Sometimes clients need to see something in front of them to understand it. Some people can't "see" ideas in plan form. That's where I came in. Completely scratched up to 1:12 scale. I was almost feeling the need to fabricate a specific deep C-channel when I found such a part already made. Phew. The Mockler (sp? too lazy to look it up) wheel hardware was unusual and a nail-biter to put together. Would the physics of the styrene and MEK solvent work at that scale? It did; but I wouldn't want to run the thing like a car on a carpet (vrrooom vroom).
The marble top is added-up sheet styrene to get the speced dimension and a custom decal for the whole thing.

i remember this well! Very impressed with the likeness-at-scale. I was a little under-funded back in the day. Now it is the endless debate over wife vs shelf-space.
Very nice to make your aquaintance!

On to windows. I thought scribing and then clearing out would be easy. Maybe if I'd done it before I trimmed off the fuse from the entire sheet, it would'a. But no-- the vac-formed plastic was too thin and it got beaten away. So! On to second vac-form fuse. The second time I drilled and connected. Much better.
I decided I wanted the rear APUs to not give me so much trouble so instead of fussing to fit everything, I sat it on a blob of ApoxySculpt. I think being more prominent looks better.
By the time Steve mentioned he had closed up the internal wiring, I had built the interior and *should* have left it out. It caused nothing but trouble later and there are parts rattling around inside the finished model...
But I made it and in it went.
You can see the interior-- which would have been smashing with a couple of lights in there! -- and also the little blob of A-Sculpt which restrains a small piece of brass tube that telescopes on 1/16" rod. I like to make a paint stand and a display base at the same time so that everything fits later. In this case, it's a simple rod; no big deal. But that strategy pays off when it's two mounts or something really fancy like a square tube (WHICH is something I should have done with this model-- I did not think far enough ahead and did not consider how the ship could be mounted at the exit of the Space Station. A piece of square -- soldered at the ends of a support rod (who wants to bend square stock?) would prevent the model from spinning... )

I made a couple quickie vac-form pulls so that i could do some accurate measurements for some etched brass. The ribbing on the ship seems to be parallel so I felt little worries when I figured all that out. The holes that are associated with the forward facing scoops would at least allow one to place the scoop shapes. Once I'd figured out how to make them.
For now, spacing 11 of the things was the easy part. (Ahem, there's 9 on the bottom, facing to the rear.)
So I took one of the sacrificial fuselages and cut them where I hoped the cabin would be. I should point out that at this point I wanted to include lighting. Steve had lit up his monster Station, I had no idea whether anyone could see the Orion lighting or not-- but what the hey! Better to have it and not need it-- etc.
Part of the brass was an interior of ceiling lights and the angled part of the ceiling that has only two lights lit-- where Dr. Floyd naps. This was a most arrogant assumption on my part, the little ship windows are teeny tiny. Not itsy bitsy-- very small. Seeing any of it would be sheer luck. And as it turned out, luck was out the window!
I made several vent shapes-- just like the intake vents on jet aircraft-- but I could not quite see a way to hide them on the surface with a LOT of work.

I've said it many a time; I'm a little slow sometimes. As I was watching Steve wrestle with his Mighty Space Station #5 (from the best movie of all time, 2001 A Space Odyssey,) I watched, as I say, as he built it. And 'it' only! I realized there was no little spaceplane filled with Dr. Floyd and a comely stew person) poised to enter the nice, open docking bay.
And thus, I volunteered to make one.
The flat-bottom and upside-down "U" fuselage made it an ideal subject for vacuum forming. I felt good about getting this baby hatched in a week or two. Besides, Steve said it had to be done quickly but not the due date.
I mulled over the things Steve had said about his station and what it was made of. The central hub was laid down on some kraft paper and in one shot of Steve's build, had a big ruler near it. 7" across. I am not above sticking a scale ruler on a monitor to get some relative sizes. And a 2.4" wingspan was it.
I scaled down Atkinson's plans and side view from Bizony's Filming The Future and could start cutting styrene.
I had a secret weapon... Ian "Stargazer" Walsh has made several Orions in 1:144 scale. One of those models comes in pieces that gives you a neat cross-section. I put them on the old copy machine and scaled them down to the reduced Atkinson plans and bang! Cut more styrene.
About *now* is when I started taking pictures...
Here you can see that I used the cross sections, stuck to the plan of the ship in styrene, to sculpt up the fuse. I used ApoxySculpt.
Now I had a 'buck" with which to vacuum form over.
Vacuum forming has few drawbacks, but one must be ready for them. One is a "radius" at the bottom of the formed plastic. This is from the balance of forces between the vacuum from the table and the stretchiness of the softened plastic. One has to elevate the buck a little so that the radius is below the part of the shape you want.
You can see sanding the fuselage down. I put some tape on top to grab it.