LDCad 1.5 Beta 1 (win+linux)

[Roland Melkert]

However, this is not supported in LDCad for any part or set of parts, only one snap connection is used each time - am I correct?

Yes currently the closest/best single connection is used to snap the whole dragged object. It will try to align the Y-axis though and for axles the roll. But still only for that one connection. I'm hoping to do multi connection matching in a future version but I'll have to figure out a efficient, multi threaded, way of doing it.

* let the user to choose the snap point (e.g. a center + axis of SNAP_CYL) as an origin of coordinates for part rotation
* let the user to turn on (temporarily) the snap function while moving or rotating the part using keyboard

How would you think choosing which connection to use should work in such a case?

The idea is to combine both the above, of course: turn the hinge until it snaps the other part of the model etc. Or rotate binoculars until the part snaps to the other binoculars

The current 'official' way of doing that is to select the existing bionculars before adding the second one. This will cause the second one to use the same orientation normal and snapping does the rest. Alternatively you can set a relative grid and press home while dragging a new part to reset it to the grid orientation.

But not only that. One can use the second feature in case there is too many snap points in a small space. For example, it's difficult, sometimes, to place 40teeth gear on the axle because it snaps too often to pinholes instead of the central axle hole, esp. when viewing the gear from some angles.

Yes this kinda annoys me too, I've tried to improve on it by letting sliding part 'stuck' to their last matched hole so it at least wont skip to another when you finally have it at the right place Letting the user choose a snapping point manually would solve this issue, but again how to do it gui wise.