On 4 Sep 2014 at 18:28, Freelance Traveller wrote:

> In "classical" Traveller (i.e., the Third Imperium and 'compatible'
> settings), ships are allocated engineering space, and on deck plans the
> various 'drives' are roughed in as very irregular shapes. However, with
> the sort of miniaturization of electronic components that we can do even
> today, about the only thing that causes irregular shape is _mechanical_
> connection or interfacing. If controls are electronic, they can be
> managed by a touch-screen arrangement, much like on /Star Trek: The Next
> Generation/ or /Deep Space Nine/ or /Voyager/.

Actually even non-mechanical things can have shapes that aren't
rectangular parallelpipeds.

stuff working with strong electric or magnetic fields is going to be
curved because of coils and other things. various sorts of "emitters"
will have odd shapes as well (consider log-period dipole antennas).

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com