Using LDCad flexible parts with Studio

[Philippe Hurbain]

Studio is a nice LEGO CAD tool, but current version (2.0.1(39)) lacks flexible parts. Fortunately, with some tweaks (and a few caveats), it is possible to use LDCad flexible parts in Studio.

If you created your model with Studio, you need to

• export it as LDraw
  
• open the exported model with LDCad
  
• add the flex parts using the guidelines that follow.
  
• reload the LDraw model in Studio.
  

If, like me, you are a die-hard LDCad user, you can still use these tips to make use of the great photorealistic rendering engine included in Studio, or its fast and user friendly instruction generator. I find that Studio editor is not nearly as convenient, flexible and powerful as LDCad, but I'm probably biased

How it works?
LDCad uses specialized meta-commands to describe the flexible parts but also create a generic fallback LDraw representation. It is this fallback which is visible in Studio if two conditions are met:

• the fallback is made with segment parts present in the LDraw library of Studio
  
• The segment parts are not scaled: Studio is not able to scale parts.
  

Important note:
This is NOT a LDCad flexible parts tutorial! For more details, see LDCad documentation, video tutorials and technical documentation.