LDCad 1.4b (win+linux)

[Roland Melkert]

Nice document, Roland. I was almost perfect 'testman' because I did not work with shock absorbers etc. before. So I followed all your examples and I may confirm they all are well understandable, I was able to learn everything you mention there. And I even learned some new tricks with Nested mode.

Good to know thanks.

The only point the text was unclear to me was near the beginning of 'Nested editing' chapter where you refer to 'Insert into'. That confused me a little. At first, it's called 'Change insertion target' in 1.5Alpha3 (maybe you describe older version. 1.4 ?). And the trick with RMB at session panel was surprising for me so much that it took me some time to find that menu. Another confusing point is that a hot-key for that is 'n', same as for starting the nested mode. I know there cannot be a conflict because 'Change insertion target' makes sense only in the nested mode but that's clear AFTER one understands the problem, not at the learning time

The 'insert into' references to the text on the zoomed session panel, the text you mention is the item in the menu which indeed does the same. But you are right all those different names (submodel, subfile, level, insert into, etc) can be very confusing I'll try to smooth them out in both the documentation and program it self. Only difference you should know about is the one between subfile and submodel though. Basically submodel is a subset of subfile as subfile is the general name of any item inside a mpd (or the single thing in a ldr) which can be a model or part etc.

Also, I believe it would be easier to understand if one can simply make a selection and open a menu with all submodels to choose where to put it, comparing to the 'put to current level' workflow. BTW, what's 'level' here and why it is not written as 'submodel'?

This used to be possible in an earlier version, but I dropped it because it caused some logic and potential rounding problems. The thing is you don't actually select a model you select a branch which leads to a model. This is especially important when a model is used multiple times in the main model. Hope that's somewhat understandable

The example with shock absorber reminded me another idea: I also found, same as Philippe did, that one can use part snapping instead of setting the absorber length in the menu. And so the generic idea: wouldn't be usable if one can not only move but also rotate the new part or selection in LDCAD with part snapping turned on? Just an idea - I do not have details solved yet (how exactly it should behave, in all which cases this would be useful etc.)

You can rotate parts in 90 deg steps (45 if you hold down ctrl) while dragging them using the arrow and pageup/down keys. But to get it perfectly to align in any situation its best to set the relative grid as it forces the exact mufti digit base rotation. Or do you mean automatic alignment through part snapping when e.g. placing a 2x4 brick on a 4x12 plate while the plate and new part are not aligned rotation wise? This is something I have in the pipe line for the next next version together with occupied connection tracking.