Old Chateau Theater of Rochester MN to SVG - Part III

Using a photograph of one of the window dormers as a guide, I created a vector image of the window detail.  I didn't want to add too much detail, as in N-scale things are pretty tiny as it is.  Though I may go back and try adding detail.

I also started tinkering with the medallion (see yellow below), but I did that freehand sort of (without referencing a photo).  I'll see if I can somehow take the actual pattern of the medallion from a photo.  My SVG front of the building is still pretty rough.  But it's fun to tinker with (and learn how to use) Inkscape.

And for reference what I'm trying to model...

Old Chateau Theater of Rochester MN to SVG - Part II

Dimensions & Math

The best I can estimate is that the old Chateau Theater in Rochester, MN is about 70' wide and 165' deep:

For Inkscape, I'm using a standard 8.5"x11" canvas.  I'm using metric units.  I created a simple spreadsheet in Google Docs to determine the size in mm that the SVG elements need to be when creating the file:

num of feet	inches in foot	scale	scale inch/foot	scale mm/foot
1	12	160	0.075	1.905

Here's some various angles from satellite.  In addition to the marquee, there will be some angles to deal with such as the slope on the wall/roof where the window dormers are in front.  I may just do flat surfaces at the beginning, and then in subsequent revisions add more detail.

Old Chateau Theater of Rochester MN to SVG - Part I

Now that winter is fast approaching, I find myself getting back to some of my previous interests... such as wanting to make SVG models of interesting buildings in Rochester, MN.  The idea being to have a PDF that can be printed out on card stock, cut, and glued.   

Just below is the original photo I took looked like (f/10.0, 16mm, ISO100, 1/100sec).  Note all the distortion.  I had to use a wide angle lens.  Using Pixlr Editor (not the Express or O-Matic versions), I was able to use "Edit->Free Distort" and straighten it out as you see above.

I did a very rough/quick prototype in Inkscape of the front.  There's a lot of detail to model and I'll need to get the sizes/proportions done properly.

Aerial shot of the theater.  I think using Google maps I can get a direct above satellite photo to determine the outer dimensions of the building.  Once I have that I can then look at the proportions and figure out exact sizes/dimensions of the model.  I'll have to spend some time tinkering around with the entrance way and fitting up an accurate marquee.