Step 1: Building the Domes

I have yet to get over my bad habit of not stopping to take screenshots. So I apologize for not having more Making Of shots. I did remember to stop for pictures on day two as I hit a miletone.

As I mentioned before I tried a few different shapes while brainstorming about this project. 

It was a little daunting at first, especially since this was the first MC build in a year, never mind the scope!

Since I was going for the water tower look I was pretty firm on a bulb tapering down to a vertical shaft as the general shape. This first shot is one of my early tests. At this point I was still judging the dimensions I wanted. This was also when I started contemplating water.

To Add water I decided on an inner dome to house the town and an outer dome around that to hold water around the town. Now in order to get a decent sized space for the town, I of course had to Jack up the dimensions a bunch. Which is good 'cause I Love Big Builds!

After a few more tries I settled on size I liked for the outer dome. After that I shrunk the dimensions a bit for the inner dome. The Final dimensions are: 200 Blocks across and 80 high for the outer dome and 160 across  and 60 high for the inner dome, The full structure is 200 Blocks high. Once I had some basic framework added to the dome I cut the tops off both so I could have the town stick out the top. This also gives the town a nice surrounding lake at the top between the two domes.

Thanks to World Edit, the domes were nice and easy to make. Tapering down the bottom however, was a pain in the ass. I first figured out the shaft dimensions (40 across for the outer and 20 across for the inner) and then tapered down the bottom of the domes to meet their respective shafts. 

Once I had the tapering done, I started on some stairs. After all, people gotta get up to that town after all eh. Since I like having headroom when I walk around inside, I decided to space my floors at 10 block intervals. 

that gave me 9 blocks between floors to work with. I also followed this spacing on the framing. 

After a few attempts, I found a design that fit and gave room to fly up the middle. Once I had it done I finished off with 20 floors total. I split it up by setting 0 in the middle and counting up into the dome from there, Then down into the shaft from there. This gave me Floors 0 to 7 for the Dome and -12 to -1 for the shaft.