Unoffcial part not showing up in LPub3D in the PLI and BOM

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hi all,

What does LPub3D require to count and render an unofficial part, because I have this part not showing up in the PLI and BOM of a model. It is part 20310 (Design Brick) mocked up by Magnus.
Where ever I put it, LPub3D just won't count it nor render it in PLI and BOM.
It is rendered in de assembly images though, so it can find the part.
It is in the folder C:\Users\Public\Documents\LDraw\Parts
I manually added it to the parts.lst file like this:

Code:

20310.dat                  Brick  1 x  1 with Capital Open Stud (Mock-up)

Please help! I need some instructions done this weekend... :-(

Thanks.

P.S. LPub 4.0.0.11 (on the same system) renders and counts it just fine in the assembly images, PLI and BOM

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hmm, something very very strange just happened. The part showed up!
The preview in LPub3D did NOT show the part in PLI and BOM. Refresh all caches did not help either.

But.... making a PDF of the instructions suddenly generated it!
Returning to LPub3D the part is there!

How?

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hmm, it happened again. Used an unofficial part and it refuses to show up in the PLI and BOM.
In this case it did work before and suddenly it is gone.

What could be causing this?

The most frustrating thing is that part 20310.dat in the model that worked yesterday now does not show up anymore too.
Rendering a PDF of PNG does not solve it now :-(

[Jaco van der Molen]

OK, either I am going crazy or my laptop is playing tricks on me.
The 20310.dat is there again after opening another model and then reopening the model the part is in.

What I see now when I hover the mouse over the part in the PLI and BOM is that the description is different from what I have in my parts.lst in my LDraw folder.

"Brick 1 x 1 with Scroll with Open Stud" which is the name of it on the Parttracker:
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cgi?s=20310

Where does LPub3D get that from?

The version I have is a mock-up that Magnus Forsberg made for me in this thread
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?t...4#pid20754
It has description "Brick with Capital Open Stud (Mock-up).

[Jaco van der Molen]

EUREKA! Found it!

LPub3D looks for unofficial parts in ldrawunf.zip in the folder LDraw3DViewer-Library
(on my system C:\Users\Public\Documents\LDraw\LDraw3DViewer-Library)

I downloaded it again in LPub3D using Tools > Refresh LDraw unofficial parts
and saw that the part I use was not in the zip and thus not on the parttracker.

3039pcb2.dat
Where Grey in "Slope Brick 45 2 x 2 with Radar and Disk Slot Grey Pattern" needs to change to Black.

Philo once modified it for me from the official 3039pcb.dat which has indeed Grey pattern. But there is a black version too.
So, Philo, if you read this: can you upload 3039pcb2.dat to the tracker and modify the description too? Once again, I thank you.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Philo once modified it for me from the official 3039pcb.dat which has indeed Grey pattern. But there is a black version too.
So, Philo, if you read this: can you upload 3039pcb2.dat to the tracker and modify the description too? Once again, I thank you.

Here it is... http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...039pce.dat
Was not uploaded before because the pattern is not really matching the real part!

[Steve Barile]

Hi All,
I am having the same issue.  I have custom LDraw parts for altBricks and when I tried to render the model the element will render in the model but not the BOM or the PLI.  But this case is different because it is not official or unofficial. :-)  
This sounds like a bug. Is there a way to get these elements rendered in the BOM and PLI if its in the model?
BTW Will the LDraw board except/add non LEGO parts?  I'd love to have the altBricks element included in the LDraw download. 
Steve Barile
altBricks

[Steve Barile]

I tried to add the file names to the pliSubstituteParts.lst file and no help. And copied the files to the unoffical directory, no help. Did I understand that LPub3D is checking the zip file?
Steve

[Jaco van der Molen]

Yes Steve, that is (still) correct.
Unofficial parts do render in the model, but sometimes not in the PLI and BOM because they are not in the zip.

[Trevor Sandy]

I tried to add the file names to the pliSubstituteParts.lst file and no help.  And copied the files to the unoffical directory, no help.   Did I understand that LPub3D is checking the zip file?
Steve

Hi Steve,

Unofficial parts are automatically added to the LPub3D archive which is then loaded into memory on application startup. When LPub3D checks the PLI list it is verified against the part list in memory; therefore, if for some reason your part was not updated to the archive file, it is unlikely to be represented in memory and will not be detected/added to the PLI. This scenario is not common and should only exist if there is some path or configuration issues preventing automatic update of the LPub3D archive library.

From your description above, a more common cause for not seeing your unofficial part in the PLI/BOM is due to the fact that there is no meta line in the part file stating that it is a part. LPub3D recognizes the LDraw standards 0 !LDRAW_ORG Unofficial_Part and 0 !LDRAW_ORG Unofficial Part, and the LDCad generated meta 0 UNOFFICIAL PART. 

