LDCad 1.3a (win+linux)

[Roland Melkert]

I just completed and uploaded LDCad 1.3a.

It's mostly a maintenance update changes include:

• Minor bugfixes
  
• Part bin tweaks (added technic motor and mindstorms groups)
  
• New part snapping info for panels, motors and mindstorms
  
• Templates for eletric cables
  

I also made a short tutorial video to illustrate how to create/work with submodels (mpd's).



As always you can download it at: melkert.net/LDCad

This will probably be the last 1.3 version, so unless a very severe problem pops up I'll be working on 1.4 from now on.

It's main feature will be scripted animation, here's a small teaser

[edit] forgot the site link

[Yannick Losser]

That's really a great software, thanks.

Note: it works perfectly on Archlinux 64bits.

[Roland Melkert]

Hi all,

I noticed I made a minor mistake in the nxt/ev3 cables. But I don't want to release a 1.3b version for it.

So instead I made a short clip on how to correct it yourself if you need it.

[Roland Melkert]

Hi all,

Someone pointed out that the 'generic' Linux version of 1.3a won't work on Debian because of the outdated glibc that distribution uses.

So I went and compiled separate versions for people wanting to use LDCad on Debian (7.5).

http://www.melkert.net/action/download/L...32.tar.bz2

http://www.melkert.net/action/download/L...64.tar.bz2

I haven't had the time to test them extensively, so please let me know if it works or not.

I would also be interested to know if the new Debian builds also work on systems currently using the generic builds. Because if so I could just promote the Debian builds to generic and use that setup for future releases instead of having to build 4 linux versions.

[Richard Speyer]

Works on Slackware 14.1

[Michael Horvath]

Firstly I would like to say that the changes you've made to the program have finally made it usable for me. The spin rotation, 2D perspective view, part rotation "hotspots", and other camera controls are really great!!

Some minor niggles however.



1. In the image above the unofficial flat plates should be light gray but they appear darker for unknown reasons.
2. Could you put the name of the model in the program title bar?
3. I couldn't find a way to double click on a model/part and automatically open it in LDCad. Is this possible like it is for MLCad and LDView?

Thanks!!

[Roland Melkert]

1. In the image above the unofficial flat plates should be light gray but they appear darker for unknown reasons.

Are you sure they don't use a hardcoded color? Could you post the part link.

2. Could you put the name of the model in the program title bar?

I'll add that to my to do list for 1.4

3. I couldn't find a way to double click on a model/part and automatically open it in LDCad. Is this possible like it is for MLCad and LDView?

Current version has no instance protection (and there is a known 'open with...' bug), Alternatively you could drag and drop files in a running LDCad though. I'll try to improve this in a future version.

Thanks for the feedback

[Michael Horvath]

The affected part is one of Tore's "boxed" parts. You can get them here:

http://home.swipnet.se/simlego/ldraw/ldb...dboxer.htm

[Michael Horvath]

For instance, "b\91405.dat", which I've attached.

I think it might be a BFC issue, since the faces aren't shaded green in LDView.

Not sure how to fix it since it references the regular "box.dat" which should be BFC certified.

[Travis Cobbs]

BFC requires the part itself to be BFC-certified. There's no way to know if a subpart (or primitive like here) needs to be inverted or not, to it's impossible to do BFC on subparts and primitives if the top-level part isn't BFC-certified.

[Roland Melkert]

The part seems to be recognized as being at part level (seen in the log), yet it's normals seem to get scaled anyway.

I'll fix this for the next version.

In the meantime if you add

0 UNOFFICIAL PART

to the file in the B\ folder it will render correctly, because that way it doesn't have to do the second guessing which leads to the bug at the moment.

edit: it seems this bug also causes the part to not show up in the (search) bin. This is because they are not seen as true/real parts at the moment.

[Michael Horvath]

1. The way the zoom feature zooms in slower and slower the closer you get to the object is usually neat. But for a very large model like Datsville it kind of peters out after a while and I can't get any closer to my point of interest. Not sure what to do about that.
2. Could you give the scrollbar handles a larger minimum size? Again, Datsville has so many models that the handle gets almost too small to grip with the mouse.
3. Which keys are used for raising and lowering an object, assuming that the 'Map Arrow Keys to Screen' mode is turned off.

Thanks.

[Roland Melkert]

1: I'll try to improve that in the next version.
2: If there are many items in the bin, it's best to apply a filter when looking for a specific part/model as it also reduces render time/work.
3: Left/right/up/down are used on the current grid axis' if you set the grid to front or side, you will be able to control the Y-axis.

[Michael Horvath]

2: If there are many items in the bin, it's best to apply a filter when looking for a specific part/model as it also reduces render time/work.

I meant in the model list in the top right. Also, have you thought of maybe indenting the list based on the nested level?

3: Left/right/up/down are used on the current grid axis' if you set the grid to front or side, you will be able to control the Y-axis.

I'm really missing the Home and End buttons like in LDraw and MLCad.

[Roland Melkert]

The top right session list could use some improvement indeed, but personally I only use it when working on a single mpd or something. The bin list is way more practical, but I'll see if I can improve it somehow.

