rubylight

I haven't yet, untill now. Thx for that link. But they don't sell all the panels (yet) though, and they don't show the dimensions of them.

Some cockpit pictures and measurements There is now... :) Last saturday (june 1st) i drove across the Netherlands to the museum 'Aviodrome', that held their 'open cockpit days'. Normally those are off-limits, but for two weekends per year, they are opened to the public. And luck would have it, they have a Viggen parked there..! (Along with a mig 21, but i found it's cockpit was quite different from the Bis we have in DCS, so it was of limited use for reference) My main concern was finding out if those panels were according to the Dzus standard or not, with a previous mentioned link to a website that claimed they were 122mm. I can safely say now those people either measured something other than the whole panel, or didn't know how to use a tapemeasure; those viggen panels are 5" 3/4 wide, just like many other cockpit-panels. The day was quite stressful though; i was of course far from the only one there, awaiting a turn in the cockpits, so it was a case of hop in - quickly measure a few things - hop out - rinse and repeat. Even some of the supervisors - though understanding of me gathering data for a simpit - were getting a bit impatient with me when i came by the 4th time. And i don't always thrive well under pressure, so the first image displays the best of 'notes' i made at the time. :ermm: In retrospect, since we don't necessarily need 'pictures', when we can look at heatblur's virtual cockpit in-game for as long as we want, i could've just left my notebook and pens at home, and simply filmed shots of me holding a ruler next to the panels and gauges.. Ow well, lessons for next time. :doh: With all that said, i think the pictures below could prove useful. Also noteworthy, the radar-control-stick has quite the gimbaling range, as shown on image nr.3. For those interested in also stepping in those cockpits (and doing a better job of taking measurements than me :p ), the next open-cockpit-days are on 7 and 8 september this year, and two months after that, on 2 and 3 november, they have 'Flight Simulator Weekend', where they stuff the flightsimmers, their equipment and displays in between the regular exhibit! You can check out the Aviodrome's website at https://www.aviodrome.nl/aircraft-theme-park-netherlands/

Hi VampireOne, and everyone else, :) Finally got my aging laptop working again, dug up my Sketchup-files, and quickly measured up the weapons-panel for ya. Because i ended up with a whole string of decimals i rounded them down (so they won't be 100% mathematically acurate) and i left out the bevels / rounding corners. Ow yeah, Sketchup measure tool showed me it was 5 mm thick, and the front dash (the whole panel with radar, gauges etc.) is tilted 10 degrees backwards.

Sry i was away for a while - life-events and reïnstalling my laptop... With a little luck i can get back to 3d-modelling cockpits again, and get some numbers for VampireOne. :)

Indeed... Dzus width would be 146mm.. Darn it! just when i thought i had all the numbers figured out. Time to go back into Blender and Sketchup and scale some models down...

It's indeed made in Sketch-up. I'm considering to share it, but i've got to do the entire front-/instrument-panels, and make sure that the sizes of the rest of the cockpit are correct. I've found out for instance that the two 'boxes' i designed are way too high...

Hey Vampire, I deleted my earlier post because i found out the numbers i used in that were quite off. :ermm: I've since then done some digging, and found out that the placement of DZus-rings (those screws used to attach the panels, which are always a given size) in the gamemodel are actually wrong! Look up my posts in the thread "Trying to understand panel construction". So simply 'counting the dzus-rows' ingame will give you wrong numbers; i've learned that the hard way. :wallbash: Anyway, i went and started remodeling - these are my best estimates so far... At least i know the O2-panel is indeed 5 3/4" by 3"; that's been confirmed by user Deadman.. :thumbup:

Owk, to double check if i wasn't really losing my mind, or making errors, i also compared the placement of rings in the imported model. I made a plane matching their O2-panel's edges (and the warning panel, since it's the same size), divided by 8... and noticed how their dzus rings are placed half their width from where they should be, according to the mil-specs deadman provided. (thàt is why i wrongfully figured 'ow-then-there-must-be-a-thing-like-half-dzus-measurements' earlier.) Again, if other parts of the model were scewered or warped i would've blamed it on the importing, but they're not; gauges and knobs are perfectly round and symetrical, and straight corners are indeed straight at 90°. :suspect:

Lost in translation; in Blender the rounding of a model's edges is called 'beveling' (plitting a straight edge to more polygons, making it indeed more rounded). And i stand corrected on the 3"; i re-imported both the A-10 and F5 cockpits from their .edm-files, deleted everything but both their O2 panels, and indeed - as Deadman predicted - they are the same size; almost to the vertex. In my earlier 3D-screengrab i counted the fasteners too close together. Mea Culpa...:worthy: However if i try to match the models with the numbers, i still run into the same inconsistencies. Importing the .edm-files into sketchup i see the small difference emerging. I could of course scale and warp the imported panel to match the 5,75" x 3" inch, but then the gauge hole etc. become scewered. :wallbash: Building one from scratch in Sketchup according to deadman's numbers it fits like a glove - if only the gamefiles were that co-operative...

