Micro ball and socket parts

[Tim Gould]

1.)
Why do the 8-ball-prim have an extra section of 4-4cyli?
I can't use joint-8-ballb.dat in part 3614.

Happy to change that one. The balla (was mis-written as balla before) will, I suspect, always be used with the cyli because the origin needs to be standardised.

2.)
I don't like the looks of the "joint-8-socket-fricta.dat"-primitive.
The pictures of the new sockets I can find show something else than the current design.
It should have rounded, softer corners and the hole is also rounded and spherical, not square or semi-cylindrical.
I doubt that the current design allow correct sideways movement.

They were made from the LDD pictures and could be wrong. Similarly I simplified some of the details to keep the file size smaller. My main goal is to get these very useful parts out in functional and useable form as quickly as possible

Functionally they work. I tested.

3.)
I don't like the extemly long file names.
As an active author working in LDDP I do most of my editing in a text editor, and don't want to type it all out every time.
Please consider a shorter name for these new primitives.

I too do everything by text. But I would prefer to use names that make sense rather than some complicated abbreviation that is unnecessarily short. I'm sure I'm not alone in typing faster than I can remember

4.)
I don't like to remove the word Towball from the descriptions. It has been present for many years now and is established.
If it is removed, let's add it as a keyword.

I believe it's long been LDraw standard that names should refer to form and function, but not use. Those parts are no longer "towballs". They are now ball and socket hinges. I agree we should keep the keyword, at least in the old parts.

I'll gladly use them, but let's all agree and discuss it here, before I start integrating them.

Yes. That is why this thread exists.