Cheers,

[Bertrand Lequy]

Hello, I'm did not want to create a new topic, because my problem is quite the same.

I used a custom part ( a self made 3068bpr0201.dat, because it does not exist in the part tracker right now) and it isn't rendered in the PLI, but is rendered in the assembly nevertheless.

I've read this post and tried some solutions, but it still doesn't work.

I've manually put my file ine the LDRAWunf.zip file but, it did not work either.


EDIT : I just saw that the 60616a part did not show in the PLI, even if it's in the original LDRAWunf.zip file and that it has been in the part tracker since spetember 2013.

[Trevor Sandy]

I used a custom part ( a self made 3068bpr0201.dat, because it does not exist in the part tracker right now) and it isn't rendered in the PLI, but is rendered in the assembly nevertheless.

Bertrand,

If you care to, PM me a zipped copy of your part(s) and related model file. You can also send by email - available on the help=>about menu.

I'll be pleased to help you and if your behaviour can be reproduced I'll release an update.

Cheers,

[Trevor Sandy]

I used a custom part ( a self made 3068bpr0201.dat, because it does not exist in the part tracker right now) and it isn't rendered in the PLI, but is rendered in the assembly nevertheless.

I responded to Bertrand by mail but in case anyone else is facing the same behaviour...

   

Option 1.
a. Create a directory under the /ldraw/unofficial folder – e.g. ldraw/unofficial/myunofficialparts
b. Place your custom unofficial part in this directory
c. Launch LPub3D, open model file and verify part file is loaded (or check logs if not loaded – log dir = /user/AppData/LPub3D Software/LPub3D/logs)

Option 2.
If your custom part is already in the ldraw parts tracker and, subsequently, in the archive ldrawunf.zip...
a. Select Tools/Refresh LDraw Unofficial Parts to download the latest copy of the unofficial archive
b. After completion, launch LPub3D, open model and verify part file is loaded

Note: Option 2a. will download the latest archive and also extract to the ldraw directory defined in LPub3D. This way, any updated content will be both available for LPub3D and 3rd-party renderers (i.e. LDView, LDGlite, POV-Ray...). FYI, for the behaviour described above, the CSI image is rendered because, the renderer is sourcing part files from your ldraw directories.

Attempting to manually put content in ldrawunf.zip or under the ldraw/unofficial/parts[p] subdirectories will not result in successful rendering of your file in the LPUb3D PLI. LPub3D does not use ldrawunf.zip but the archive used is based on this file. The archives used by LPub3D can be found in the AppData/.../libraries folder – see above. LPub3D does not load content from unofficial/parts or unofficial/p subdirectories as these parts are all in the unofficial archive used by LPub3D. Instead, one should define their own custom parts directory (usually under the unofficial directory), and place personal parts there. At said location, LPub3D will automatically detect and load these parts at start-up – as described in Option 1.  As you can see above, the steps to either define a location for your custom part(s) or refresh the archive parts are pretty simple and straightforward.

Cheers,

[Bertrand Lequy]

Explaination of the picture : In my case, the newspaper  and the door don't render in the PLI. The problem occured regardless of the file I used them. (Yes this one is not the original one as you can guess)

[Trevor Sandy]

Some more information on this item. As we have seen, the behaviour presented above can also result from invalid LPub3D LDSearchDirs entries. LDSerchDirs is the registry-stored list of search directories used by LPub3D to populate the LPub3D LDraw unofficial parts archive file on startup with items such as generated model ade parts and custom parts etc...

Only ...ldraw/models and ...ldraw/unofficial/<any subdirectory> are valid entry types. Of course, one can have as multiple entries.

One can immediately determine the state of search directories by looking under Preferences/Other/LDraw Content Search Directories. If there are no valid directories, the dialogue will state no search directories detected - see graphics below.

To correct the situation in LPub3D where no search directories are detected, there are 2 options:

Prerequisite: 
The directories referenced must exist and have at least 1 LDraw part.

Option 1:
a. Navigate to Preferences/Other and manually enter the search directory "../ldraw/unofficial/mycustomparts" - use absolute path syntax.

b. Click the 'Search Directory Reset' button, 'OK' button.

   

   

Option 2:
a. Enter your valid search directory as in option 1a. As the search directory list is empty, the Search Directory Reset button is disabled. To enable this button, you must enter a valid search directory.

b. Click the 'Search Directory Reset' button, 'OK' button. You will receive a prompt indicating the directories have been reset.

   

   

   

Cheers,