Following the discussion at
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...s/6117.dat
on the PT, I'd like to suggest a new META for specifying a "good" origin of a file.

0 !ORIGIN x y z m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 m8 m9

It is just the keywords "0 !ORIGIN", followed by the usual translation and matrix data.
When not present, a default of

0 !ORIGIN 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

is assumed.

Adding this will allow us to adjust the "suggested" origin of parts even after they have become official,
WITHOUT breaking models that users have built with it.

Software aware of this new syntax can put its rotation center etc. to that origin when the user touches the part.

I'd like a MediaWiki savvy volunteer to clean up and streamline the wiki

To continue our earlier discussion about modernizing the spec, there seems to be 2 camps. This poll is designed to see where developer sentiments lie.

Hi LDraw community,

I’m not happy about the material and edge color specification from the LDraws Colour Definition, I have trouble to understand what is meant, I will try to explain my reasons in 2 steps.


Edge Color:
The edge color specify (how the word says) the color from the rendered lines between 2 points, and the color is (in most cases) darker then the maincolor.
But that's not correct, at first such lines called "edges" does not exist in the real world, that what we see as a dark line between 2 parts are shadows, please take a look on the following picture.

farm9.staticflickr.com/8337/8192336942_2d08eddbfb_b.jpg
(25 Dec 2014 at 23:46)

If we take a look on a single part, we see that the edges are brighter and not darker then the maincolor.
To show this you can watch the following pictures (or you go to your bricks and spectate them self, of curse).

davidglennsimmons.com/archive/images/Jack Stone car chassis.jpg
(25 Dec 2014 at 23:56)
lego.brickinstructions.com/05000/5653/003.jpg
(25 Dec 2014 at 23:57)

In both cases it will be wrong...

• First case we have edge-colors which are darker then the maincolor, so it fits if we have things like brickwalls but not if we have a single brick.
  
• Second case we have edge-colors which are brighter then the maincolor, so it fits if we have a single brick but not if we have a brickwall.
  

If any site design/graphic artists are out there, I'd like some ideas for a theme facelift for the forums. No coding experience is necessary, just a mock up of how things should look. However if you have the know how then code is good too.

Can someone with better icon making skill than me make icons for the following:

Website Admin
Parts Author
Parts Author/Reviewer
Parts Library Admin
Steering Committee Member
Standards Committee Member
LDraw.org Member
JJMA awardee

If you can think of any other icons/badges appropriate for the forums make those too. Not sure how big we should make them 16x16? 32x32?

The 2014-02 LDraw Parts Update has been now been released. This update includes 1005 new files in the core library, including 558 new parts and 83 new primitives.

The last few months have been an incredibly productive period as can be seen by the steepness of the history chart. Thanks are once again due to all the part authors who created or corrected parts for this release. The reviewers also play an important role in keeping files moving through the tracker and deserve just as much credit. This package probably ought be named the 'Friends Figures Update', as many are included.

You can preview the new parts in 2014-02 and download the update from the Latest Parts page.

There are still quite a few files awaiting admin review, and whilst I could have worked on pushing those through, I thought it best to stop to give me time to produce this seasonal gift for the LDraw community.

Once again, no new "Physical colour" parts are included in this update as we still intend to move these to a separate section of the LDraw file structure, to more closely fit with the "DesignID" vs. "ItemID" concept. A number of such parts on the Parts Tracker are awaiting admin review, but will not be released until this concept has been implemented. I am conscious that support for texture maps needs to be added to the Parts Tracker and also have that on my to-do list.

Despite this being a very large update, it has only just kept pace with the number of new files submitted since Parts Update 2014-01 was released in June 2014. Although there is clearly interest in working on new parts, I'd like to repeat my appeal for authors to try and reduce the backlog of held or insufficiently reviewed parts.

The recent downtime was cause by our forum software conflicting with out webhosts Apache security settings. I've implemented what I consider to be a non-ideal workaround. This issue and the fact that current software is wonky under PHP 5.4+ may force my hand into upgrading the forum software. This unfortunately will mean that the hybrid thread view will go away. Thankfully I did a lot a lot of legwork to convert the for before I decided to abandon the project to based on your feedback about liking the hybrid view a lot. Whether we convert or not is really going to depend on how deeply rooted this conflict is to the core of the form software. Stay tuned for more.

Hi,

has anyone a .ldr or .dat file which assembles a ruler in LDUs. Say something to measure parts in an editor?

w.

The existing reinforcements between the bottom tubes of part 3943b are made with the "BOX" primitive. That did its job, but on a closer look you see gaps.

I tried to preplace them with "RECT" primitives and a few quads for the bottom that emulate a HiRes curve. Looked nice, could do the job as well.

Now MagFors showed me a nice primitve "BOXJCYLr". The R available is only 4 at the moment. For the large tubes the part needs to be scaled up. Scaling it up by 2 on the width and 2 by the depth did the job in the editor, but when LDRAW did a primitive substition and used HiRes, the primitve intersected too deep into the tube, loosing the edge line.
When optimizing the primitive for HiRes (Scaling only 1.25) the part looks very good in HiRes, but LoRes give now a very small gap...

See the Pics: (YELLOW: Scaled by 2, RED: scaled by 1.25)
Top view:



And a bit tilted:



I think I will go forward with the hiRes optimized version of the part.

Gerald