Back in 1973 when I was 12, together with my younger cousin I made a 6 minutes Lego film in Super 8, half of it using stop motion animation. Inspired by the popular Apollo program, we built a rocket with several stages and room for the LM, a launch vehicle, an aircraft carrier and many busses, cars and houses. Minifigs were not invented yet, so we used small 1x1 brick men.

The film was a gift to our grandparents' golden wedding anniversary.
After the party our grandparents took the film and us to Billund, where we showed it to Godtfred Kirk Christiansen. He liked it and had a copy made. We, in turn, got a Lego factory tour and got some big sets to take home ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW583kCiOWo
/Lars

In the last few days i've been toying with an idea for an Lpub like program to generate and paginate instructions.
The problem with these kind of programs is that all code to layout stuff is tedious and bug prone (all calculations on margin and alignement and relative positioning and stuff).
The idea is to use something that already does this job and i thought, why not HTML+CSS?
We can put all rendering images into div boxes, giving each box his css class like "assembly", "part list", "step num" etc, and building the appropriate CSS to handle positioning. CSS has plenty of options for this. CSS could be used also for font size, face and placement. One could customize his own CSSs and reuse them (instead of reentering his setup for each file as in LPub).
The generated html+css+images could be used by itself, or better with an integrated renderer we could generate png images just like LPub. It could also be postprocessed with any WYSIWYG html editor.
CSS has some advanced rules to control pagination.
Rendering of images could of course be handed off to LDView or another renderer just like LPub does.

What do you think ?

Hello,

After working on an instruction for a few days I came across some issues that bugged me quite a lot and the workarounds with the existing tools are either tideous or I simply did not know them, in this case I gladly take some advice from you :-)

For the issues where I did not see any obvious workaround I would have some suggestions concerning mainly MLCAD, LSYNTH and LPUB. I would like to get your opinions.

Those are the concerns:
1.) "One Part Movements" e.g. sliding a bush on an axle
2.) Moving parts later during construction
3.) Re-Routing of Cables during construction

And here are the ideas:
ad 1.) "One Part Movements"
Sometimes in the instructions you want to show a part being moved or added, so you put it a bit away from the model and add an arrow.
BUFFER exchange does to job pretty well and straight forward. However, it clutters the MLCAD file quite a lot. Not so much in the code, but visually. So it gets difficult to identify parts and e.g. if you want to move them later on, you need to move the buffered parts as well.

The file looks like this:
[sub]1 4 124 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 32054.dat
0 BUFEXCHG A STORE
1 0 -4 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 4519.dat
0 MLCAD ARROW 0 72.001 0 0 -1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 -1 15 6 18 50 1 30 1 2 1 1
0 MLCAD SKIP_BEGIN
3 1 90.001 0 0 71.001 -7.5 0 72.6677 0 0
3 1 90.001 0 0 71.001 7.5 0 72.6677 0 0
3 1 72.6677 0 0 72.001 -3 0 72.001 3 0
4 1 72.001 -3 0 22.001 -3 0 22.001 3 0 72.001 3 0
0 MLCAD SKIP_END
0 STEP
1 0 84 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 4519.dat[/sub]

And displays in MLCAD as:


To avoid this a META command either directly within MLCAD or in LPUB could be used that applies to the part following the command. e.g.:

[sub]0 OFFSET PART [Matrix where to show the part/or a delta position]
1 0 84 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 4519.dat[/sub]

MLCAD would the show only the part in its final position

-> The command could be realized in e.g. LPUB only (make it LPUB OFFSET)
-> Additionally an arrow could be added as it is currently done in MLCAD ARROW

ad 2.) Moving parts later during construction
Sometimes a part is added during construction that will be used in a later step to fasten an additional part, e.g. pushing in the long pin with bush during technic construction or movin an axle.

The only way how to realize this is putting a lot of parts into the buffer exchange. This disadvantage here is that multiple STEPS within the BUFFER exchange commands make LPUB not displaying the amount of bricks correctly. (MLCAD does show a correct inventory) .
Also a disadvatage of this method is not so much cluttering the view, but when parts are moved, you need to take care of many parts within the buffer.

