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LDraw terminology for part anatomy |
Posted by: tom alphin - 2021-09-12, 22:26 - Forum: General LDraw.org Discussion
- Replies (6)
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Hi,
Some of you may know me from my book The LEGO Architect or my brickarchtiect.com website. I'm always looking for ways to simplify the more confusing aspects of our hobby, including my work on the LEGO Brick Labels project.
In order to create the labels, I've needed to craft extremely short descriptions for each part which complement the part image. (Because the name is always accompanied by the image, I can take some liberties to make the names shorter.)
One of the biggest challenges I've encountered is a semantic one. Different websites (including LEGO.com) use different names for each part, and even for the 'anatomical' elements within a part. I am in the process of learnign all the names used within the hobby for these connections and anatomy - in the hopes that I can distill the most commonly used terms.
![[Image: 2020-10-03%20-%20LEGO%20Storage%20Guide%...irtual.jpg]](https://brickarchitect.com/files/2020-10-03%20-%20LEGO%20Storage%20Guide%20(for%20AFOLs)%20-%20BrickCon%20Virtual.jpg)
Slide showing most of the common connection types in contemporary LEGO parts.
There are several aspects of LEGO part anatomy that I'm curious to hear how they are named within the internals of the LDraw project.
For example:
- On the underside of a 1x2 brick, there is a rod between the studs to create a gap the right size for a stud to attach. Is this called a "bar" since it is 2 units wide (in the measurement system used above), or do you have a different term?
- Hollow Stud - Is there a better term for these hollow studs which accept a bar element?
- Bar/Clip/Handle - A "handle" has the same diameter as a bar element. Is there another term for these used within LDraw project?
- Mini Bar - I have also seen "prong" as a term for this, such as in the context of relatively new part 68211
- Click Hinge - I have also heard "indexed hinge" and other terms - is there a common name here?
- Ball - This is also sometimes described as a constraction hinge - has that term been outmoded by now?
- Mini Pin - Is that the closest thing we have to a universal name for this non-Technic pin connection?
If there is already a LDraw Part Naming Styleguide, please let me know. If not, maybe this project can help create one?
Sincerely,
---tom
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Rubber band templates question |
Posted by: N. W. Perry - 2021-09-10, 15:40 - Forum: LDraw Editors and Viewers
- Replies (4)
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For band/belt templates in LDCad, the radius of a point is measured to the center of the path. I thought it would be handy to offset the path skin so that its inner edge follow the radius (i.e., the radius of the point is the same as the part it goes around).
I thought adjusting the alignment parameter was the way to do this, but it didn't work. It just breaks the path into segments with wide gaps (and they aren't noticeably offset from center).
Is there a simple way to adjust the template to do this? Or would I have to create a donor part with the origin shifted (and would that even work)?
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Another possible use for !FLOAT meta |
Posted by: N. W. Perry - 2021-09-06, 2:22 - Forum: LDraw Editors and Viewers
- Replies (2)
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(For those not familiar, !FLOAT is my proposed, imaginary meta command that temporarily overrides the displayed position and other parameters of a part in an LDraw editor or BI maker. It is intended to replace older concepts like buffer exchange, which is confusing and requires extra copies of parts to be added to a model.)
When building a model with lots of moving sections, like a Technic model, you probably build those sections as submodels or groups at orthogonal (90-degree) angles. Then when it's time to pose the model, you apply rotations to those groups or submodels.
But what if you want to change the pose? Or just revert a section back to its unrotated state for some reason? At least with LDCad, you can't always just rotate the parts the same number of degrees in the opposite direction, because you'll get rounding errors in the matrix.
If it's a submodel, of course you can always just reset the orientation. But then what if the unrotated state is non-orthogonal, like a piston rod or an angled link in the steering column?
With !FLOAT, the idea is that you supply a temporary position/orientation in the meta command, which is what will be displayed until the command is canceled. The type 1 line for the part or submodel would always contain the final or "fixed" position, which is typically what will be displayed in the last step of the model (so you can "float" a part in the building instructions, e.g.).
But if you supply a float position and just never cancel it, then it could actually be used as the position displayed in the finished model. The matrix in the type 1 line would then represent the default or unrotated position of the part, which could be an identity matrix, another orthogonal position, or a rotation of its own. You could then pose the model simply by adjusting the float position, without changing the default position and thus compounding rounding errors (or simply forgetting what that position is).
The major drawback to this usage is that the fallback display (for any software that doesn't recognize !FLOAT) would be with everything in its unrotated state, rather than nicely posed. But I suppose a good editor could get around this by having an option to save a copy of the model with the float positions inlined. And in a way, the pose of a model is more a property of its display than of its construction. The actual parts of a model are immutable and so it makes sense for them to be hard-coded, but things like which way the steering wheel is turned are changeable, and so there's some logic to having that information stored at a meta level, in a way that's perhaps more interactive and portable.
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