LDCad 1.4 Beta 2 (win+linux)

[Jason Smith]

Right on, glad it wasn't too elusive an issue.

[Roland Melkert]

I made a third animation tutorial clip while testing Beta 2 some more myself.

If anyone would like to see a clip of something specific please let me know.

[Jason Smith]

Is there any way to get the program to keep the parts bin filters upon restart?

[Roland Melkert]

At the moment the filters are not remembered per view, only the default dialog settings (except the text) are kept between sessions.

With 1.5 I'm planning some changes to the bins so I might also change / expand the filter io.

An alternative could be making your own bin groups, but you would need to get pretty familiar with the pbg files to do it.

[Magnus Forsberg]

Is there a way to make the part icons differ from library icons?
I never seam to learn when I could grab a part, or if a click just opens a subgroup.

Why does it loose the set rotation point every time I zoom?
I want to choose a brick in my model and then have it to be the rotationcenter of every move I make

[Roland Melkert]

Is there a way to make the part icons differ from library icons?

There is if the group has a png associated with it, other wise the statusbar text should give insight on the item.

Maybe I'll also add some extra indication to group 'tiles' when applying the planned bin changes for 1.5, thanks for the suggestion.

Why does it loose the set rotation point every time I zoom?

The zoom function, by default, tries to keep the thing your mouse points to at the same place (zoom to cursor). If you don't like that behavior you can change it from the prefs/editing menu to plain center of screen zooming (zoom to center) for example.

Also to center on a brick press 'c' while it's selected.

[Philippe Hurbain]

The more I play with LDCad, the more I like it... I created a Technic model with a lot of weird angles, and thanks to snapping it was quite easy (and reliability of the program itself is excellent).

I am now trying to add a PF-M motor with cable, that was easy enough but now I want to properly route the cable but I can't seem to be able to add control points. Using insert key as described here does *something* but I can't see any new editable control points ?

[Roland Melkert]

Glad you are liking it.

Besides a known (and fixed in the upcoming version) bug concerning wrong editing pin position when clicking on e.g. the elec brick part of the motor, all should work like described in the 1.2 intro text.

Only difference with the 1.2 version is you now should use the nesting mode after the generic placement is done. While in nesting the control points become visible and whenever you press insert while one is currently (indirectly through a group) selected a new one will be added after the selected one (or in front if it's the last point in a non looped path).

It does not matter which nesting level (the 'insert into' model, although best left at toplevel) you are using as the insertion code makes an exception on that while inserting path points. That way you don't have to worry about it, while modelling multiple hoses through nesting.

If this is not working for you you might have something else selected when pressing insert, maybe the hose's skin? (noticeable by the text 'click anywhere to insert new skin meta').

I'm planning to release the definitive 1.4 this weekend, I could also upload a small video clip demonstrating generic path template usage it might make things more clear (as the current pneuhose demo clip is somewhat old and I only move the start/end points around in it)

[Philippe Hurbain]

If this is not working for you you might have something else selected when pressing insert, maybe the hose's skin? (noticeable by the text 'click anywhere to insert new skin meta').

OK, that was the problem - I was inserting new skin meta (what the purpose of this?). But it's quite misleading, since you are working on cable it's tempting to select it!
Another question: is it possible to close current file? to revert it to previous saved state?

[Roland Melkert]

I was inserting new skin meta (what the purpose of this?).

Skin meta's are used to define what LDraw part is used to plot the path and how it's to spread out etc. You can have multiple skin meta's as a path might need multiple dynamically placed LDraw parts (e.g. the space flex hose which has a left, mid and right one).

is it possible to close current file? to revert it to previous saved state?

Not currently, but due to the amount of people asking for this lately I'm strongly considering adding full file reload (which is also needed for closing files) to 1.5. In the mean time you could just 'undo' all the way back to the start as there is no limit on the number of undo steps.

[Merlijn Wissink]

I've been using LDCad a bit more lately, and I start to like it quite a lot. Great job!
To really get the hang of all the ins and outs of the program, I'm now building set 76023 The Tumbler in LDCad.

