{"id":144,"date":"2007-01-02T22:16:02","date_gmt":"2007-01-03T03:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/?page_id=144"},"modified":"2007-01-02T22:28:29","modified_gmt":"2007-01-03T03:28:29","slug":"2006-design-overview","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/?page_id=144","title":{"rendered":"2006 Design Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/Image\/dickens-full.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" vspace=\"10\" hspace=\"10\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/Image\/dickens-half.jpg\" \/><\/a>This year I spent the majority of my effort on building the infrastructure of the diorama:&nbsp; platform, wiring for lighting, foam based landscape, and water features.&nbsp; I got a lot of ideas from an old video that Dept56 used to produce on how to create all of these.&nbsp; Even though we purchased the video this year, I&#8217;ve heard they are no longer making or selling the video.<br \/> <br clear=\"all\" \/><a href=\"\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/Image\/dickens-anotated.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" vspace=\"10\" hspace=\"10\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" src=\"\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/Image\/dickens-anotated-half.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>I started with two 4&#8242; x 2&#8242; foam insulation boards I purchased at Home Depot.&nbsp; These had a smaller width (48&quot;) than the area I needed to fill, so I cut the first board and spread it out on a piece of 1\/4&quot; thick wood cut to fill the space.&nbsp; Power for lighting had to run underneath the display area to the front of the display because the cubby hole used for the display had no power in it.&nbsp; So the space between the two pieces of the first board was the avenue where the power cord was run from the front to the back of the display.<\/p>\n<p><em>My terminology in this next section is off a bit &#8211; I&#8217;ll update it with links and proper terms when I get a chance.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I ordered a set of 12V 50mA Bi-Pin lamps from Radio Shack and wired these to screw connectors.&nbsp; Then I ran the wires to a connecting bar and the bar was wired to a 12V 1.5A power converter.&nbsp; The converter was then wired to a plug which ran to the wall outlet.&nbsp; All of these lights are very small and were hidden behind walls, bushes, and buildings.&nbsp; The annotated image here shows how the main wiring troughs were cut in the top foam layer to hide the wires for the lamps.&nbsp; The troughs were covered with roadways or other material to hide them.&nbsp; I ran lamps through the small river running from the main pond back to the small pond at the base of the waterfall (upper left) and then put a lamp behind the waterfall.&nbsp; However, the waterfall lamp was too bright and it wasn&#8217;t easy to see the waterfall effect.&nbsp; Next year I&#8217;ll use either a lower wattage lamp or hide it behind something so the GladWrap that makes up the waterfall is more visible.<\/p>\n<p>While insulating foam was used for the base, the risers were carved out of styrofoam blocks purchased from Michael&#8217;s.&nbsp; Shaping styrofoam is easier than insulating foam because the latter has to be carved with a heating element while the former can be sanded using sandpaper or even another piece of styrofoam.&nbsp; That makes creating rounded edges a little easier, though a little messier.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve added a gallery showing how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/?page_id=141\">the village looks at night<\/a> with the lighting turned on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year I spent the majority of my effort on building the infrastructure of the diorama:&nbsp; platform, wiring for lighting, foam based landscape, and water features.&nbsp; I got a lot of ideas from an old video that Dept56 used to produce on how to create all of these.&nbsp; Even though we purchased the video this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":119,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-144","page","type-page","status-publish","czr-hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/Pe9t8-2k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/144\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.graphics-muse.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}