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Jetro de Château · (This post was last modified: 2016-02-09, 9:31 by Jaco van der Molen.)

When I make instructions with LPub3D everything is fine as long as I use one step per page.
However, when I include more than one step on a page several things get out of control

The steps cling together at the vertical centre of the page.
I have found out that using 0 !LPUB RESERVE 0.1 will help me separate them, but ideally I would want the first step to start at the same location it would be if it was a single step on a page.
.
The steps cling together at the horizontal centre of the page.
I have not found a way to make PLIs stay on the same (horizontal) spot between pages (e.g. always at 2cm from the left margin). Instead they dance around the page depending on the width of the view of the model

Am I missing something or are those the current limitations of the program?

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-20, 15:28

Hi Jetro,

For me, step groups appear to be working as I expect; however, I have not tested extensively with callouts. I understand there are some issues with placement from another reported issue but I'm not sure what to make of what you are reporting.

If it's not too much trouble for you, can you send some screenshots of what you expect and what LPub3D is producing ?

Perhaps you can use an older version of the application to produce your desired output as a point of reference.

This is what I get when I process a step group page - i.e. multi-step page:

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-20, 17:51

I'm attaching three screengrabs of a file I was working on today. The first is a single step. For the second a third I simply added two steps per page. As you can see not only is the PLI in a different place in page 2, but page 2 and 3 have different horizontal PLI placement.

Some other curious things can be seen in the images.
Whenever I use the refresh button to implement any changes I have made in the text of the ldr or mpd file the file editor pane shows the file as can be seen in the first image. No big deal, because as soon as I click on the text it shows normal again.

I have no idea why in the second image the first PLI has the parts next to each other and the second below each other.

As you can see when you view the images in rapid succession, the PLI boxes "dance" all over the screen. It looks like PLI and model are glued to each other and then displayed in the horizontal centre, while the steps glued together together are displayed in the vertical centre of the page.

***Philippe Hurbain*** · 2016-01-20, 18:04

As far as I can tell, this behaviour was the same in "regular" LPub

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-20, 18:09

Indeed. And I wondered then as well if maybe I was missing something.
Looking at the page Trevor shows above I have a feeling there are some tricks I have missed.

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-20, 18:16

Ok - you may be inheriting defaults which is giving you behavior you do not expect. Or, something(s) are broken.

Try placing and playing with some globals and see if the page organization improve. Here are some I use:

Code:
!LPUB RESOLUTION GLOBAL 150 DPI

!LPUB ASSEM MODEL_SCALE GLOBAL .75000

!LPUB ASSEM MARGINS GLOBAL 0.1270 0.5000

!LPUB CALLOUT INSTANCE_COUNT FONT GLOBAL "Arial,18,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB CALLOUT STEP_NUMBER FONT GLOBAL "Arial,18,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB CALLOUT PLI PER_STEP GLOBAL FALSE

!LPUB CALLOUT BORDER GLOBAL ROUND 1 #ffffcc 0 15 MARGINS 0.0499994 0.0499994

!LPUB CALLOUT BACKGROUND GLOBAL COLOR "#ffffcc"

!LPUB CALLOUT ASSEM MARGINS GLOBAL 0.3000 0.3000

!LPUB BOM MODEL_SCALE GLOBAL 0.5000

!LPUB BOM ANNOTATE FONT GLOBAL "Arial,18,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB BOM ANNOTATE FONT_COLOR GLOBAL "#0000ff"

!LPUB BOM INSTANCE_COUNT FONT GLOBAL "Arial,18,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB BOM BACKGROUND GLOBAL COLOR "#4f9eff"

!LPUB PLI MODEL_SCALE GLOBAL 0.6000

!LPUB PLI ANNOTATE FONT GLOBAL "Arial,18,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB PLI ANNOTATE FONT_COLOR GLOBAL "#0055ff"

!LPUB PLI BORDER GLOBAL ROUND 1 Black 0 15 MARGINS 0.472439 0.07

!LPUB PLI INSTANCE_COUNT FONT GLOBAL "Arial,18,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB PLI BACKGROUND GLOBAL COLOR "#bbd1ff"

!LPUB PLI BORDER GLOBAL ROUND 1 Black 0.03125 15 MARGINS 0.05 0.05

!LPUB PAGE BORDER GLOBAL NONE 1 MARGINS 0.019685 0.019685

!LPUB PAGE SIZE GLOBAL 9.8425 11.6929

!LPUB PAGE MARGINS GLOBAL 0.0197 0.0197

!LPUB PAGE BACKGROUND GLOBAL COLOR "#4f9eff"