So far, it's going quite well. I was wondering if you could incorporate a mirror building mode like in SR3D Builder. So, when the user starts the mirror building, the user can place a mirror and then everything that's palced on one side, gets mirrored on the other side.
I would really like such a feature in LDCad.

Btw, is there a setting to change the mouse-wheel button behaviour? Currently, when I click the mousewheel, it opens up the selection properties, but I'd like it to be what is currently shift+RMB.

[Roland Melkert]

76023 has lots of angled things, should be fun just remember 'o' is your best tool for angled placement even when part snapping is enabled.

I was wondering if you could incorporate a mirror building mode like in SR3D Builder.

Seems like a useful feature and shouldn't be too hard to implement unless you also want auto left/right wings etc. I'll put it on my nice to have to do list.

is there a setting to change the mouse-wheel button behaviour?

Currently all key/mouse bindings are static, but I did plan to add custom key binding to 1.5 but at the moment I'm leaning towards implementing full file reloading first. So maybe 1.6 or maybe I'll add just a simple 'what does the middle button do' multiple choice option to 1.5.

[Owen Dive]

Seems like a useful feature and shouldn't be too hard to implement unless you also want auto left/right wings etc. I'll put it on my nice to have to do list.

Such a feature will need auto left/right parts otherwise it becomes distinctly less useful.

It seems that LDCad has come a long way indeed since I last played with it - I really must give it another go.

EDIT: And now having read through the 1.4 release thread, I'll definitely make my next LDraw project in LDCad (though that next project might be some way away yet - if only I had the time to spare to play with this, and build physically, and do all my other hobbies!)

Owen.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Tried again to understand a tiny bit more the animations... and failed miserably.
I tried to animate the attached model using groups, but top rotor doesn't rotate correctly (it starts rotated 90°). Suspecting (wrongly) it might be an interaction with submodels, I flattened the model... to get a result even worse. Looking at the propriety of the groups, I guess I understand what happens: their default orientation is not identity, so the setOri wipes out their initial rotation. I guess I could solve this with a matrix multiplication, but it's much more complicated than I expected...

Otherwise, I tried also something else: animate flexible parts. I hoped that if I included a flex part path point to a group, this path point would be animated too with the group... doesn't work!

[Philippe Hurbain]

Got it to work, sort of: I redefined groups starting with parts that had identity rotation matrix (fortunately it was possible here...), so the groups inherit that orientation. But clearly that's not the right way to do things...

[Roland Melkert]

Tried again to understand a tiny bit more the animations... and failed miserably.
I tried to animate the attached model using groups, but top rotor doesn't rotate correctly (it starts rotated 90°). Suspecting (wrongly) it might be an interaction with submodels, I flattened the model... to get a result even worse. Looking at the propriety of the groups, I guess I understand what happens: their default orientation is not identity, so the setOri wipes out their initial rotation. I guess I could solve this with a matrix multiplication, but it's much more complicated than I expected...

Yes the setOri call is absolute and thus will only act as expected on groups/references using an identity matrix. To compensate for this you need to buffer the original orientation in the onStart function, like so:

Code:

function onStart()
  --grp ori bug prevention
  topRotorBaseOri=ldc.subfile():getGroup('TopRotor'):getOri()  
end

And then apply it on a per frame like so:

Code:

local ax2=mainSf:getGroup('TopRotor')
  ori:setRotate(-angle, 0, 1, 0)
  ori:mulBA(topRotorBaseOri)
  ax2:setOri(ori)

Note: I've flipped the sign of angle to make it spin the right way.

You could also buffer the group references in the start event, but this being a very small script it won't matter much speed wise.

Otherwise, I tried also something else: animate flexible parts. I hoped that if I included a flex part path point to a group, this path point would be animated too with the group... doesn't work!

Not yet indeed, I need to make some adjustments path/spring generation stuff in order to make that useful (fast enough etc). This is something I hope to do for 1.6 as part of the animation/script improvements.