Hi Trevor,
I'm a heavy user of your lPub3D and I would like to thank you a lot for it and for all the great improvements you are bringing to it. At the same I apologize for not providing you feedback so far. What I personally appreciated a lot were the addition of the BOM by color and the export of single pages, these boosted significantly my efficiency.
I finally take the opportunity to provide you a few inputs:
1) The incompatibility related to the "Add/CHANGE line type attribute to border configuration" with previous LPub versions should be in my opinion be fixed by assigning a value by default to the missing value in case of older file, instead of generating a parsing error which might not be trivial to understand to unexperienced users. This is of course just a suggestion.
2) wrong text (I'm just being picky here!): when you export to PNG the window title says "Print to pdf"
3) in the menu which appears when right clicking on the main page the first top choice now is "Change page background". I personally preferred it before when it was "Add next step", just because I guess this command to be more often used overall. (I might be wrong though)
New possible features:
1) Currently when you click on an step image the cursor moves to the corresponding location on the right commands list, which is great. It would be useful if the same would happen when while clicking on a line of code the corresponding instruction image would get highlighted.
2) Rotation steps: Not sure whether it is just me, but when it comes to rotation steps I happen to more or less always use the same angles of vision. (example: 25 50 0 ABS). In my view it would be very convenient to have some buttons to generate these standard rotsteps with just a click. (customzable in the prefs?) Additionally it could help to have buttons to rotate by +/- 90° each axis on the currently selected rotstep. Just throwing ideas out there :-)
3)When I generate BIs I find myself often going back and forth from and to MLCAD to fix small issues, like an inaccurate bricks positions, or a wrong brick color.
In this sense it would be great to have the ability to change the color directly in LPub. Of course this can already be done by typing the color code, but it would be more convenient to have a table with the colors and just have to click on the proper one.
When it comes to brick position also here it would be great to be able to adjust the position of bricks back and forth up and down and so forth by just clicking on some buttons which makes them move by standard distances like 1 plate in height and 1/2 brick in x,y. (or custom configurable in the prefs)
I also like to move bricks temporarily to generate more clear instructions (For this there is a specific Ldraw instruction, but I find too cumbersome and time consuming to use). I personally indeed export everything to PNG and combine instructions in Photoshop.
4) possibility to add extra custom arrows? This is something I personally do not need, but somebody might find useful.
For the moment that's all I can think of.
As I wrote above I'm just throwing ideas out there based on the experience accumulated while working on the generation of 40+ models instructions for my new book. So, in case you feel creative anytime soon... ;-))
Trevor, thanks a lot for your efforts which I personally appreciate very very much.
Take care!
- Mattia
I'm a heavy user of your lPub3D and I would like to thank you a lot for it and for all the great improvements you are bringing to it. At the same I apologize for not providing you feedback so far. What I personally appreciated a lot were the addition of the BOM by color and the export of single pages, these boosted significantly my efficiency.
I finally take the opportunity to provide you a few inputs:
1) The incompatibility related to the "Add/CHANGE line type attribute to border configuration" with previous LPub versions should be in my opinion be fixed by assigning a value by default to the missing value in case of older file, instead of generating a parsing error which might not be trivial to understand to unexperienced users. This is of course just a suggestion.
2) wrong text (I'm just being picky here!): when you export to PNG the window title says "Print to pdf"
3) in the menu which appears when right clicking on the main page the first top choice now is "Change page background". I personally preferred it before when it was "Add next step", just because I guess this command to be more often used overall. (I might be wrong though)
New possible features:
1) Currently when you click on an step image the cursor moves to the corresponding location on the right commands list, which is great. It would be useful if the same would happen when while clicking on a line of code the corresponding instruction image would get highlighted.
2) Rotation steps: Not sure whether it is just me, but when it comes to rotation steps I happen to more or less always use the same angles of vision. (example: 25 50 0 ABS). In my view it would be very convenient to have some buttons to generate these standard rotsteps with just a click. (customzable in the prefs?) Additionally it could help to have buttons to rotate by +/- 90° each axis on the currently selected rotstep. Just throwing ideas out there :-)
3)When I generate BIs I find myself often going back and forth from and to MLCAD to fix small issues, like an inaccurate bricks positions, or a wrong brick color.
In this sense it would be great to have the ability to change the color directly in LPub. Of course this can already be done by typing the color code, but it would be more convenient to have a table with the colors and just have to click on the proper one.
When it comes to brick position also here it would be great to be able to adjust the position of bricks back and forth up and down and so forth by just clicking on some buttons which makes them move by standard distances like 1 plate in height and 1/2 brick in x,y. (or custom configurable in the prefs)
I also like to move bricks temporarily to generate more clear instructions (For this there is a specific Ldraw instruction, but I find too cumbersome and time consuming to use). I personally indeed export everything to PNG and combine instructions in Photoshop.
4) possibility to add extra custom arrows? This is something I personally do not need, but somebody might find useful.
For the moment that's all I can think of.
As I wrote above I'm just throwing ideas out there based on the experience accumulated while working on the generation of 40+ models instructions for my new book. So, in case you feel creative anytime soon... ;-))
Trevor, thanks a lot for your efforts which I personally appreciate very very much.
Take care!
- Mattia