Yesterday I put the final touches on my 300th model, a token holder for Armada, and I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Instead of stacking damages and speed tokens on ship cards, I find it easier to have them next to each base. However, keeping individual markers lined up with their ships can be difficult when those ships are colliding with each other, and I wanted a solution to corral them in one place. The most used tokens are double sided, so adding an angle to the speed location was a must, and I have a slight bevel in each damage recess to make it easier to remove and replace them. I will probably print out more that are color coded for multiple players after a test run or two to see if play is sped up enough to warrant it.
But the main thing that has been on my mind for the past week or two was not this model, or really any other one in particular, but the whole of my modeling progression. I have kept records of everything since starting the hobby again, and knew that I was closing in this milestone of 300 models, but is it really a milestone? Is progress quantifiable… is counting even important?
I would say that it is, but with full notebooks and spreadsheets, I can recognize a slight bias. For anyone who may be considering sinking into the unending spiral of recordage though, I would say three things need to be considered: accuracy of the count, consistency of the count, and usefulness of the count.
On accuracy, counting is meaningless unless
everything is counted. I really started to record print information in detail after some initial issues with my first 3D printer, as I wanted to know what I should expect the actual life of the replacement parts to be, and with that, the overall lifetime cost of the printer. It took some effort, but I did work back through all of the print jobs and results to get to a total of 305 printed projects with a margin of error of +/- 2 including the final failed print which retired that printer. Modeling records were an easier task as all of the stl files were on the hard drive, which is where model #300 comes from and this topic.
On consistency, counting is meaningless unless
everything is counted in the same way. I would say I have a system on counting models in particular, but unlike painting or printing, it does not have an easily discernable physical output. The first ship I designed for my Clone Wars project was the Lucrehulk, 7 different component models, counted as 7; which I later rescaled requiring 9 different component models, counted as 7; while the final version of the Lucrehulk painted and posted incorporated 6 additional models more, counted as 4. Meanwhile, last week I finished a set of transports with 4 different silhouettes, of which 3 also had alternate surface detail layouts, which I only counted as 1 model given that all of them were designed at the same time in a single evening. All in all, and my method is honestly not really definable.
On usefulness, counting is meaningless unless
it has meaning. Maybe not the best way of stating that, but looking at my count of 300, what does that really represent? It is not miniatures modeled, since a good number of my miniatures either require multiple pieces modeled and printed separately, or I have split them for greater variety after assembly. It is not miniatures or models printed, since I cancelled several before even exporting them to the slicing software. And it is especially not miniatures painted, as almost everything I paint is in multiples, and to date, only 45 miniatures have been painted of the 218 I printed in that first year. Looking back through the list I can see that year over year I have increased the amount of different miniature results possible out of any single model file, but I doubt anyone else would be able to glean anything out of these records.
Overall, I would say that given the three goals of a meaningful count as a measure of progression, I am at a clear win, loss, and draw, and so solidly neutral on whether my recordkeeping is showing quantifiable progress in the 3D modeling hobby. But then again, keeping up lists and looking back through prior years has been an enjoyable micro-hobby so far. (200)
