Hello, I have a software friend who would like to process pairs of LDraw files and determine how they may interact. This is clearly part of the LDraw program, as the user interface allows users to do this; and so I am wondering whether that software is open source or a more experienced administrator could help us understand how to read and interpret the code. Would love any and all help in this direction. We are very excited.
I was checking the Mursten-era parts (the u80xx series) to see if they needed to be corrected with non-logo studs, and I was glad to see that Magnus has already submitted fixes for most of these. But after reviewing the research, I realized that this fix isn't necessary in some cases—specifically, the non-slotted bricks (u80xxa variants).
tl;dr—
Basically what I'm asking is this; read on below the break for more background.
The Mursten bricks in the official library have stud logos. Real-life slotted bricks generally did not have stud logos, but non-slotted bricks always did. Which library parts, if any, should be fixed to have non-logo studs?
For parts that existed both with and without stud logos (e.g., 1x2 slotted bricks), which variant should the official part reflect? Or, should a new version be submitted so that both are represented?
Now, back to our story…
It appears that stud logos were first added to the molds at the same time that TLG switched over to studded windows and doors—and thus bricks that no longer needed slots. Prior to this time, all the different available bricks had at least one slot, which means that all bricks without stud logos (with a few random exceptions* that probably aren't worth modeling) would have had at least one slot.
So basically you have two distinct periods for these early bricks:
Slotted bricks (Automatic Binding Bricks and early LEGO Mursten, c. 1949–1955). These had no stud logos (and their undersides had either no logo, or one of two general logo styles—plain or "dogbone"—but we don't model these underside details anyway).
Non-slotted "hollow-bottom" bricks (late LEGO Mursten and early System, c. 1956–1957. These had stud logos (and their undersides typically had no logo, but some molds also had a plain style underside logo).
After that, of course, you had the modern tube/post-bottom bricks starting from 1958.
There is one snag, though. There was limited production** of some bricks that had both slots and stud logos (and in some cases also underside logos!). In general, I think it's correct to model the slotted bricks without stud logos, but it's worth being aware that there are some real-life cases where examples of either can be found.
So, I've put together a summary of the Mursten-era bricks that are in the library and what I think their status should be. I'm starting with standard bricks; I need to dig a little further into beams and baseplates. Open to ideas and suggestions, of course! I. Standard bricks A. Non-slotted, hollow-bottom with stud logos (no fix needed):
Parts listed in bold are variants that have also been found with stud logos, mostly in limited cases as discussed above. The exceptions are u8001b and u8001c, which had a fairly mainstream production run—these two in particular might be worth having separate models for (or possibly leaving unchanged).
* The random exceptions are things like Swedish PRIMA bricks that had their own special molds. In fact, the only example I can point to off hand is the 2x8 beam, which was produced in Sweden without slots from a non-logo mold. (Ironically, this part would be u8005a, which is not yet in the library.)
** This mainly seems to be due to certain markets like Norway, which still sold slotted bricks after the changeover happened elsewhere, because they were still using these older molds after Denmark was done with them.
So I wrote this script in lua that takes all the parts in a ldr and moves them to their "rounded" location (I have a massive studio 2.0 file that I have been working on for a while, and a bunch of stuff is slightly out of place in completely different directions)
I tried the script, and it works perfectly, but I was wondering if there was a way to make it so that the individual parts of each submodel could also be targeted and align to the world grid.
btw i used another script by N W Perry as a starting point
I just updated the MLCad.ini file accordingly to the latest LDraw.org parts update 2023-06. The .ini file defines (among other things) the parts available in MLCad's, LEOCad's and Bricksmith's minifigure generator.
I've created a small webapp that generates LEGO houses, 1980s style!
It's a bit like one of those AI image generators, except it uses traditional Procedural Generation techniques, not AI. As well as displaying the model you can zoom, spin around etc, and you can download the LDraw source to edit the house in your favourite tool.
I should say that it's probably fairly useless at this point and it does have a few issues:
There are quite a lot of cases where it overlaps bricks, especially on a roof
Bricks on a roof are sometimes not interleaved
Many of the houses it generates are a bit boring! But keep clicking and you'll probably find something a bit funky!
This is only the first public version, but I'll be adding features and fixing bugs and I'll keep this thread updated with notable changes.
I guess you have experienced by yourself that the LDraw Primitives Reference is pretty outdate by now and should be fixed. I see this as a collaborative effort, where all authors should help in an update. No time constraints though - it has been like this for several years now and a month or two or three more doesn't change a thing.
The question is how do we tackle this so that the work isn't loaded on the shoulders of one person only.
* Wiki
* A Google Doc
* Forums
* Any other suggestion
