LDCad 1.5 Beta 1 (win+linux)
2015-10-10, 18:57 (This post was last modified: 2015-10-29, 14:26 by Philippe Hurbain.)
2015-10-10, 18:57 (This post was last modified: 2015-10-29, 14:26 by Philippe Hurbain.)
Hello all,
It took over a year since 1.4 Beta 1 but I'm hoping it is worth the wait / time spend.
For those who somehow missed the massive 1.5 Alpha thread on the forum, the major new features of 1.5 are:
Detachable color and part bin windows, of whom you can have multiple instances or none at all.
Extensive (optional) LDraw source window, with full nested editing support and a growing selection of line type property editing dialogs.
LDraw file reloading and external changes detection, and you can finally close files now.
Library part (shadow) editing, mostly intended for myself in order to add part snapping info so it is disabled by default and far from a full LDraw part editing solution.
Compressed (e.g. complete.zip) library support.
Single instance protection.
There are also loads of minor improvements etc, some of which are:
Better scrollbar handling
Bin window(s) can be used at a smaller width.
Part bin windows can render vertical or horizontal orientated.
And many more tweaks and adjustments etc.
I also added almost 600 new part snapping files to the default shadow library including info for doors, windows, windscreens, fences, bars, antenna's, plane parts, boat parts, minifig hats/hair and minifig accessories. Do note some (especially the doors and windows) need some additional work as I'm not sure how they behave/fit in real life any help on that is welcome.
Here are a couple of screen shots showing possible window configurations.
The 1.5 mascot example
An alternative layout
Editing shadow (snap) info
And I will add a new youtube demo clip later, if there is something particular you would want demonstrated feel free to ask.
As always the new version can be found at
http://www.melkert.net/LDCad/download
The windows setup version can be used to upgrade any previous version including ones installed by the AIOI.
I will update the documentation on my website to reflect the newest version in the next couple of days / week. For now the only thing you might need to know is how to dock windows. This is done by holding down 'ctrl' after you position the loose window roughly at the place you want it to go.
Lastly there might still be a problem with occasional crashes during closing the program at seemingly random intervals. I have tried a number of things to fix this and I haven't had a crash since the last adjustment myself, but as it might sometimes take days between occurrences I'm not sure it's really fixed.
So if you do have a crash on close down, please send me the contents of the logs folder as I added some extra messages to help pinpoint the crash location. The crash it self is relatively innocent as it will only result in a failure to write/update configuration files as it happens fairly late in the shutdown procedure.
Hope you like the new major version, any feedback / questions / suggestions are welcome.
It took over a year since 1.4 Beta 1 but I'm hoping it is worth the wait / time spend.
For those who somehow missed the massive 1.5 Alpha thread on the forum, the major new features of 1.5 are:
Detachable color and part bin windows, of whom you can have multiple instances or none at all.
Extensive (optional) LDraw source window, with full nested editing support and a growing selection of line type property editing dialogs.
LDraw file reloading and external changes detection, and you can finally close files now.
Library part (shadow) editing, mostly intended for myself in order to add part snapping info so it is disabled by default and far from a full LDraw part editing solution.
Compressed (e.g. complete.zip) library support.
Single instance protection.
There are also loads of minor improvements etc, some of which are:
Better scrollbar handling
Bin window(s) can be used at a smaller width.
Part bin windows can render vertical or horizontal orientated.
And many more tweaks and adjustments etc.
I also added almost 600 new part snapping files to the default shadow library including info for doors, windows, windscreens, fences, bars, antenna's, plane parts, boat parts, minifig hats/hair and minifig accessories. Do note some (especially the doors and windows) need some additional work as I'm not sure how they behave/fit in real life any help on that is welcome.
Here are a couple of screen shots showing possible window configurations.
The 1.5 mascot example
An alternative layout
Editing shadow (snap) info
And I will add a new youtube demo clip later, if there is something particular you would want demonstrated feel free to ask.
As always the new version can be found at
http://www.melkert.net/LDCad/download
The windows setup version can be used to upgrade any previous version including ones installed by the AIOI.
I will update the documentation on my website to reflect the newest version in the next couple of days / week. For now the only thing you might need to know is how to dock windows. This is done by holding down 'ctrl' after you position the loose window roughly at the place you want it to go.
Lastly there might still be a problem with occasional crashes during closing the program at seemingly random intervals. I have tried a number of things to fix this and I haven't had a crash since the last adjustment myself, but as it might sometimes take days between occurrences I'm not sure it's really fixed.
So if you do have a crash on close down, please send me the contents of the logs folder as I added some extra messages to help pinpoint the crash location. The crash it self is relatively innocent as it will only result in a failure to write/update configuration files as it happens fairly late in the shutdown procedure.
Hope you like the new major version, any feedback / questions / suggestions are welcome.