[LDPatternCreator] Release 1.6.5

[Nils Schmidt]

Hi,

after a few sleepless nights I was finally able to reproduce and fix some troublemakers.

Download and install the latest LDPatternCreator release directly from sourceforge.net.

Change log:

Fixed bugs:

• Fixed a rare crash (Rectifier/SlicerPro/Unificator tool chain)
  
• A wrong winding was exported when "Include Metadata" was disabled, but a winding was chosen in the metadata dialog.
  

As always, I included a short readme.htm in the installation directory.


Cheers & Leg Godt


Nils

[Philippe Hurbain]

Made two complex (but flat) patterns, no crash. Good news so far

[Nils Schmidt]

Did you ever dreamed about a possibility to convert a 2D scan into a pattern? Well, there was a converter implementation*, but it was impractical and I removed it completely.

Lately, I did some advanced research on imaging and neural networks.

First of all, there are some limitations... It is not possible to just load a 32bit raw image and covert it into perfect triangles, because of

1. "garbage in -> garbage out", if your input file is blurry, noisy, has a low resolution or has some undesired artifacts, low contrast, printing errors etc.
   
2. Perfect corners / orthogonality / symmetry / parallel lines: It is not trivial to decide if a geometry isn't organic (e.g. street signs or control panel patterns)
   
3. Colour palette: It is not trivial to classify the colour palette of your pattern.
   
4. Scope of detail and relevancy: It is not trivial to determine how much detail is needed in all areas of the picture. Maybe some area is not relevant for the pattern at all.
   

However... instead of writing a raster image to triangle converter, I would rather implement...

• ...an A.I.-Assistant which will suggest two triangles after you inserted one triangle (~200% increase in productivity) and/or
  
• ...an SVG-to-triangle-converter (like svg2dat)
  
• ...a Lines2Pattern clone.
  

Vector graphics are very cool, because they are well-defined. There was svg2dat, but now it is forgotten.

Any thoughts??


The following pattern was created by an A.I.:
   


* (proof - search for "Projet automatique à partir d'image Bitmap")

[Philippe Hurbain]

Did you ever dreamed about a possibility to convert a 2D scan into a pattern?

Oh YES! after making my last pattern (arctic torso) I looked again on the web to see if someone somewhere provided a usable solution but found nothing new

Well, there was a converter implementation*, but it was impractical and I removed it completely.

Yeah, never succeeded in doing something useful with it

However... instead of writing a raster image to triangle converter, I would rather implement...

• ...an A.I.-Assistant which will suggest two triangles after you inserted one triangle (~200% increase in productivity) and/or
  
• ...an SVG-to-triangle-converter (like svg2dat)
  

Both seem interesting...

There was svg2dat, but now it is forgotten.

Maybe not completely, afaik it's still used in Darats tool chain to make patterns. But it suffers from two drawbacks, poor triangulation (many needle shaped triangles) and very partial svg support (afaik no support of path, so useful to make pattern outlines.
Rolf Osterthun also had an interesting bitmap to ldraw converter that was kind of usable, but he evaluated that the tool was not good enough for general release.

The following pattern was created by an A.I.:

From a bitmap? overall it looks rather good, but strangely in some areas one side the darker lines was missed?!

[Willy Tschager]

Did you ever dreamed about a possibility to convert a 2D scan into a pattern?

...

Any thoughts??

I love all your fancy feature but wanna see first coded all the things I really miss:

https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-21654-post-24373.html

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Hi Willy,


I listed your whishes here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/patterncreator/tickets/198/

Have I forgotten something?

Leg godt,

Nils

[Merlijn Wissink]

Since we have someone creating a bunch of vector files for Lego prints at the moment: https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-22213.html
Something along the lines of an svg to LDraw would be an interesting addition 

[Willy Tschager]

Have I forgotten something

Hi Nils,

thanks for creating the tickets. Looks like you've got everything but the layers:

https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-21654-po...l#pid24625

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

[Merlijn Wissink]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

I agree completely. I haven't made that many (patterned) parts, but I even I can see the incredible usefulness of a feature like that.

[Travis Cobbs]

Since we have someone creating a bunch of vector files for Lego prints at the moment: https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-22213.html
Something along the lines of an svg to LDraw would be an interesting addition 

If anyone wants to pick up where I left off on SvgToDat, contact me. See here for more info:

https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-18493-po...l#pid18562

[Willy Tschager]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

Looks like we identified what's needed most:

https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-21654-po...l#pid24384

w.

[Magnus Forsberg]

I agree. That would be an excellent feature.
Adding the uncoloured background is the boring part of a pattern.

