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+--- Thread: Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) (/thread-29166.html)
Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) - Ansgar Riedel - 2025-11-13
Hello everyone,
we are currently working on a project that requires a number of custom LDraw parts. To keep everything compatible with the official LDraw standards, we are looking for an experienced LDraw Part Author who can create high-quality, highly optimized .dat files.
This is paid work, and we are looking for someone with the following experience:
Requirements
- Strong experience with LDraw part authoring
- Ability to create primitive-based, clean, and efficient geometry (minimal triangles, correct use of subfiles, primitives, condlines, BFC, etc.)
- Familiarity with the LDraw Part Authoring Guidelines
- Ability to work with custom elements, modified versions of existing parts, or completely new parts based on STEP/OBJ files
- Experience with LDPartEditor and LDraw primitives is important
What we provide
- STEP/OBJ reference files
- Technical drawings or measurements if needed
- Clear specifications for each part
- Potential for ongoing paid collaboration
What we expect
- Clean, optimized .dat files
- Correct BFC usage
- Correct origin and grid alignment
- Use of LDraw primitives whenever possible
Volume of work
We need several custom parts and are looking for a reliable long-term collaboration.
How to apply
If you are interested, please reply here or send me a private message.
Thank you!
Ansgar
RE: Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) - Peter Blomberg - 2025-11-13
Who's the employer? Why do you need compatibility? Why do you need custom parts?
RE: Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) - Ansgar Riedel - 2025-11-13
(4 hours ago)Peter Blomberg Wrote: Who's the employer? Why do you need compatibility? Why do you need custom parts?
Hi Peter,
we’re a small independent project working on digital building workflows.
We need Studio/LDraw compatibility because our designers build in Studio and we rely on LDraw files for part lists and instructions.
The custom parts are original elements specific to our models that don’t exist in the official library, so we need them as highly optimized .dat files.
Best,
Ansgar
RE: Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) - Peter Blomberg - 2025-11-13
Is what country is the employment? Where the employee would pay income taxes.
Why don't you simply convert the obj files into dat files and annotate them with studio's part designer?
RE: Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) - Ansgar Riedel - 2025-11-13
(2 hours ago)Peter Blomberg Wrote: Is what country is the employment? Where the employee would pay income taxes.
Why don't you simply convert the obj files into dat files and annotate them with studio's part designer?
We’re not offering employment — it’s just a paid commission for specific LDraw parts, so tax residency isn’t relevant.
Regarding OBJ → DAT:
We already tested Studio’s Part Designer, but it exports full mesh geometry, which results in very large, unoptimized DAT files with no primitives, no condlines and poor performance.
For our workflow we need proper LDraw-style, primitive-based parts (like the official library), which is why we’re looking for an experienced part author instead of using mesh imports.
RE: Looking for Experienced LDraw Part Author (Paid Work) - Rene Rechthaler - 2025-11-13
What kind of parts do you need? rather geometric or more freeform parts? (any examples you want to share/show here?)
could it be split between several persons? (we have some specialists here, also to keep the "peer review" feature)
are the digital parts also based on real parts? coexisting with Lego or not?
does it still fall under the CC BY 4.0? would the parts also be allowed on the tracker? or for your use exclusively?