Hello all,

I'm working on the 6 pattern torso (front & back) of Castle 2013-2014 serie. The think is, the 973p40 - 4z : Castle range of seems to be soon full (actually some torso of Castle Fantasy Era are missing too).
What range can I use ? It would be nice if the six new 973p4_ parts had a continuous range of part number 

I wonder if the LDraw system could shift the pattern rule from BBBBBpCC to BBBBBpCCC (like 973p41 becomes 973p401 etc..) in order to allow more parts for each range (36 parts max to 99+ if using letters)
Just asking, I don't intend to do a revolution as I'm new in LDraw ! 

Thanks for your feedback.
Yann

Could someone work on part 35394 - Dish 4 x 4 Inverted (Radar) with Open Stud?


Thanks!

Is anybody already working on some Speed Champions sets? Or even knows where they possibly could be downloaded. 

I'm especial interested in the 1985 Audi Sport quattro S1 #76897

As far as I could see they are not jet in the OMR available and I have not found them somewhere else for download either.

If there is not already someone working on them, I might give it a try my self. Are there any things to know (guidelines, recommendations) before I start?

Technic 2020 models thread.

I made a simple mechanism demonstrating some Technic capabilities.  I'd like to use it in a workshop at a Bricks By The Bay convention next summer.

Animations make good advertisements for showing people what Technic can do.  But I'm having a problem combining three movements into a single movement.   It's awkward to describe with just words, so I made a YouTube video showing the problem.

The LDraw file I will use for building instructions is here.

The LDraw file I used for the animation is here.  It organizes sub-models by their connectivity, not by how you would assembly the MOC.

The three Lua code files are here, here, and here.

Any help is appreciated.

Walt

75181 - Y-Wing Starfighter
   
OMR Compliant
Missing: Stickers, Patterned parts
Notes: 18897.dat does not position correctly in Studio, had to hack a workaround.

Attached Files

  75181 - Y-Wing Starfighter.mpd (Size: 138.1 KB / Downloads: 17)

...done with Leg-o-letters

I'm curious how different people make use of submodels, and, for those editors that support them, groups? I've read about a few different methods, all of which seem valid; is there one that's preferred, or considered more "correct" or standard?

One method I've heard is that submodels should be used similar to subparts—that is, for assemblies within models that are used frequently, or have to be repeatable for some reason, in order to reduce file size. This makes sense, although one difference I can think of is that subparts are likely to be used in more than one part, but I don't know how often you'd find a submodel being used in more than one different model.

Another recommendation I've seen is that submodels should correspond to sub-assemblies that appear in building instructions, especially if they have their own building steps shown in a callout. And yet another is that submodels are useful for keeping assemblies together that might need to be hinged, rotated, or otherwise positioned as a group—in animation, for example, or just for posing the model.

And finally, I've seen a few models of official sets where the use of submodels seems to make no sense at all; maybe those builders are using a system I just don't understand yet!

As for myself, I like to build official sets, so I use submodels to correspond to sub-assemblies shown in the instructions, especially if they are used more than once, or have more than 3 building steps of their own. In Studio I used to also use them for groups of parts that need to move as a separate unit, but since switching over to LDCad, I use the Grouping feature for that. Any collection of parts that needs to be positionable as a group, but separately from the overall model, I assign to a Group in LDCad, and I use the different grouping layers for nesting these assemblies within each other, from smallest to largest. (For example, a tire/hub and its axle might be in Layer 1, then that group plus the steering arm that rotates with it would be Layer 2, and if that whole assembly also moves up and down in a suspension, it's Layer 3, etc. I figure this may come in handy when and if I ever figure out animation, or if kinematics become a reality some day…) And since groups in LDCad can be spread across different subfiles, I use the submodels only for different stages of the building process itself.

What are other builders' experiences?

Maybe it's just me, but I find PT rather sluggish recently...

Hey,

I have wonderful news for you if you are a developer and want to create your own version of LDPartEditor (LDPE).
It is now very easy to build and run LDPE.

The project on Github uses now the brand new Github Actions feature for build automation.
The build pipeline creates artifacts for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and is triggered on push.

Here is an example run with build artifacts for every platform:
https://github.com/nilsschmidt1337/ldpar.../368914646

You can fork the repository on Github, modify the code, push the changes to your repository and the build pipeline will create a custom LDPE version just for you.

It is also possible to build LDPE on your own Linux machine. It requires a JDK 8 and Apache Ant 1.7 or later.
Just clone the forked repository and open a terminal to run