[Nils Schmidt]

I received a bug report from Philo about a crash on export.
Does anyone else noticed similar issue?

[Magnus Forsberg]

I received a bug report from Philo about a crash on export.
Does anyone else noticed similar issue?

I've only made some flat surfaces so far. No crash.

[Philippe Hurbain]

I've only made some flat surfaces so far. No crash.

The crashes I got were with flat patterns too. Maybe it's something on my machine (Nils couldn't reproduce the issue either)

[Magnus Forsberg]

I've only made some flat surfaces so far. No crash.

The crashes I got were with flat patterns too. Maybe it's something on my machine (Nils couldn't reproduce the issue either)

I'm so sorry, I just discovered I've been using 1.6.2. The new version was installed in another folder.

I'll try to make some patterns asap.

[Philippe Hurbain]

I have a few issues related to file naming when doing an "export as dat" (on Win 7):
- If I import a dat file a dat file as projection data, add pattern on it then do an "export as dat", proposed filename is the name of file (*) used as projection data. Not a good idea as this leads to overwriting shape file with pattern file. (*) Actually, it's not the file name but the file in "name" field of projection data file header.
- When doing an "export as dat", LDPE properly browse current work folder, but the proposed file name contains a full path to LDPE executable, eg. "C:\Program Files (x86)\LDPatternCreator\toto.dat". If I don't pay attention and hit save button, system proposes to save in my default documents folder instead...
- but the thing that really drives me mad, is that if by misfortune the projection data file carries a header with subfile type in header, when I export .dat in my "work" folder as "titi", it silently creates a file "titis01" in "work\s" folder instead !?! No, if I browse to a folder and give a file name, I want this file and folder to be used...

[Nils Schmidt]

I was able to reproduce this issues and fixed them today.

[Willy Tschager]

Bug of the day:

* Add an Oval. While it is still selected scale it and you will see that the vertex on the very left stays still deforming the two aatached triangles of the oval. To avoid this you have to deselect your newly created oval and relect it again, but ...
* ... when you group this triangles into a primitive and delete it afterwards the vertex on the very left will remain and cannot be selected or deleted.

w.

[Rolf Osterthun]

Rolf Osterthun also had an interesting bitmap to ldraw converter that was kind of usable, but he evaluated that the tool was not good enough for general release.

Hey,

yes, but sadly it is almost in the same state...

   

The idea was that you can choose the colores with a right mouse click - then a color quantisation will be done.
You can improve the result a little bit by drawing pixels or recolor areas.
Then an edgedetection algorithm (derived from potrace; but for multicolor) will search for the edges.
Again a little bit of postproduction can (must) be done (put points on circle, put points on line, delete points, etc).
At the end the edges will be send to the tool triangle - the output of triangle will be converted into an ldraw compatible file again.

Depending on the source images the results can be very differently... From my point of view the biggest challanges are color gradients.

Rolf

[Nils Schmidt]

Bug of the day:

* Add an Oval. While it is still selected scale it and you will see that the vertex on the very left stays still deforming the two aatached triangles of the oval. To avoid this you have to deselect your newly created oval and relect it again, but ...
* ... when you group this triangles into a primitive and delete it afterwards the vertex on the very left will remain and cannot be selected or deleted.

w.

• What type of an oval did you add (solid, hollow, ...)?
  
• How many segments had it?
  

[Nils Schmidt]

Today, I implemented a new progress bar for the file export.

[Willy Tschager]

Bug of the day:

* Add an Oval. While it is still selected scale it and you will see that the vertex on the very left stays still deforming the two aatached triangles of the oval. To avoid this you have to deselect your newly created oval and relect it again, but ...
* ... when you group this triangles into a primitive and delete it afterwards the vertex on the very left will remain and cannot be selected or deleted.

w.

• What type of an oval did you add (solid, hollow, ...)?
  
• How many segments had it?
  

Solid, 20 segments. Used on:

http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...26bpw8.dat

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Thank you for this bug report! I fixed this bug today.

[Nils Schmidt]

As a user I'd like to scale just in one direction (x or y) - not sure if this was on the wishlist of someone else.

This is already possible since a few years...
You can lock the X or Y axis with Shiftor Ctrl while translating/scaling a selection.

[Willy Tschager]

Bug of the day:

* Import a .dat as subfile
* Select the primitive and color it
* When un-grouping the primitive all triangles are recolored to color 16 substituting the color you set for the primitive.

w.

[Gerald Lasser]

* When un-grouping the primitive all triangles are recolored to color 16 substituting the color you set for the primitive.

w.

Willy, how do you ungroup a primitive in LD Pattern Creator? I looked through all the menus but could not find anything...

