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

Hi all,

The ability to post new messages was broken for the last few days due to a server configuration issue. This issue has been resolved and normal posting should now be possible. Please let us know if there are any issues.

Orion

P.S. The solution to this specific issue was less than ideal so a workaround is in investigation. If the problem recurs, give it some time as this may be us testing possible solutions.

I've used this old-school tire in a few models that I've modeled in LDraw. For now I'm using 6581 (Tire 20 x 30 Balloon Medium) as a substitute, which has a very similar shape, just with the inside hollowed out.

I'm wondering if someone could throw together the 2857 solid balloon tire, maybe starting from the 6581 tire model.

Guys,

as the end of the year closes in you're might interested in some figures. Below you'll find the top ten of people who have a lot to say in this forum:

Name - Number of posts since start

Philippe Hurbain - 1253
Tim Gould - 1109
Orion Pobursky - 1040
Michael Heidemann - 1036
Roland Melkert - 1003
Willy Tschager - 936
Steffen - 872
Travis Cobbs - 789
Chris Dee - 640
Michael Horvath - 402

w.

PS. From a personel point of view I'd like to ask Roland to keep quiet for a while - otherwise he'll get totally out of reach.

Guys,

the PT currently has some HOLD parts which should be addressed instead of sitting on the PT for the rest of their days. Just one example:

http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...s/879h.dat

Please discuss.

w.