LDCad 1.6 Alpha 4 (win+linux)

[Roland Melkert]

First of all, I thank you much for so well working 1.5, it has helped me a lot in this hurry time; it's the editor which simply does the job well and I can work fast with. I started to think about a note "built with a help of LDCad" added to my builds labels at exhibitions

Thanks, always nice to hear

The first difference to 1.5 I saw was that "+" hotkey no longer works in the partbin, "-" still works. After some testing I found what's the problem: on the US keyboard, "+" is a sign I can get only with Shift and new hotkey machinery is confused with that. Setting the hotkey to "Shift +" is a workaround but that would probably cause "+" on numeric keyboard stop working, if I had any. So there is no way to make them both working now, as it was in 1.5.

More about hotkeys:

* it does not warn me if hotkey is already assigned (and to what), it would be nice if a simple popup window appeared, with that warning and a choice what function I want to set this hotkey to (the old one or the new one)
* could you add "alt" to the list of modifiers?
* how can I assign a hotkey to (sub)menu? For example: Alt-F for "File" menu or Shift-Alt-S for View->Editing_views->Split (Yes, I want to hide menubar and have all menus accessible via hotkeys. I have really small screen on my laptop, especially vertically.)

Some hotkey management improvements are planned for Beta 2. I never realized the + key thing as it was meant to be used with the numpad keys. Maybe I should handle the non numpad key as a normal shift-less hit, I'll have to research if wxWidgets allows for that distinction though.
I've been avoiding the alt key because it acts very different in Linux. It seems to be a system level key in some versions (focus to the program menu bar) I haven't found a way to suppress that behavior yet. Currently menus can not be assigned a hotkey but it shouldn't be too much of an hassle to add that, I'll put it on the beta 2 'nice to have' list.

ROTSTEP editing is great feature! The button "Sample view" confused me at first, maybe "Current view" would be more understandable, but it works well in both ways: getting the view and setting it. This makes my life with LPub much easier, thanks!

I'll rewrite the hint of that button as it is a bit vague indeed.

Group layers feature: technically, it works. And I remember I already needed something like this several times so I really support this idea. Unfortunately the current version is very hard to use and not intuitive. So the feature itself is great and works but, please, add new GUI for that. What about hiding all technical details about layers and simply provide a submenu with a list of currently defined groups, optionally with a name? That would be much easier to use!

Layered groups are a bit experimental. I was planning to iron it out in Beta 2 by allowing users to name layers which will then replace the current layer 1 2 3 placeholders.

Unhide in the Source window: great feature, I like it. Unfortunately it's dangerous because the same hotkey is there for hiding and unhiding ("h") and I cannot even set them to different ones in the hotkey manager window. One of first things what happened during my testing was: I forgot I already have some hidden parts selected, their lines were out of the screen. Then I selected some visible parts and wanted to hide them. What was my surprise when another parts appeared instead!

Currently the 'h' in source window is more a visibility toggle which is indeed very confusing now you point that out. I'll make it a separate action with its own hotkey (maybe shift+h?)

For more reasons I believe it would be really useful if there was some visible indicator "you have something selected even it might be invisible or hard to see" - something similar to "I" icon in the bottom-right corner? For example I had some hidden parts selected, forgot about that and double-clicked on some part in the partbin. Those hidden parts were silently replaced with that part and, of course, I found that minutes and minutes later when I unhide them - and it was too late for any undo.

I could display the 'Selection contains invisible items' label as is done when e.g. a step meta is in the selection.

Mirroring feature: I did not test it much because it's probably more about missing parts metadata. What I can say is about GUI again: a selection of "X", "Y" or "Z" axis is a random shot, I really cannot remember which is which, it is not shown anywhere in GUI. If there was at least a color corresponding to the diagram of axes in the bottom-left corner, it would be easier. Better if it was shown "in place" instead of a separate popup window, something like grid is - another hotkeys for setting and showing the plane for mirroring.

X, Y, Z is shown as Red, Green, Blue lines in the compass and grid. This is somewhat of a standard I thought everybody knew that I'll see if I can render the same colors in the combo box.

Region select: great feature! Really helpful, I needed that so many times... Is there a way how to do rectangle unselect, too? The part about 3D box is very hard to use for me, I'd need a way how to see that box and rotate the view at the same time.

Random thought: what about stopping the LMB function of turning the view? I slightly remember you had this as a long-term goal (if I'm corect), it confuses me a little and it's not good for anything, RMB is here for that.

The 3D part is the far clipping plane which can be moved by the scroll wheel. It should be visible by the background color overflowing part of the model. I did indeed plan to drop the left mouse button controls in faver of the region select but for some reason dropped it again, I think it had mainly to do with left mouse already being used to drag the selection.

About scripting: one of my dreams is to make a script allowing user to select a rotation center of the part or group of parts to a specific snap point (resp. the axe of that snap object). So one can bend hinges, rotate 1xN plates on a stud, rotate Technic beams around axles etc. If you remember my video showing this. Would it be possible to work with snap points in scripts? And let the user to select it?

And maybe there would be a chance to add a function/script for making triangles. I know there is already a way how to do that with that helper you showed in one of your videos but it's too complicated and manual.

I do want to add your snap point rotation idea at some point, I'll see if it can be done without too much of an impact to existing code (beta stage and all).


Thanks for the detailed feedback, I always like to get some insight from a users perspective as I tend to make things a bit technical at times