File paths in various programs

[N. W. Perry]

I would recommend fully separating libraries and user content.

For example I use these items in my (ldcad) search path:
d:\LDraw\complete-2504.zip
d:\LDraw\ldrawunf.zip
d:\LDraw\projects\

You could optionally unzip the zips into their own subfolders.

This is actually how I'm set up now, as far as LDCad is concerned. Additionally, I do have the zips unzipped; the only thing is that complete.zip is not a subfolder, it's just the p and parts subfolders at the top level of the ldraw directory. In other words (using your directory names):

d:\LDraw\complete-2504.zip
d:\LDraw\p\
d:\LDraw\parts\
d:\LDraw\ldrawunf.zip
d:\LDraw\unofficial\
d:\LDraw\projects\

This assumes the used tools differentiate between normal and library locations.

If not you will probably need to merge the two zip contents like so:

d:\LDraw\library\p  (from complete.zip)
d:\LDraw\library\parts  (from complete.zip)
d:\LDraw\library\unofficial\p  (from ldrawunf.zip)
d:\LDraw\library\unofficial\parts  (from ldrawunf.zip)
d:\LDraw\projects\

So if I were to use the ldparteditor temp folder, this would be my hierarchy exactly. Maybe I should do that?

ps: LDCad will still (also) look in the unofficial subfolders of library locations/zips, but personally I don't use that much.
note: also using locations which are sub locations of libraries might crash LDCad , Beta 2 will warn about that and remove the offending location from the list.

No crashes as of yet. The only thing that happens with LDCad is that if I search a part, it won't show me both the official and unofficial version(s) of the part, only the one that is set highest in the preferences. (This is probably intended behavior.)