I have a couple of feature requests for Bricksmith:
- Display of mouse pointer coordinates. MLCad has this feature. I use it a lot to align parts to a specific rotation point.
- A keyboard only way to change color. When I add a part I press Cmd-I, Tab to the part list, arrow to the part, and hit enter. The dialog closes and spits me back out to the model display with the new part selected. For color selection I press Cmd-Opt-C, Tab to the color list, arrow to the color, hit enter, and nothing happen except that the color of the part changed. The dialog stays focused. That would be fine if I could simply re-press Cmd-Opt-C to close the dialog but that doesn't work either.

I've just accidentally discovered that a circular reference in an MPD file with cause Bricksmith to crash. I know it's invalid syntax and I'm not sure how hard it is to detect but it certainly crashes the programs.

Also, how do I add a reference to a part that not in the parts list and not in the MPD itself? I thought I've done this before but for some reason I figure out how to do it.

J.C. Tchang has recently updated his French manual for the LDraw Pattern Creator program
It now includes a tutorial that walks you through the steps for creating a pattern for a part.

You can find the updated manual here:
http://jc-tchang.philohome.com/manuel/LPC.htm
http://jc-tchang.philohome.com/manuel/LPC.htm#tuto

You can download the LDraw Pattern Creator program here:
http://www.pearse.co.uk/lego/links/ldrawpatterncreator

Bye for now

Reuben

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Download 3D Lego models and other resources from:
http://www.pearse.co.uk/lego
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I just noticed that the date format of the sticky announcements at the top of the forums is in this format
(below is a snippet from http://forums.ldraw.org/index.php ):

Not OMR Spec compliant

Attached Files

  5541.mpd (Size: 30.22 KB / Downloads: 5)

- Does not include the buggy, I'll add it later
- Not OMR Spec compliant
- This is one of the oldest models created by me (timestamp said 2003!), I have one that is older but I need to clean it up first.

Attached Files

  6931.mpd (Size: 30.17 KB / Downloads: 6)

Not OMR Spec compliant

Attached Files

  6209.mpd (Size: 235.1 KB / Downloads: 5)

Not OMR Spec complient

Attached Files

  10129.mpd (Size: 79.74 KB / Downloads: 6)

So I'm a digital Lego newbie getting my head around MLCad, solid piece of work, but I find that part 56145 - a reinforced wheel - doesn't seem to be in the parts list (thought I was being stupid, looked up the part number, ctrl+f says it's really not there). Huh. Do a bit of searching around, and find this: http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg.../56145.dat

OK... gotcha. I'm feeling more up to speed now. So after gazing over the ReadMe I add 56145.dat to LDraw/parts and the 6 subfiles to LDraw/parts/s... restart MLCad, not there... run mklist and run MLCad... no part. OK... so in MLCad I go FileScan Parts... no new parts found... still no part.

Hm.

Are there any pros out there who know what I'm doing wrong? Would greatly appreciate
a bit of advice! If it changes anything I'm running a 64-bit Win-7 environment.

Thanks in advance.

Hamish.

Over the years that I used MLCad, before I switched to OSX and the very awesome Favorites list in Bricksmith, I customized my .grp file to group parts a little more specifically to avoid hunting around in the "Other" group. I've attached that file in the hopes that someone will find it useful.

Attached Files

  MLCad.grp (Size: 652 bytes / Downloads: 6)