(2022-03-31, 13:12)Cam's Bricks Wrote: I see where you are headed with this and I think that a category called something like "Tile, Without Groove" fits in the current array of LDraw categories.
By extension you could do others like:
Plate, waffle bottom
Brick, no vertical tubes
Brick, with slots
Those sound like sub-categories, something which has been tossed around occasionally over the years. And individual editors are always free to go further with the sorting of parts into sub-groups (as LDCad does).
The question is when you have some modification that, for some parts, is a default, but for others is a variation. If the above (sub)categories had existed since the beginning of LDraw, then the "default" tile would have fallen under Tile, and the old-school 1960s tiles would be under Tile, Without Groove. But the jumper plate would have been listed, by default, under Plate (or Tile), and when the new grooved variant appeared, that would have been under Plate (or Tile), With Groove. (And then the third variant would be, what? Plate, With Groove, With Bottom Stud Holder?)
Now for jumpers, that issue might be resolved by the below discussion (plate vs. tile), but it's just meant as an illustration.
Quote:This is probably controversial but with some of these, are jumpers modified plates or modified tiles? They fit better in my mind as modified tiles because of the groove but I am sure changing that at this point in the game is gonna cause some frustrations.
That has actually been discussed at some length, here. The consensus was that, for category purposes, only fully studless parts are Tiles (or in the case of inverted tiles, fully anti-studless parts), and anything with one or more studs is a Plate. However, a keyword of "tile" is recommended for those plates that can be thought of as having a tile-like function, like jumpers.
My personal rule of thumb is that any plate missing 50% or more of its studs in a contiguous surface area is in the tile family, so that would exclude the 1x2 jumper. But, I also consider all tiles to be a modified type of plate anyway, so the jumper is always a modified plate to me, whether or not it's also a tile.