LPub3D 1.0.0

[Trevor Sandy]

Greetings,

As there has been some interest in the LPub3DViewer prototype screenshots I posted some time ago, I have industrialized my additions and uploaded version 1.0 to LPub3D on SourceForge.net.

Here are most of the added features/enhancements:


  LPub128.png (Size: 12.9 KB / Downloads: 2)

LPub3D 1.0.0.320.2
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-Integrated 3D Viewer powered by LeoCAD
-Set ROTSTEP (step rotation) meta using 3D Viewer
-Fade previous step's parts
-Use any LDraw colour as fade colour
-Manage colour parts for complete part fade
-Unlimited PLI part annotations
-Split the BOM (divide parts over number of BOM occurrences)
-Formatted front and back cover pages
-Automatically generate formatted cover pages
-POV/L3P high-quality rendered instructions
-Customizable front and back cover pages
-Text and picture (e.g. logo) front and back page attributes
-Customizable content page header and footer
-LDraw editor line numbers
-64/32-bit automatic installer
-Automatic check for updates
-Qt 4.8.6
-Bugfixes and robustness improvements

Screenshots:

   
   
   
   

Cheers,
Trevor

[Gerald Lasser]

Thanks for sharing this version of LPUB! It is great to see this very nice piece of SW improving!

There are quite a few branches now, I hope there is a chance to get all those nice features under one roof!

I downloaded it immediately and will try it in the evening!

[Trevor Sandy]

Excellent. Enjoy!.

Trevor

[Gerald Lasser]

After some initial stuff done with the LPub3D I noticed the following:

- It crashed once when I tried to add a divider, but in retrospective I think I was too impatient as the 3D View was still being rendered before the pop-up menu was shown. If I wait for the 3D view to update this issue did no occur anymore.

- When I choose to annotate all the parts in the BOM, my BOM Layout changes. If there are no annotations I could not resize the BOM anymore.

Regarding the ROTSTEP preview:
- I would really like to have the same view in the 3D mode as I see it at the current step. The standard render looks to be at 23.5°/45°. I did not find a way to get the same view in the document and in the 3D preview. I could not save the camera position. The different views make it difficult to judge.
- Having the "handles" to rotate it is a good way
- When updating the LPUB doc, I think a "I am working" Icon would not be bad, especially for larger models.

Thanks!

[Willy Tschager]

Good to hear from you Trevor! Would you please contact me through email at willy[DOT]tschager(AT)tin[DOT]it to discuss the inclusion of LPub3D in the upcoming AIOI?

Thanks, w.

[Trevor Sandy]

Hello Gerald - I appreciate the feedback. See my remarks below.

- It crashed once when I tried to add a divider, but in retrospective I think I was too impatient as the 3D View was still being rendered before the pop-up menu was shown. If I wait for the 3D view to update this issue did no occur anymore.

Ok. I'll take a look and try to reproduce; and do something to prevent the crash.

- When I choose to annotate all the parts in the BOM, my BOM Layout changes. If there are no annotations I could not resize the BOM anymore.

Ah, you have discovered an important oversight! I did not include an option (or any logic) to 'turn off' anotations. I will correct this shortly. So I am clear on the behavior you are encountering (and to share with others), do you mind sharing your steps to reproduce - here or on the LP3D sourceforge discussion board?

Regarding the ROTSTEP preview:
- I would really like to have the same view in the 3D mode as I see it at the current step. The standard render looks to be at 23.5°/45°. I did not find a way to get the same view in the document and in the 3D preview. I could not save the camera position. The different views make it difficult to judge.

I agree, this is on my TODO list. My design requirements was only to be able to manipulate the ROTSTEP coordinates. However I too believe, the doc and 3d image views should match exactly.

- Having the "handles" to rotate it is a good way
- When updating the LPUB doc, I think a "I am working" Icon would not be bad, especially for larger models.

Indeed, I think it's necessary to be able to individually manipulate all 3 coordinates.
Regarding the 'working' icon, I agree. I have already implemented a progress bar fremework - currently used for printing and generating fade colour parts. It is also on my TODO list to hook it into the display page function.

