Need ideas and possible help with a image project
 

Ladies and Gents,

Need ideas for a project. I am involved with a group in saving some antique airplanes build in the 1930's and 1940's. We have been working with the factory who produced them. They allowed us to use their commercial scanning machine to scan the original blueprints for almost every model made, which will allow them to be rebuilt, restored and kept in the air.

We have about 5000 blueprints that have been scanned, from 11 x 14 up to blueprints that are 4' by 8' in size. All are either .TIF or Adobe PDF format.

First, does anyone have any suggestions on how to organize something like this? 100 documents is one thing but 5000+ blueprints is something that needs organization and some sort of database to find specific drawings then a way to lead you to the drawing you are looking for.

Second we believe that it will fit on one, if not two DVD disks. We are going to be sending these out to the members of our association and while we know that eventually these will be copied and handed around but would appreciate any suggestions for either copy writing the information or slowing people down in making copies and selling them on Ebay?

Here is a small example of what we are working with. The first one is 300k while the smallest of the .TIF or .PDF drawings is 4 megs each. Some are 500 gigs each!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1192207353.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1192207550.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1192207589.jpg


Thx,

Joe

Well Joe that's quite a daunting task......pretty cool project though.
So it sounds like the documents/blue prints, etc will be called upon for future use, and they will probably be adding more as time goes on. Not sure what your budget looks like but when tasked with a similar project we used this company www.edms.org (EDMS) there are also other companies out there such as Captaris, Ademero, etc. Do a google search for electronic document management.

Essentially a product like EDMS allows for organization, security, rapid retrieval, web based access and scalability.

"Some are 500 gigs each!"
WTF? 1/2 terabyte? You better buy a lot of DVD's (I think the largest DVD is 8.54GB), let me know which make so I can buy stock in it :)

As far as protecting the data on the disk I have personally never done this but there are tons of software options out there. You could either "protect" the disk or have the images protected with a water mark. If you never plan on having members copy from the disk then protecting the entire disk may be the way to go.

Joe, there must be some logical organization built into the prints now, Model #, part #, qty required per plane etc. you just need figure it out (easier said than done). I am assuming you have most Aeronca prints for all the models?

In simple terms maybe create a folder for model 11A, and place the main assembly drawing in it along with sub-folders to place sub-assy drawings and their details in. Of course this will be a real SOB and probably many identical parts were used in many models.

Any way you slice this, it sounds like a ton of work (a real "labor of love" type project). Good luck, give me a call sometime if you want to discuss it more. I might be of some assistance from the engineering/drawing/deciphering perspective but not much help in how to best store the data.

Size of plueprints (if I remember corretly) vary from A through E. Each one will require a "drawer". Drawer will be labelled, a list of the contents of each. List computerized, sorted by:

model number
general category (engine, fuselage, wing, etc)
part number
description of part (location of part, if a stocked item such as specifc hardware)
drawer i.d.
other relevant info you may come up with. (maybe subcategory like "type A or Type B")

I do not know if this helps, but it works for auto restoration!!

My suggestion is not to send the disks out but to load all the data onto a web site - its cheaper and you can protect it with passwords for a start.
You can also load up lower resolution images with watermarks that are unsaleable on ebay etc.
The web site will be easier to maintain as new data is obtained and you can build a forum facility to allow members to pass requests and info between themselves.
You will save the distribution costa and have a far better chance of stopping theft of images while making the info accessible to legit members.

Heres a forum some friends started recently. (the software is not expensive.)

www.openpitlane.co.uk


Thats my starter for 10 as we say here.
Now about the book.....;)

Joe,

Ya gonna have to bite the bullet and get an image archive software to create the database....and manually enter each drawing number (top right in the image shown) and the title... possibly also the revision number.

You will then be able to create 'collections' of images that are related....as Tim says by model number perhaps...what this does is ensure that only one actual copy of each image is stored, however it can appear a number of times in different collection.

Nikon Picture project works in this fashion....

What I do not know is how you can transfer that info via disc...we have a few million images in our image data base but they are on a number of fixed servers and the software we use is $++++and not on every machine.

I'll see if our TI guy knows of other systems that are more suitable.

SteveO's suggestion is spot on.

On the commercial side I have used Cantos Cumulus for large image DB's.

There are Open Source alternatives out there should fit your need.

Nice thing is you can then assign all sorts of attributes and keywords to make searching the DB easy.

Scott

Great project Joe. I've got a couple of modern reprint magazines of some planes from the 30's with a few blueprints, but with 5000+ they are almost sure to be dulicates.

Off the topic, but it would be neat to scan those blueprints into a program like http://www.raster-vector.com/, find some way to automate the 3D modeling process, and then fly them in an open source flight sim like http://www.x-plane.com/.

Once you have sufficient disk storage (and backup for it too) then it is "easy" enough to catalog the image and add keywords. Of course, this is best done by a human...

Ok guys,

Just talked with the guy who is putting together all of the blueprints and have more information. Was incorrect, the largest of the scans is 500 megs each, not 500 gigs. He said that he believes that most of them are the 11 x 14 or next size up and hopes to get everything on one DVD.

Good idea on having all of them on the internet but two issues there. First is that some of the guys working with these old airplanes are in their 60's and 70's and for them a dial up connection is more than enough. It would take forever for them to download one of the large prints. Second is that once one person takes the time to download everything then they can share them with whoever they want or the world for that matter. Eventually this is probably going to happen anyway and we are just going to slow things down.

John, thanks for the offer but we are trying to compile drawings for only the old Aeronca's for the time being. That said, I have a very good friend who is restoring the old Ryan Monoplane that flew "Leo the Lion" for MGM Grand in the 1930's and if you have any of their old prints would love to get the two of you in touch.

Let me work with this a bit more and get back to everyone.

joe - i've got code to do this sorta halfway done as a proof of concept... be monday before i can send it/post it.. if it looks like what you wannt, i'll gpl it for you

Thanks and I am still off duty and in the country for another week, but will still be on email even when overseas.

Am trying to get a sample of the drawings from my friend. Could "beta test" it with these.