(2022-02-02, 14:24)Philippe Hurbain Wrote: This would indeed be the ultimate flexibility but so far I failed to imagine a real life use case?
And I guess that's really the point—if you know what the naming scheme is to be, you can create and combine the primitives as needed, when unforeseen uses arise. (Such as the use case that started this thread: you could create a sector 3-4 primitive without having to propose something new.)
For even more flexibility, you could imagine a type of metadata where there is an underlying curved geometry, such as a cylinder, in a part file. You could then map any tri or quad to this invisible object, so that the curvature is generated by rendering programs. This would be useful for parts with lots of interrupted circles and cylinders (like 4208), or patterns on curved surfaces like the minifig head.
But of course, that goes beyond primitives and into what I imagine as an "LDraw 2.0" specification. :-)