A better way to handle would be to put only this one or more parts into a buffer and retreive them, respectively replace them later. Realization would require an extension to the BUFFER meta command:
e.g. define the parts that need to be moved between a START/STOP bracket and later remove them with a REMOVE command and place the same part in the final position.

[sub]0 BUFEXCHG A START
1 4 124 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 32054.dat -> Part in pulled out position
0 BUFEXCHG A END
0 BUFEXCHG A STORE

....

0 BUFEXCHG A REMOVE
1 4 124 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 32054.dat -> Part in final Position[/sub]

ad 3.) Re-Routing of Cables during construction
This concerns instructions where a cable needs to be included (as later parts would block the routing at the time the destination is inserted) and needs to be re.routed once or several times during constructions.
Theoretically this could already be addressed with the proposal of the second point. But to make instructions easier to do and better to read some improvements can be done like:

- entering a "name" for the cable (or LSynth element) to make identification for re-routing easier.
- adding a color identifier to the cable to show the destination when multiple cables are used.

Possibly two meta commands in LSynth could help here e.g. NAME and LABEL

[sub]0 SYNTH BEGIN ELECTRIC_POWER_FUNCTIONS_CABLE 16
0 SYNTH NAME CABLE-1
0 SYNTH LABEL START/STOP SQUARE/CIRCLE/DIAMOND/TRIANGLE UP/DOWN Size Color
0 SYNTH SHOW
...
0 SYNTH SYNTHESIZED BEGIN
...
0 SYNTH SYNTHESIZED END
0 SYNTH END[/sub]

The LABEL command would add a color identifier to the cable hovering above the cable before the plugs.

The NAME command could identify a cable and when preparing instructions e.g. LPUB can take care to use now the next instance of e.g. CABLE-01


So, that was quite a lot, may be too much, but I would be happy to hear your opinions.

Thansk for reading
Gerald

I'm using OpenGL for LDForge's renderer and I'm about stumped on to decide when to draw conditional lines. Actually rendering the part is no problem but how does a GL renderer take the control points into account?

For compiling objects glGenLists/glNewList/... is used and glCallList for drawing them. While it's not the most optimized approach, it works for something as simple as a single part.. at least for the simple ones. I've been considering using VBOs though.

Hi there,

I'm currently trying to make a set of instructions for some Lego models I have created in MLCad. I would like to format them so that parts that were added in a previous step are differentiated from the new parts (preferably by making the older parts lighter while the newer ones are in full colour). Is there a way to do this in LPub or MLCad, or is there a better software solution to fit my needs?

Thanks for your time!

Hello, there are a couple of part that are not avaiable:

Part 75937 looks very similar to 30033, it could be aliased. It seems they differ in the width of the arms. It looks like the missing part is the new version of the avaiable one.

Part 92220 looks new to me, but it's an interesting part, it's used in many 2012/2013 sets.

many thanks

Hi! I'm new here, so I hope it's not too rude of me to request a part. I need the powdered wig from CMF Series 10's Revolutionary Soldier for a set of instructions I'm working on - could anyone help? Thanks!

-G

Hi all,

I've been working on and off on the next LDCad version, when released I also want to make some video tutorials so I started playing with some screen cap software.

A test clip is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWN9Vco1GBo

This one also demonstrates the new nested editing feature. (it's not completely done yet, comments are welcome )

My main question with this clip is are there particular things people would like to see in an example/tutorial video ?

Morning,
Has anyone has an idea about the part name of the small back bucket of the Technic Mini Backhoe Loader (set 42004).
I checked the official and unofficial list but coulden't find the part. This is strange as I could locate part 30552.dat which is the connecting click-hinge used with the bucket . thanks for your help. mmarc

Is it avaiable? I can't find it in the part tracker

http://www.brickset.com/parts/search/?query=11211