Bricksmith 2.6: Texture your world

[Allen Smith]

Bricksmith 2.6 adds the following features:

• Supports planar textures (LDraw TEXMAP language extension)
  
• Select multiple parts by dragging a rectangle around them
  
• Part Browser improvements:
  • Source-list UI
    
  • Part Browser search scope buttons for choosing all parts or selected category
    
  • Improved text-matching algorithm for search
    
  • Recognizes and searches !KEYWORDS in parts
    
  • Identify and categorize alias parts, and exclude them from searches
    
• New option for turntable-style model spinning (in which the model can't be rolled on its side)
  
  
• Substantial improvements to the handling of neighboring file references
  • Referenced neighbor files can be opened and edited; changes seen in parent document
    
  • Submodels in neighboring files will be drawn correctly
    
• New duplicated parts are inserted into last step instead of current one
  
• Document autosave
  
  
• Option-wheel (or just wheel) to zoom
  
• Command-Shift-C for color palette
  
• Removed nonstandard Officiality setting for models
  
• Speed improvements for models with many submodel references
  
• Speed improvements while hovering mouse over model
  

It also fixes the following bugs:

• Fixed crash on 10.7+ when closing windows or viewports
  
• Step display won't change the view rotation unless the step specifies it
  
• Pan-dragging is not affected by perspective distortion
  
• Zooming gesture locked in when view is orthographic; no interspersed rotations are permitted (prevents view from changing to perspective)
  
• Allow leading whitespace in any line
  
• Fixed primitives failing to be drawn in new submodels
  
• Fixed certain hang situations
  
• Avoid accessing Address Book to avoid scare dialog on 10.8
  

Bricksmith 2.6 has been a long time coming, but I think you'll agree there are some fantastic new features in it.

I am especially happy to announce that Bricksmith supports the new texture LDraw meta command! I am really excited to see this feature supported in an editor, and I hope to see some great new pattern parts soon. In Bricksmith 2.6, texture support is limited to planar textures only. I also don't currently support nested textures, and the drawing code has not been optimized. Lastly, there is not yet a GUI for adding the texture META. Obviously, these are all features slated for a future release. In the meantime, enjoy this TEXMAPped part:



I would also like to extend a special thanks to Ben Supnik, who contributed code for several of the great new internal features. Ben's work included the drag-a-rectangle-to-select feature and the neighbor file improvements, among others.

Bricksmith now requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later, and may be download it at <http://bricksmith.sourceforge.net/>.

Sincerely,
Allen Smith