Home (snap to grid) and end (switch to previous session) are used for different things in LDCad, cause imho you'll need those two functions way more. I could experiment with ctrl/shift arrow combinations for controlling the dead axis though?

[Michael Horvath]

I think I found a bug.

The program is freezing sometimes during the model loading stage. I think it happens when you are using one of the orthographic camera views.

[Roland Melkert]

Does the whole app hang (so no response to camera rotate etc) or does it seem like it's waiting to load forever (you can still edit already loaded models rotate the camera etc).

If it's the second thing it could be your pc is just still busy prepping / rendering. The ortho mode can be quite a bit slower with rendering due to the fact edges are rendered for everything all the time ( no depth, so no max render distance. Loading datsville can take quite some time on older hardware (it's loading/prepping >450MB of stuff)

[Michael Horvath]

You're right. It was stuck in the loading/prepping phase and I just needed to wait apparently.

[Roland Melkert]

Hi all,

I'm close to finishing the first beta of the new 1.4 version. If anyone has some problems or found bugs while using the current 1.3a, please tell me so I might be able to include a fix for it in the upcoming version.

I already fixed all known bugs, except this one, which I can't seem to reproduce at the moment.


Second thing...

The major feature of 1.4 is scripted animation using lua. So in order to make your own animations you need to write scripts using the lua interface api I've setup.

My question is how much documentation would be needed to get people started? Or might just a couple of examples be enough?

Thing is don't want to waste time on writing documentation no one is going to read (I learned that the hard way with LD4DStudio), so I'm hoping to find the middle ground.

Minimal example of a script:

Code:

function reg()

  local ani=ldc.animation('Example')
  ani:setEvent('frame', 'onFrame')
end

function onFrame()

  local ani=ldc.animation.getCurrent()
  local grp=ldc.group('Group 1')
  local angle=ani:getFrameNr()/ani:getFrameCnt() * 360
  local posOri=ldc.matrix()
  
  posOri:setRotate(angle, 0, 1, 0)
  grp:setOri(posOri)
end

reg()

This will (absolutely) rotate group 1 around the y axis once during the time of playback (5 seconds by default)

[Roland Melkert]

I would appreciate it if any Linux users of LDCad could check to see if they have one of the following font files on their system:

Namely one of these:

verdana
FreeSans
DejaVuSans

and one of these (mono spaced)

DejaVuSansMono
cour
FreeMono
FreeSans

I need to know this cause I discovered the availability of fonts differs greatly per distribution. The upcoming 1.4 needs to find at least one font in both lists to be able to render text correctly.

If none in the list are present on your system could you please list the ones that are available on your installation.

The font files of interest should be in /usr/share/fonts/truetype . That's the location LDCad (recursively) looks for them, the extension might be .ttf or .ttc.

Thanks in advance.

[Richard Speyer]

On Slackware 14.1 I have:
DejaVuSans
verdana

DejaVuSansMono
cour

But they are in /usr/share/fonts/TTF

The fc-list command will list all installed fonts, including those in ~/.fonts with the full path.

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks,

Did not know about the TTF variant, Kubuntu, Debian and Suse use the truetype subfolder only the contents are very different so I assumed it was the general location. I'll add the TTF variant to the search function.

Might also add an .cfg option to indicate additional locations and or use the fc-list for Linux versions.

[Mario Pascucci]

Hi Roland.

In Fedora (20):
FreeSans & FreeMono
directory - /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/
package - gnu-free-sans-fonts & gnu-free-mono-fonts

DejaVuSans & DejaVuSansMono
/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/
dejavu-sans-fonts & dejavu-sans-mono-fonts

Other free fonts:
Liberation Sans & Liberation Mono
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/
liberation-sans-fonts & liberation-mono-fonts

From Liberation fonts info:
"The Liberation Fonts are intended to be replacements for the three most commonly used fonts on Microsoft systems: Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New"

Tomorrow I'll see on a CentOS/RedHat ES server.

Feel free to ask for more test/info

Cheers

Mario

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks,

Seems the truetype/TTF sub folders aren't reliably at all.

I'll just search the whole "/usr/share/fonts" recursively from now on.

[Mario Pascucci]

Hi Roland.

RedHat ES and CentOS are identical to Fedora.

If you need a specific font in a software, take a look to the Liberation Fonts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts

These fonts are intended as a 1:1 replacement with Arial, Times New Roman and Courier, but are free to distribute and free to include in a software distribution, even if software is commercial. It is required only an attribution note and a copyright note for fonts, nothing else.

Mario

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks,

I don't need a particular font at the moment, users can change them by editing the gui/default/main.gui file, like so.

Code:

[fonts]
partBin_search=DejaVuSans,FreeSans,verdana,16
selInfoPanel_text=DejaVuSans,FreeSans,verdana,18
partInfoPanel_textS1=DejaVuSansMono,FreeMono,cour,FreeSans,18
partInfoPanel_textS2=DejaVuSansMono,FreeMono,cour,FreeSans,14
etc..

But I needed to setup a default which (hopefully) works on all popular distributions.