I don't usually start like this on a forum I'm new to, but the whole stuff is totally frustrating, and I need to vent off some steam. Nonetheless, these are (imho) legal complains about something that should be an out-of-the-box success instead of a chain of failures and frustrations.

I'm really a beginner with all this digital building stuff, but I've learned that ldraw & co can be frustrating to no end.

I started with the all-in-one-installer to create building instructions. I got a lot of help and could get the basics up and running with MLCad (which I had used before to create the models) and LPub3D within a few days. But then it got frustrating. LPub3D produced really, really bad (I'm tempted to say shitty) output. Even when I set the DPI to 600 (and cleared the caches), the PDF was horribly blocky. I finally fixed that by upgrading the provided LPub3D to a more current version. Why does the current all-in-one-installer provide outdated, buggy software?

But even with the updated version, the rendering with LDGLite still just crashes when rendering the model, and I never got the PovRay rendering to work, even after hunting for obscure lg_colors and lg_materials files. The only change I got was that instead of staying open and presenting obscure error messages, it now opens and closes povray without producing anything. It still seems to produce an error of some sorts, but it immediately closes the window, so I cannot tell what the problem is, and the stdout_povray and stderr_povray files are empty.

Hunting for the LGEO library (e.g. to look for updates or to find thoses mysterious lg_colors and lg_materials) files only leads to dead ends - looks like el lutzo closed up shop with his website. Why are those mysterious files (and whatever else may be needed for rendering with PovRay) not part of the all-in-one-installer? I finally found those two files somewhere on sourceforge in another projects archive, but I have absolutely no idea if those are the right ones.

Those rendering problems lead to the idea to use L3P and the L3PAddon to attempt a rendering of the model with PovRay. Sorry, but that was a total failure. The program wants to know the location of some files (which cannot be found within the installation, ldraw files, or program installation directories) and a strange tool (ledit.exe, according to google this is a electric circuit/layout program!?!) that it cannot run at all without.

Maybe this all works for some people who have installed numerous updates over time, have some old files still hanging around from 20 versions ago that some current programs still need, but no installer provides, or have tweaked their system over time to cover some of the problems I found. But it just does not work on a freshly installed system.

Please, take a fresh machine, install the AIOI, and try those things yourself if you don't believe me.

At least, with the updated LPub3D i get a decent PDF with the LDView renderer.

But the program is still buggy on many aspects. E.g. all measurements are in inches, even if the default unit is cm. A A4 page is 29.7 by 21.0 cm, not 11.6929 by 8.2677 (without any unit given, but it looks like inches) in Configuration->Page Setup.

If there is anything I can do to help debugging this whole mess, ask me, and I'll try my best. If a developer needs my mpd files to fix his software, no problem, just ask, and you will be given. But working with a software suite where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing is utterly frustrating.

Leg bedre,
Christian

My first file, i hope everything is right....

Attached Files

  6656 - Tow Truck.mpd (Size: 2.29 KB / Downloads: 18)

Hello all, I've been working on ROTSTEP support for LDCad 1.6 but I have some questions regarding the spec / general behavior of these meta's.

First what is the base orientation (the one for step 1) to be used while calculating the step's orientation using the REL option.

I've been using this:
   

Second is it correct to assume the "ROTSTEP 0 0 0 ABS" will turn out an upside down image (as LDraw is y negative orientated).

  abs.png (Size: 39.31 KB / Downloads: 161)


And then there is the REL option should it act like so when rotating an already rotated model using the x axis only.
   

Hope these issues are clear so experienced rotstep users can help me refine the feature.

Also if someone could donate an (semi) large model using lots of rotstep metas with an known expected output would be very useful.

[size=large]New LEGO 40165 Minifigure Wedding Favor Set and lego Eiffel tower 21019 is beautifully liteup by liteupblock.[/size]

[size=large][/size]
[size=large][/size]
[size=large][/size]

I released 0.8.11 this week... It contained a bug and no triangle selection was possible. I had to fix it with release 0.8.11b... Sorry :|


Hey!

oh well, finally there is a 3D CSG manipulation feature release with LDPartEditor 0.8.11b...
This one was difficult, but the results are worth it :)


As always, you can download LDPE from this page:
http://nilsschmidt1337.github.io/ldparteditor/

Changelog:
(6 new features and 1 bug fix)

With this release you will be able to...

