Introducing LDCad

[Roland Melkert]

Hello all,

I'm very proud to (finally) present my new LDraw editor called LDCad.

It's a grid based editor (like MLCad is) but with modern rendering and (hopefully) some additional editing features which should make things easier.

Long story short, check "LDCad 1.0 beta 1" out here:

http://www.melkert.net/LDCad

Hope you like it and don't hold back on comments / requests etc.

Roland

[Philippe Hurbain]

Hi Roland,

I have tested LDCad a bit. There are many things I like (eg. relative grid), and... some I don't Among these is the forced layered structure, and the non-configurable grid sizes. They make building Technic (especially studless modern Technic) pretty difficult: in this kind of models there is no preferred direction, and grid size is the same in all directions (I'd like to be able to use a 10:10:10 grid!).

Otherwise it works smoothly on my machine, the only minot interface issue I noticed is that the LDCad window is not redrawn after a focus switch to another application.

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks for reporting, I seem to have forgotten the grid stepping management dialog I will add it in the next version. For now you could consider editing the main.cfg file by hand, inside it at the bottom you'll find:

Code:

<moveStepping>
Fine->1,1,1, 5,4,5
Small->5,4,5, 4,6,4
Normal->10,8,10, 4,6,4
Large->20,24,20, 5,5,5

If you add the line (while the application is closed)

Code:

Custom->10,10,10, 5,5,5

That stepping will be available next time you start the application.

First 3 numbers are x, y, z stepping. The later 3 are the frequencies of the helper lines (every 5th line is white instead of gray in this example).



I'm not sure what you mean with 'layered structure' unless you mean the '2D grid mode's". If so there are some things on my todo list for improving working with grid mode's (multiple (ortho) views being the most important one.), and in the (far) future there will be some sort of (limited/self learning) 'auto snap/guidance' function.



The redraw issue is most likely the result of the 'Reuse front buffer' option in the main options menu, but I don't think your issue is worth disabling this optimization. Disabling it will cause considerable higher rendering times especially when many parts (or mpd submodels) are being displayed in the part bin.

[Philippe Hurbain]

>
> That stepping will be available next time you
> start the application.

Ah - great, thanks!
>
> I'm not sure what you mean with 'layered
> structure' unless you mean the '2D grid mode's".
Yes, that's what I mean...

> If so there are some things on my todo list for
> improving working with grid mode's (multiple
> (ortho) views being the most important one.), and
> in the (far) future there will be some sort of
> (limited/self learning) 'auto snap/guidance'
> function.
Among other possibilities would be a keyboard shortcut to move in the orthogonal direction, and/or possibility to pull an additionnal arrow on the editing pin.

>
> The redraw issue is most likely the result of the
> 'Reuse front buffer' option in the main options
> menu, but I don't think your issue is worth
> disabling this optimization. Disabling it will
> cause considerable higher rendering times
> especially when many parts (or mpd submodels) are
> being displayed in the part bin.

Yeah, it's no big deal since the window is refreshed once you mouse over it.