!LPUB PAGE DISPLAY_PAGE_NUMBER GLOBAL TRUE

!LPUB PAGE TOGGLE_PAGE_NUMBER_PLACEMENT GLOBAL FALSE

!LPUB PAGE NUMBER FONT GLOBAL "Arial,36,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB MULTI_STEP ASSEM MARGINS GLOBAL 0.3000 0.3000

!LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT GLOBAL "Arial,36,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB MULTI_STEP SEPARATOR GLOBAL 0.03125 #ffffcc 0.5 0.05

!LPUB STEP_NUMBER FONT GLOBAL "Arial,36,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0"

!LPUB PAGE DOCUMENT_COVER_IMAGE FILE GLOBAL "C:/Users/Trevor/Desktop/LPub/42039S/24HrCar.png"

!LPUB PAGE DOCUMENT_LOGO_FRONT SCALE  0.3381

!LPUB PAGE DOCUMENT_TITLE_FRONT COLOR "#000000"

!LPUB PAGE DOCUMENT_TITLE_FRONT PLACEMENT LOCAL LEFT PAGE INSIDE 0.00283286 -0.0954091

!LPUB PAGE DOCUMENT_COVER_IMAGE SCALE  1.4635

!LPUB PAGE DOCUMENT_COVER_IMAGE PLACEMENT LOCAL CENTER PAGE INSIDE 0.0319602 0.15541

!LPUB INSERT COVER_PAGE FRONT

Regards,

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-20, 21:23

Thanks Philo. This is good to know as it makes fixing a lot more efficient.

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-20, 21:26

Jetro, it could still be helpful to understand what behavior you were expecting. This way, I can better determine if there is anything to fix or just to improve.

Cheers,

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-20, 22:12

I was mainly curious to know if there was something I was doing wrong.

I would like to be able to control where PLIs go in multistep pages so they can always align in the same way horizontally (e.g 3 cm from the left border.

A would also like to be able to control the separation between PLIs and the actual model , but I suspect that may be in one of the commands you posted from your personal setup

**Jaco van der Molen** · 2016-01-21, 8:16

It seems indeed to go wrong (or rather unexpected) when using a callout on a multistep page.
I try to avoid it, but you can place the callout relative to the page. Then playing with the stepgroup placement you can get results.
The arrow from that callout does also do strange things.
I'll try to come up with an example of that.

***Philippe Hurbain*** · 2016-01-21, 9:47

Again, this is something that occured with regular LPub, callout in multistep can be done, but for sure my skull has even less hair now because I tried to do so...

Milan Vančura · 2016-01-21, 10:48

Philippe Hurbain Wrote:Again, this is something that occured with regular LPub, callout in multistep can be done, but for sure my skull has even less hair now because I tried to do so...

Exactly. After time, I've found one trick which helps at least somehow: set the callout placement in some direction "out from the multistep area". For example "right from model". This way it stops "colliding" in the internal algorithm calculating the placement of everything else in the multistep. And then, go to the source line of this callout and add an offset (two coordinates at the end of line) to put it where you want to have it.

Sounds complicated and you have to forget about your mouse, of course. But it works.

***Philippe Hurbain*** · 2016-01-21, 11:06

Yes, that's more or less what I do too. Far from perfect...

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-21, 14:29

This is good insight - Thanks !

So can I conclude that the limitations to positioning callouts is not new in LPub3D ?

I've introduced header and footer margins and page attributes so I want to confirm that those enhancements have not exposed new limitations or unexpected behavior.

Cheers,

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-21, 14:35

I've been playing around with some of the parameters and I'm getting varying results.

I hadn't though of using the "move these steps" option in the pop-up menu of a multi-step page and setting that to "left" provides the solution for the PLI placement.
What I am still not extremely happy about it the model placement. Unfortunately that depends on the PLI size, not on the distance to the left or right side of the page. Using "change assembly margins" I can tweak it to be further away from the callout, but that number is going to be different on every page. as each PLI has a different size.

All in all, I think I now have the tools I need to move the individual images around and get the page composition I want. It would be easier to get this "just right" by tweaking each page individually if I could see a grid and use grid lines to judge if I need to insert extra space to keep the model centered on the same position. Maybe I should make a background with grid lines and remove it before I publish...