• ...to manipulate the CSG bodies in the same way as the sub-parts (supports also colour changes, "Select All", "Select all with Same Colours" and "Select None", global and local transformation).
  
• ...to quickly convert selected triangles into quads.
  
• ...to create and use angle protractors for 3 points.
  
• ...to create and use distance meters between 2 points (distances depend on local or global manipulator settings).
  
• ...use a little unit converter on the 3D editor window (located at the snapping area).
  
• ...to benefit from better undo/redo performance.
  

1. If you copied a LPE vertex and then tried to move one of them, both copies were moved ("Move Adjacent Data" is OFF).
   

1. Download the zip-Archive
   
2. Extract the archive content to the location of your choice
   
3. On windows, double-click "run.bat" to start LDPE.
   
4. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "run.sh" to start LDPE.
   

1. On windows, double-click "update.bat" to search for updates.
   
2. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "update.sh".
   

• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.8
  
• OpenGL 2.1 compatible Graphics Card
  
• Operating System (32/64bit): Windows [XP; Vista; 7 or newer], Mac OS X [>=10.6], Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=10.4]
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon II (>2.0Ghz)
  
• RAM: 4GB
  
• Video-Memory: 512 MB
  
• Free Disk Space: 100 MB
  

• Operating System (64bit): Windows 7, Mac OS X [>=10.6], Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=10.4]
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor with 4 cores (or more)
  
• RAM: >4 GB
  
• Video-Memory: >=1 GB
  
• Free Disk Space: 512 MB
  

Hey Guys,

I am German and not very good in English so it might be that I am just too silly to find the link to the download of LDraw...
It would be nice if someone could post a link to the MLCAD needed LDraw base package

Thanks very much!

Marco

I was trying to post my Futuron sets to the Official model part of the forum and I found something annoying.

I did it as usual : one post per set with a mdp file attached.
But instead of making a separate post, the forum was adding my replies to my last created post. I guess it is to avoid multiple posts but I wasn't able to structure the thread as I would have liked.

With everything into one single post, people would not be able to easily comment one particular model, and I cannot add more than 5 attached files (so how can I do if I have more that 5 sets to post).
So, I would like to get back the older forum way of dealing with this : no concatenation of posts if the same person is posting in a short amount of time.

I hope you see what I meant.

Topic for the Space / Futuron theme.

I posted first in the topic here:  'LDD Is Dead?' and for the sake of ease on my part I'll just copy-paste what I wrote:

Quote:Hi, I'm a long-time user of LDD, love it to bits.  I love the simple UI, easy to use, nice layout of the pieces in an easy-to-search interface, and a pretty building interface.
I tried using LDraw once before but found the information and choices to be quite over-whelming.  A quick google for 'LDraw' came up with a parts list and a whole bunch of different editors and it was too much, so I stayed with LDD.
Now LDD is semi-dead, I'm trying to learn LDraw again.

I'm interested in learning about LDraw and want to know what the closest editor to LDD would be.
I've tried opening MLCad and was physically ill upon seeing the interface.  I've just now downloaded MLCad and SR-3D Builder and would like to know where the resources for learning how to use these would be.

As someone who uses advanced 3D applications on a day-to-day basis (I work in the games industry and use 3DS-Max and Maya), I'm not afraid of a complicated UI, but the information available to me for learning these LDraw applications is disparate and fragmented.
LDD was so easy to learn, all the info was right there in an easy-to-find options menu, and it was so simple to just get started and make some models, but with these LDraw applications I find myself completely lost.

I'm sure this has been asked before but... Is there a recommended place to get LPub4 for OSX? The "Working with LPub" instructions look promising, but the link for LPub4 sends you to a "You don't have permission" message.

I'm tempted to try the dmg from 2010 on thinkbricks.net, but that says it's for 10.6 and my newest Mac is only 10.5, so I'm looking for other options.  If none exist I'll try it though.  Bricksmith says it's for 10.6 and so far it works ok on 10.5.