LDCad 1.5 progress / opinions req

[Roland Melkert]

Can you give a status/prospect of LDCad's support for saving a template as a part (.dat) - as it already supports saving as an inline and stand alone submodel (.ldr).

This capability is especially useful for LPub3D's ability to automatically treat complex user-defined parts.

Let's take a shock absorber for example. When creating instructions with such a part, it is desirable to treat the absorber as a single part so it can be efficiently and automatically managed in the PLI/BOM.

As a submodel, the part components will be displayed requiring some advanced manipulation to "transform" into a single BOM/PLI part. Another good example is 8870 LEGO® Power Functions Light.

I am working on a part substitution framework for LPub3D that will allow substitution of the modeled part with a different representation. The light example would benefit from this functionality where instead of having the show the actual modeled part which would take the form as installed in the model, a substitute "shortcut" or catalog representation would be used in the PLI/BOM. I believe the ability to save LDCad templates as parts would be complementary to this new capability as well as the overall ability to produce complex CAI overall.

Actually the generated hose/shock etc might be called .ldr inside the mpd but it has the lines

Code:

0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CCW

In the header, LPub3D can use that to thread them as parts instead of submodels. There is also the option to include alias info with LDCad path content. This is somewhat untested / unused at the moment as I was targeting it at some future feature which has become low prio.

Anyway those alias metas can be used to reference an official (static) ldraw part for use in BOM lists. This is done by setting up a table of lengths combined with .dat filenames. I could add something simular to the spring based parts, which will only need a single static 'mascot' I think.

I can then add some static comment line in the generated code mentioning the resolved alias, which you can then use in the BOM.

I'll try to flesh these features out for the 1.5 Beta 2 and add alias info to the default templates. If you have any additional ideas / suggestions feel free to let me now.