Best,
Trevor

[Trevor Sandy]

Hello Gerald, I updated the PLI Annotation feature set to allow turning off annotations. Use Help=>Check For Updates to implement.

[Gerald Lasser]

sorry for my late reply, I had to churn out 30 instructions for a charity event our LUG is supporting.

I could reproduce the issue of the crash, I will try it with the 1.1.0 and send you also the file and a description how I get it to crash.

I will try the BOM resizing as well and share it on sourceforge.

Gerald

[Merlijn Wissink]

EDIT: oops, this was supposed to be in the newest LPub3D topic. Sorry!

--------------

Hey,

I'm working on instructions for a big Technic model (~2700+ parts). I currently have a complete LDraw file of the model except rotation-steps (it's not my model btw). In the past, I would now start to add the rotation-steps in MLcad. I don't like MLcad, it's old and slow but I was able to add rotation steps fairly easily.

Now, since I read about LPub3D I was eager to try out all the new features, including the built-in rotation-step feature. I'm still not 100% sure how it works, but it looks pretty nice and useful. However, when I press the "add rotation step" button, LPub3D crashes. I don't think that should happen? Any chance you can quickly fix this, or should I just temporarily switch back to MLcad?

Anyway, it's great to finally see someone working on LPub again. It's a very nice piece of software. Thanks so much!

[Trevor Sandy]

Hi Merlijn,

I can't reproduce your issue - see my screenshots below. I am using LPub3D 1.2.3 on Windows 10.

Please let me know the following so I can better understand you environment:

- LDraw install path - see Preferences menu
- LPub3DViewer-Library path - see Preferences menu
- Installation OS, version and architecture (e.g. x86, x64) - About menu
- LPub3D version - see About menu

For the screenshots below, I used a model with ~1200 parts build on LDCad.

If you prefer, you can send me a copy of your model and I'll try to reproduce your issue. You can see my email in the LPub3D About menu.

Screenshots:
   

   

   

   

Thanks,
Trevor

[Merlijn Wissink]

Thanks for your reply. This morning, I tried it again and I discovered that it only crashes when I try to add a rotation step at the very last step, at least on a few other (random) pages it didn't crash. Stupid that I didn't think about trying any other pages.

Anyway, it's still a bug I think, just a little less important. So, I'm also runnung Windows 10 (Pro) 64bit, the newest LPub3D (1.2.3 R.443 B.2)

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hi there,

I set
0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT GLOBAL "Arial Black,72,-1,5,87,0,0,0,0,0"
0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT_COLOR GLOBAL"#000000"
at the top file (in an MPD)

And then this

0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT LOCAL "Arial Black,48,-1,5,87,0,0,0,0,0"
0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT_COLOR LOCAL "#00007f"

But it does not seem to work.
Is it broken?

[Trevor Sandy]

I set
0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT GLOBAL "Arial Black,72,-1,5,87,0,0,0,0,0"
0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT_COLOR GLOBAL"#000000"
at the top file (in an MPD)

And then this

0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT LOCAL "Arial Black,48,-1,5,87,0,0,0,0,0"
0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT_COLOR LOCAL "#00007f"

But it does not seem to work.
Is it broken?

Indeed it is broken, as you may know this is an existing bug in LPub 4. In fact there are several issues with changing and/or moving multi-step numbers.

Actually, I fixed these issues (and added the ability to insert a model rotate graphic and a new background choice: gradient) since the beginning of August; however, I have not released these updates as I was also working on extending the multi-thread capability to improve the display page performance.

You can expect these updates in the next minor-version release.

Here are some screenshots of your scenario as well as the completed fixes and functionalities.

   

   

   

[Philippe Hurbain]

Awesome work, eager to be able to test this!

[Jaco van der Molen]

Awesome work, eager to be able to test this!

Agreed! Very eager.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Though I think I once had a model where it did work. Or perhaps that was not multistep, can't remember.