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-21, 15:43

I've run into a problem with this procedure with milti-step pages in submodels. The submodel appears to inherit both the placement of the group (PLIs + models, fine with me as I want to keep things aligned in the same way) and the assembly margin. Whatever I try the pop-up for assembly margin in a submodel always open at 0.00 even if I change it previously. The code is inserted in the page, but disregarded. I have tried negative numbers to see if that would reduce the inherited assembly margin, but that results in an error.

Milan Vančura · 2016-01-21, 16:48

Yes. What I described is how (old) LPub4 behaves, too.

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-22, 8:54

I've just installed the latest version of LPub3D and tried again. This time I was successful in creating a different assembly margin in the subfile (smaller) after setting one in the main file.

Is there a way to move the rotation icon placement on a multi-step page?

**Jaco van der Molen** · 2016-01-22, 9:52

Here is another example of callout behaviour in a multistep. This time the arrow does not know where to go.
I drag its tip towards the place the submodel is in the assembly (horizontal), but after rendering the arrow points down oblique somewhere.

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-22, 13:34

Yes, 'Move Rotate Icon' in the context menu.

Cheers,

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-22, 13:59

I don't get that context menu on a multi-step page

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-22, 14:05

Right click the rotation icon and you should get this context menu:

.png

move.png (Size: 104.34 KB / Downloads: 21)

Cheers,

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-22, 14:36

Solved.

Somehow I hadn't managed to select the actual icon. I always either got the entire group or only the step model. Getting it to select appears to require clicking directly on the border. Anything else will cause the whole page group to be selected.

Can the rotate icon image be made to be selected when clicking anywhere inside the border as well?

This has brought to light a strange behaviour I have experienced several times. If I try to select the rotation icon and fail, the entire set of steps is selected. To unselect that I can click outside the group or try to select one of the step models. If I do so several times the step model will no longer stay selected. Upon selecting the step model it will briefly be outlined as selected, then the page will blink (refresh?) and the step model will be unselected. I cannot get the step model to stay selected (nor any of the other step models on the same page). This behaviour persists until I force-reload the page.

Trevor Sandy · 2016-01-22, 16:06

Jetro,

The behavior you are describing seems linked to the amount of content you're placing on the page.

When you click on a model in a step-group page, this gives the indication to display the model in the 3D Viewer. In the next major release, I will try to minimize the amount of page refresh calls which may be the reason your selection is not persisting.

In the future, I'll try to update the placement framework which is at the root of many issues but at this moment it's not a priority for me.

Cheers,

Jetro de Château · 2016-01-22, 16:39

I haven't used the 3D viewer (yet - still need to figure out what I can use it for). Maybe you could set the viewer not to be actie when the corresponding window/pane is not active (as is my case).

Jetro de Château · 2016-02-07, 23:03

I've been trying to work out what this measn and how it should work, but I'm not getting the result I need. In the image I have attached you can see I generated a callout inside a subfile and even though it has been configured to show up at the right of the model it stays at the left, no matter what I do.
How can I get it to display toward the right of the model instead of on the left?

**Jaco van der Molen** · 2016-02-08, 9:17

Jetro de Château Wrote:I've been trying to work out what this measn and how it should work, but I'm not getting the result I need. In the image I have attached you can see I generated a callout inside a subfile and even though it has been configured to show up at the right of the model it stays at the left, no matter what I do.
How can I get it to display toward the right of the model instead of on the left?

I think you can only achieve this (atm) by setting the placement relative to the step group to say "bottom right outside" (?)
Then, the callout should be movable too. Only the arrow can behave strange then, so you'll have to adjust this manually.

Jetro de Château · 2016-02-08, 17:38

Thanks Jako. I hadn't realised I could choose to set the location relative to something else. This is Perfect. I always end up moving the arrows anyway so that's just fine

**Jaco van der Molen** · 2016-02-08, 18:47

Jetro,
It gets even better. I just tried with some instructions to place a callout relative right outside a stepgroup and was able to drag it to the left and it turned up fine left of the assem of that step. I'll try to upload my example tomorrow.

**Jaco van der Molen** · 2016-02-09, 9:31

In my example there are 2 callouts on one multistep page.

With no further settings they are placed odd. (fase1)
But when I set the allocation of the first callout to horizontal, things get better: both callouts are placed neatly left of the assembly. (fase2)
Then setting the placement of the first callout to top of the assbly, things get worse again. (fase3)
Setting the placement of the second callout to top too, it is fine again. (fase4)
Setting placement to be right or left outside the assem does not have any effect. (returns to fase3)
However if I place the second callout right outside bottom of the stepgroup and drag it to the left of the assembly of step 5, things are like I kind of want them (fase5, not perfect)

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