[Willy Tschager]

Willy, how do you ungroup a primitive in LD Pattern Creator? I looked through all the menus but could not find anything...

  Ungroup.jpg (Size: 32.54 KB / Downloads: 147)

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Was not aware that this worked with primitives too! I thought it worked only with groups made in LDPC...

[Gerald Lasser]

Thanks, I did not notice this icon...

[Philippe Hurbain]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

Nils, any news on this?

[Nils Schmidt]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

Nils, any news on this?

Unfortunately, no. I will focus on LPC when LDPartEditor 0.8.42 is released.

[Steffen]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

+100 

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* Currently "Remove isolated vertices" removes them all. I'd like to see only removed the isolated vertices in a selection. So:

No selected vertices  - the command removes them all
Selected vertices - the command removes only the isolated vertices among the selection

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

* Currently "Remove isolated vertices" removes them all. I'd like to see only removed the isolated vertices in a selection.

Hi Willy,

I added your feature request to the list.
Over the past months I was on a business trip (consulting / development) and I am back again
Currently, I am working on LDPE's version 0.8.44.

Cheers,
Nils

[Johann Eisner]

Hi Nils

Now a point from me.
Only 64 characters are possible in the parts description.
Is it possible to change that?
Especially with my Nexo Knight signs that I am currently drawing, this is often a problem. If not, it is not a problem either, because I check and correct the file with DAT header before uploading.

Regards Johann

[Roland Melkert]

Hi Nils

Now a point from me.
Only 64 characters are possible in the parts description.
Is it possible to change that?
Especially with my Nexo Knight signs that I am currently drawing, this is often a problem. If not, it is not a problem either, because I check and correct the file with DAT header before uploading.

Regards Johann

As far I know this limitation has been dropped awhile back.

It isn't dictated in the library header text, only a limitation on the help meta length is mentioned.

[Nils Schmidt]

Only 64 characters are possible in the parts description.
Is it possible to change that?

I changed that a few minutes ago (#1). It will be included in the next release (1.6.8).

[Gerald Lasser]

Something that should be (very) useful: an automatic area triangulator. One would select a color, then click in an empty area of the pattern, and LDPC would fill that area with triangles of selected color. Triangulation would extend on all area, bounded by template lines and existing triangles. If only for this, it would be very useful to fill-in background of a pattern!

Nils, any news on this?

Hi Nils, Any chance this might make it into 1.6.8?

[Johann Eisner]

Only 64 characters are possible in the parts description.
Is it possible to change that?

I changed that a few minutes ago (#1). It will be included in the next release (1.6.8).

Thumps up!
Thanks.

[Magnus Forsberg]

Hi Nils,

As a user of both LDPE and LDPC I want to have a more unified keyboard shortcut list.

As a user of LDPC I want to have "F" as a shortcut to flip a pair of connected triangles.
As a user of LDPC I want to "override", or slow down, my Windows scroll wheel speed setting, to finetune the position of a background picture.

As a user of LDPE I want to have 1, 2, 3, 4 on my numpad as shortcuts for Select, Move, Rotate and Scale.
(it looks like it should work, but it doesn't on my laptop. I have to click on the buttons.)
As a user of LDPE I want to have Ctrl+Q as a shortcut to "Merge to nearest edge and split".
As a user of LDPE I want to toggle between overlapping surfaces, like it's possible to do in LDPC by holding down Ctrl-key.

Bug:
It is sometime very hard to attach a new triangle to a vertex in a prim, or grouped set of vertices. e.g.  a common vertex, present in both in a ndis and a disc, is not connectable. But when Fast Triangulation II in activated it's possible.

Bug:
Triangles overlapping and using the vertices in a primitive is undetected by the overlap detector.

Code:

1 11 -3.9 0 1.7 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 3-4ndis.dat
1 12 -3.9 0 1.7 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 5-8disc.dat
3 13 -3.1929 0 2.4071 -3.9 0 1.7 -2.9761 0 2.0827
3 14 -2.9 0 2.7 -3.9 0 1.7 0.9 0 1.7
3 10 -3.9 0 2.7 -4.9 0 1.7 -3.9 0 1.7

Bug:
I sometimes get triangles like this one. Looks like some kind of rounding error. The decimal comma is missing.

Code:

3 16 -2900 0 1700 -3900 0 700 -2.181717 0 0.9578202

It should have been: 3 16 -2.9 0 1.7 -3.9 0 .7 -2.181717 0 0.9578202

Bug:
Or like this one:

Code:

3 12 0.9 0 1.7 -2.9 0 1.7 -3.9 0 1.7

It's a colinear triangle