LDCad GUI thoughts

[Roland Melkert]

Recently I've been playing with the LDCad GUI. And I would appreaciate people's thoughts on the tweaks I made so far in 1.4 Alpha.

This is how it looks the current stable version 1.3a


This is how it now looks in my latest 1.4 build


I replaced the fixed font rendering with 'real' freetype font rendering, it's using Verdana at the moment (and FreeSans on Linux) but suggestions are welcome.

I also attempted to create better part bin root group pictures and app icon.


thoughts?

[Santeri Piippo]

It certainly looks a lot better to me and I highly approve of the new category icons!

[Willy Tschager]

Like the new font. What are you using for the green back-up arrow in the left-hand top corner of the color wheel? Is it a .png?

w.

[Roland Melkert]

What are you using for the green back-up arrow in the left-hand top corner of the color wheel? Is it a .png?

Yes all used pictures are RGB(A) png's. I made that one eons ago using realdraw. It's the same as in 1.3 though so it might also be in need of an update.

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks, it's tough trying to abstractly picture something in only ~200 square pixels

[Michael Heidemann]

Your changes are real improvements!!

[Stephan Meisinger]

like those changes!

Btw: I would love to see "moving" in 3D while both mouse buttons are clicked.
is already in:
-> left mouse button: changing angle
-> mouse wheel: zoom
new mode:
-> both mouse buttons: moving forward/backwards/strafe left and right along the current angle

[Willy Tschager]

Would you send them over to have a look?

w.

[Roland Melkert]

They are loaded from disk, you'll find them in the gui/default and partBin/default subfolders of the standalone archive version (or in users/<user>/appData/roaming/etc etc etc for the setup version)

You could also open the gui.sf and/or partBin.sf files (in seeds subfolder) using any zip reader

[Roland Melkert]

Thats a good idea, I might add that.

In the meantime you can already move the view using leftclick + shift (rel to viewport) or leftclick+shift+ctrl (rel to grid). You could also use rightclick with the same keys only differences with that is it will ignore the model (left only works on the background).

[Willy Tschager]

Try these. You're obviously free to dump them if you dislike them.

w.

[Michael Horvath]

One of the things I am missing is a way to view the text code of a model and step through it like in MLCAD. Did I simply miss the text code when it already exists? Thanks.

Also, I'd like a mode where the part movement keys retain their orientation regardless of the view settings. E.g. the arrow keys and Home/End should always move in the same direction.

Lastly, the middle mouse button confuses me. In MLCAD and LDview holding down the middle mouse button pans the camera, but in LDCad it brings up a movement menu.

[Roland Melkert]

I like the color change in the colorbin/partbin (mono) ones. I think I'm going to use those.

I also like you horizontally flipped the 'back up' arrows, much more logical. Can't believe I didn't notice that before

Thanks Willy.

[Roland Melkert]

When I compile the dev versions, there is a very simple text dialog included I use for editing part snapping info. It's passive (only displays the ldraw tree/file content for the selected node.) but it might be better then nothing and I could add more functionality later on. So maybe I should include it in the release builds.

The key directions should (by default) always move along the grid in a user orientated matter. So this might be a bug, I'll have to check that.

The middle button tries to open a dialog relevant to the selection/stuff under the mouse. If it opened the move dialog you probably had your mouse over the editing pins movement arrows.

[Michael Horvath]

I meant movement commands that are fixed relative to the scene, not the camera. Like in LDraw or MLCAD.

[Roland Melkert]

You want the opposite then, disabling the option I referred to (prefs/editing/map arrow keys to screen) should give you what you want.

[Michael Horvath]

Yes, thanks.

[Michael Horvath]

Here's an idea: why not use a tabbed editing environment like a Web browser, and add forward and back buttons to navigate to previous models. That would take a lot of work though.

[Roland Melkert]

Tabs in the editor might be fun for a few open models, but like you say models like datsville have hundreds of models. But maybe some sort of bookmark system (in order to limit the number of tabs) would be helpful.

I'll have to think about it, maybe I'll try something 1.4 beta 2 or later.

Thanks for the idea.

[Jason Smith]

I like 1.4 as well. The bin icons are much nicer IMO, the font looks a little more "pro". Thank you so much for this development, any change and any work on it is much appreciated.