A common issue with sharing LDraw models seems to be unofficial parts usage. To recap the problem, since unofficial parts are subject to changes in origin, orientation, filename, etc., models built with unofficial parts may appear incorrectly or incomplete to users with different (or no) versions of that part. The recommended solution (see recentexamples) is to include needed unofficial parts as MPD submodels, so the version used will always be available to others viewing the file. This is a good solution, but I don't think it is an obvious solution to the larger community of casual users. Plus, if you use certain unofficial parts frequently (or have downloaded all of them), I find it easy to forget that they are even unofficial - and there may be prerequisite unofficial subparts or primitives needed as well.
So:
Are there any editors or utilities that currently support saving models with unofficial parts (and dependencies) included as sub models? For example, a save dialog option or insert menu command to "Include unofficial parts as sub models", or a single-purpose utility to do the same for existing files. I suppose unofficial parts would be identified by looking for "Unofficial_" in the !LDRAW_ORG header line (or any non-compliance with the official library header specs, for that matter), or also, obviously, if they are housed in the "Unofficial/" subdirectory of the LDraw library.
Imagine if the Part Tracker kept a version history of the actual part files (like source code version control), not just an event log. (Does it?) Conceivably, this could then be used to retrieve the unofficial parts used to create models found in the wild - perhaps even programmatically, based on file creation date. I can imagine a number of cases where this strategy might break down, but maintaining a full version history seems like it might be useful anyway. (Moving forward, it could probably even be implemented as a third party mirror that monitors the main part tracker's activity log and commits copies of each new change...)
I'm a computer control freak and as such I hate install programs. I'd much prefer to have a zip file to unzip wherever I want. I realize that most users like install programs but I'd like to request a zip distro of SR 3D Builder.
I'd also like to request the unbundling of the Conns folder with the rest of the parts library. I keep my parts distro up to date myself and, frankly, the installer you use to add the parts library is extremely slow. I'd rather not have to sit through the entire install every time I want to update the program.
I noticed about a half dozen parts with longer descriptions in an 'unofficial' download from September, but no comments regarding that as an issue in the parts tracker.
4521127.dat
s/32167s01.dat
Is there still a constraint on the description length as per the header spec?
Just wondering if the code I'm working for my Java project should prevent this.
I came across it while running a test across all dat files I had.
Ok, I read actaully read the Help file this time so if I ask for something that's in there then I guess my short term memory sucks
- I like show/hide but it only works if the actual parts are selected. Request that if a step is selected, all the parts in that step are hidden/shown - Request an easy way to set the zoom level for all the viewports, all at the same time. Sometimes I zoom to various levels depending on the view (e.g. front, left, etc...) and then when I'm done I'd like to just reset them all back to the same view level. - Jim's suggestion is good enough for me - A keyboard shortcut for changing grid granularity - These exist and I am apparently blind
- I like pinch to zoom but for some reason it sometimes switches the viewport to the 3D view while I am pinching.
- OMR stuff for the file header.
This is quite unfortunate when you just want to put strings inside parentheses. See this post as an example. (just try to quote-reply to the message to clearly see what I intended for it to look like)
When you click on the smiley face on top of the message input box and click , it adds ;) so why should ") also be the same face.
Also, I would like to propose that we disable emoticon replacement inside code blocks so that we don't run into things like
print("Hello World!");
should not read
print("Hello World!");
Note: I am inserting [b][/b] in-between the two characters that make up the emoticon in order to prevent it from being converted to a face.
Edit: This post may not make a whole lot of sense anymore to those who were not here earlier and thus don't know what I'm referring to. Just trust me, there were little yellow smiley faces everywhere... just trust me
hi,
i recently ran into problems with conditional lines from inlined subfiles, it seems to me that the control points get damaged. i discoverd this when i was inlining c-lines from the minifig head 3626b.dat file.
to reproduce, do the following steps:
1.take original head without inner part s\3626bs02.dat (or use attached file "head.dat")
2. view it with ldview, all c-lines are correct (-> screenshot 1)
3. select all subfiles within "head.dat", and inline them (i used lddp 2.0.4)
4. save, and view it again in ldview
5. notice that the conditional lines are not displayed as they should (-> screenshot 2)
here are two screenshots, taken by this steps and viewed from same angle.
using subfiles:
inlined subfiles:
after that, i tried to inline the subfiles with other tools (like slicer pro, edger2, ...), but the result was the same for me, all lines were there, but displayed not correctly.
am i doing something wrong, or can anyone confirm this behavior?
![[Image: 01_head_with_subfiles.png]](http://c-force.org/ldraw/01_head_with_subfiles.png)
![[Image: 02_head_inlined.png]](http://c-force.org/ldraw/02_head_inlined.png)
