all seemed to have different radii, making it tricky. Then the out lining walls wouldn't line up, and it was evident the original scale used in the typography the map was based off was wrong. After prolonged discussion with Terry, I decided to redraw the problematic walls and fishbowl to make it fit. This was done at the expense of a few meters accuracy, but for the sake of getting things done this was necessary.
Then all the adjoining corridors had to be attached to the com labs. This posed a challenge, as I had no physical objects to base the widths off. The best solution, seemed to make a simple formulae to convert a real length to a length in freehand that was in the same scale as the existing map elements. I did this by taking a length of a wall, and dividing it by the length of the wall in freehand. This gave me a scaling number. When you divide a measurement by this scaling number, you get the number in freehand. Depending on exactly what I was working on, this number varied.
The next task was to connect Com 4 to the conglomeration of com labs. Using door widths and known measurements I could establish the size, but not the position. I got permission to draw and measure the server room, which solved the problems about the exact locations of Com 4. Using the previous concept of doors as scaling guides, the materials technology block was connected without a hitch.
The foyer and library was the hardest part of the map, the foyer is a complicated shape full of odd angles. As we did not have time to work out all the adjoining wall angles, some assumptions of visual accuracy and 90 degree walls had to be made. Due to the large number of connecting surface, this section took some time with many revisions. The library was the hardest part, and it appeared once again that the typography was wrong. To solve that, the library was re measured along crucial walls and the image altered to such. The library has many sections, and is an unusual shape. Unlike previous rooms, I could not make one part fit and thus the whole thing fit. One section might line up, but the rest would be all out. This was solved by measure lengths of different relative sections, such as the seminar-kitchen corner to the com lab block perpendicularly.
Term 2 and the 90342 standard has been a learning curve, I have learned much about process, organization and persistence. Without the help and steady assistance of others, I would not have been able to complete the map. Finn has played a vital role, in helping measure endless lengths of wall and space. What made the task easier and manageable, was breaking it down into chunks and following a concise process.
Process for Term 2 Map construction:
-Establish the conceptual shape of the area, as to give a rough idea of the layout (Research)
-Collect all the relevant existing freehand maps and put them into one file (Collaboration)
-Establish all existing measurements and the measurements required (Specifications)
-Draw a layout of the area (Design)
-Measure the unknowns (Data Collection)
-Calculate all the new measurements into freehand units, then draw and position the lines (Production)
-Consider the accuracy of the map, consult others on it and make any changes or corrections (Evaluation)