I've just ported the 3d-cockpitmodel into blender to double check. The deviations happens a little bit as well, though not as much as with the F5. I guess it's a moddeling-thing... :joystick:

I know, i was running into this problem building my F-5 plans. The oxygen-panel for the A-10 Deadman mentioned is indeed 3" high (or 8 Dzus rows), while the F-5's is a bit higher with 10 rows, making it 3,75".

Well, i never brag about my scientific understanding anymore than i doubt my powers of observation: My problem wasn't with the measurements of the panels (i can model to 0,000001" precision in Sketchup if i have to), it was with the fastening-rings in the game's 3D-model not adhering to the constant distances, as i showed in my blender-screencapture of my previous post: Belsimtek's modellers must have taken some liberties then.

Sorry to 'kick a dead horse', but i've got one more question with those Dzus-things... I've managed to export the F5's cockpit-model into Blender (thanks to NickD's python-script for blender - many thanks mate! :)), but now i see another thing happening. First off i see that even the baseplates of the panels are beveled, though i saw that ingame already. But when i check the placement of these Dzus-rings, by making a copy and cloning them with an 'array'-modifier, some of them line up while others are completely off. Was Belsimtek sloppy in their modelling (hard to believe), are the F5's panels special from others, or is there such a thing as 1/2 Dzus lengths or something..? Note; it's not due to the imported model being warped; all the rings and circles in the model are perfectly round. I thought i had the general idea, but now i'm getting confused... :huh: *sigh* (edit: i know i'm prob. a bit too OCD about this, but i just hate it when a 'plan doesn't come together' :p )

Sketchup-file Data-panel Despite that the Joker once said "if you're good at something, never do it for free", i happen to feel a bit like santa, with christmas closing in etc... Sketchup file is in the .zip-attachment. Made with Trimble's Sketchup Make 2017. I left it flat, since i have no idea what kind of plates, boards, etc., you guys plan on using. Enjoy :) Viggen - Data Panel.zip

3D Sketchup measurements Hey fella's, I'm not much of a pit-builder (yet), but i dìd study 3D-animation, and in a previous post i already dug into some sketch-up modelling, using the earlier mentioned DZUS-standards. Following the numbers from that article, and with a bit of interpretation, i hope the numbers in these renders might prove helpfull. Cheers,

Well, it was the main one that came up when i searched for panel dimensions. I hope the data and measurements are still usefull? (And accurate, because i already found conflicting data from others, saying the acrylics are less thick than i read earlier :huh:).

Panel Dimensions Hey John, I've also started looking into cockpit building a bit, and given i'm a 3d-animator / designer, i started making layouts in SketchUp. When i started researching about the dimensions of these panels i came across this document, by Hessel Oosten, explaining a lot about them. I strongly suggest reading through it - it's only 15 pages - but to give a quick summary, here's what i learned: The big round screws used to attach these panels are called 'DZUS-screws' (named after it's inventor), and attach to a wire underneath the attachment rails with only 1/4 turn. The centers of the holes in the DZUS-rails are always 3/8" apart, and thus, the height of any panel is at least 3/8", or a multitude of that. The backplate of a panel is normally made from aluminum, and is used to attach the panel to the rails in the cockpit. It's also where the switches, buttons, and lights are attached to. The height is variable, but as stated before, always one or # times 3/8". So: 1 rows high = 1 x 3/8" = 3/8" 2 rows high = 2 x 3/8" = 3/4" 3 rows high = 3 x 3/8" = 1 1/8" ... 7 rows high = 7 x 3/8" = 2 5/8" ..etc.. Now for the acrylic plate, on which the texts and labels are printed / engraved, and goes on top of the backplate. It is made of some kind of transparent material (most likely clear or milky-white plexiglass in our cases) to allow the backlights to shine through. Even though i'm from europe and we use mm mostly, i found that setting SketchUp to inches and allowing snapping, makes the 3d-modelling incredibly easy. Hope this helps a bit :)