This was a tight fit and, in retrospect, I might have positioned it a little differently because this wall gets doubled by the outside wall which leaves this door recessed vis-à-vis the outer wall. Its not a big deal just something to add to my lessons learned when doing future builds.
Now construction can commence in earnest!
The first assembly is the Lattice with Beam, Support Struts, Top Side Panels and Roof Guides for the rear part of the building.
Next up come the first aid stations. Volgren Troller has very generously supplied a full First Aid Station and sink for each vehicle bay. The Rough Guide was a little fuzzy here. It details about half of building the most complicated side without mentioning the small positional markings on the struts or how the First Aid stations are constructed... and do the same for the other side... which I mistook for a comment about installing the other side wall when it really specifically was referring to the First Aid Stations. The kit is very well designed so once I started dry fits it became immediately obvious how things were meant to go.
The inner framework, complete with matching First Aid Stations and side catwalks. The catwalks are not only great places for miniatures to lurk but help a lot with giving the tool boxes and other etched features an illusion of depth.
Now comes the Interior Rear Wall. Once this wall is in position the whole framework can be slotted into the floor.
Floor installed. For as many slots as the floor part has this went together very easily. The precision of the laser cutting is really great. The Rough Guide helpfully mentions that the floor should be worked starting from the rear wall. The front wall is not yet on and the side walls are still a bit flexible at this point making them a lot easier to deal with in the fitting.
Time for the Front Wall. This slots into the floor and relies on the flexibility of the Top Side Panels to be lifted enough to get the wall into position.
Remember those resin vent panels? Add them in here as they get painted. The printed side is reversed to show the etched detail on the other side of the wall panel and the slightly larger resin side allows for the whole thing to be glued in flush.
Second picture shows the painted MDF side.
Before attempting to slot things together I carefully trim one side of the coating off the tiny tabs. This coating helps give these kits a smooth finish but it often seems to bunch up when going into slots and the excess has to be cut away afterwards. Cutting off just one side retains the strengthening effect of the coating while reducing the bunching and occurrence of too tight fits to practically zero.
"The Rough Guide to building habitat 5" on the Antenocitis Workshop site notes that this kit is a little complicated and should be approached in a certain way. Believe it!
True to its name the guide is a little quirky. As is the usual case with these kits all of the components of the model have very specific names but the parts are not labeled so have to be carefully selected and test fitting is essential. Some of the parts have names that imply the existence of other parts for example "Beam 1" seems to be the only part named "Beam" in the kit so I spent some extra time trying to located the other "Beams" to make sure the one I had selected was actually "Beam 1"
Next comes the Exterior Rear Wall which completes the main structure. There ae still a lot of things remaining to do but this was the tricky bit.
First picture shows the resin side.
These slide in very easily and add some extra detail.
Back to the desk to work on the ramps, doors, ladders, interior details etc...