David A . Kimble David Austin Kimble , generally credited as David A . Kimble or simply David Kimble , was a technical illustrator who has served on as production illustrator , employed at Astra Image Corporation . Already a famed contemporary automotive technical illustrator , he was responsible for the creation of the exterior orthographic ship ' s operations graphics of the refit - as featured on various computer consoles on the " Enterprise " bridge , seen in that movie and the two subsequent . Kimble followed up on his work for the movie with the creation of the " " , and their derivative cutaway drawing of the refit - from . For his work on the movie , Kimble has not been officially credited . At the time ASTRA colleague , Production Illustrator Andrew Probert , clarified , " " David Kimble helped us out in preparing working drawings for all the spacecraft that were , in fact , later published by Simon & Schuster as the official " Star Trek " blueprints . David was brought into the project by Robert Abel because he is a cutaway artist ; his specialty is doing see - through views of anything from race cars to sailboats . Later on , I assisted him in a technical capacity on a new poster that he had published . It was a beautiful cutaway view of the " Enterprise " , showing where all the sets " allegedly " belong . " " ( " " , p . 157 ) Decades later , his memory a little dimmed , Probert elaborated in more detail on the latter , " I really don ' t know how David got brought into it . I think Richard Taylor contacted him . David Kimble is an artist who is known worldwide for his accuracy in doing machinery cutaway drawings . He has done ocean liners , spacecraft , oil rigs , and automobiles , which are very popular with racing fans . So he was brought in to do the cutaway of the " Enterprise " . That was the big carrot that was dangled in front of David , because he was drooling over putting those decks and other spaces together . Part of the package was that he also draw the blueprints , the six - sided views of all the ships . David just knocked himself out doing the blueprints , and those are all totally accurate to my designer ' s mind , and to the models , or they ' re close enough to the models to work , but they ' re totally satisfactory to me as the designer . The cutaway was a lot of fun . It took him a long time to do that . He did all the decks , we planned out the spaces together , and if you look in the botanical garden section , he painted my wife and me walking on one of the paths . We ' re just little dots of color , but I know it , she knows it , and David knows that those dots are us . " The cut - away drawing was originally a black and white illustration that was published in various magazines in 1979 . Kimble revisited that drawing and upgraded it to a full color cutaway poster , published by " Mind ' s Eye Press " in 1980 , and the first officially licensed one of its kind , though , like its successors , it is not considered canon . The original drawing ended up in the possession of Rick Sternbach measuring fifteen inches in length by eight inches wide , who ultimately sold it on 8 August 2010 as Lot 309 in Propworx ' " The official " Star Trek " Prop and Costume Auction " , estimated at US $ 100 - $ 200 and selling for US $ 180 . Kimble ' s stint at Paramount Pictures apparently turned out to be a bit of a disillusionment , as was recalled by admirer Chris Cushman , when he sounded out Kimble for a possible co - production for a cutaway poster , " " I asked him what he thought of the Enterprise illustration I had started and he loved it , I pushed the conversation into the direction of a possible collaboration figuring he had the contacts at Paramount . He looked less than happy when I mentioned that , explaining that he had not profited from the first poster very well and preferred not to work with them again . " " Cushman ' s company , Sci - Pub Tech , went on to publish a series of " Star Trek " starship cut - away posters , very much reminiscent of the one Kimble had done . Career outside " Star Trek " . Kimble , hailing from Los Angeles County , California , and a graduate from the Academy of Technical Arts , Gardena , California , is an accomplished illustrator and best known for his cutaway drawings of cars . His expertise is a highly sought after commodity by the automotive industry , like General Motors and publications in the field , such as " Sports Car Graphic " and " Road & Track " . Repeated requests for art from the latter , led Kimble to found his own business company , David Kimble Illustration , in 1976 . Many , in fact , consider him the " king of the cutaway technical drawing " . A Google image search under his name will yield many fine examples of why his work is so well respected . He considers himself to be " very eccentric and very aberrant " , with a collection of well over a thousand movies and working as much as seventeen hours a day on a regular basis . David Kimble is married with one son , and was living in Marfa , Texas as of 2000 .