[LDPartEditor] 0.8.22 Beta Released (PrimGen2, Identical Lines, Protractor Length)

[Nils Schmidt]

Hi,

again, 5 bug fixes, PrimGen2 and new features with a not so primitive 0.8.22 release...
...well, however, in the next days I still want to write more content for the wiki/manual.


As always, you can download LDPE from this page:
http://nilsschmidt1337.github.io/ldparteditor/

Changelog:
(9 new features and 5 bug fixes)

With this release you will be able to...

• ...use a "new" tool: A PrimGen2 clone is now added to the list of tools.
  
• ...choose whether Intersector should hide things or not (default is not to hide).
  
• ...benefit from "realtime" asynchronous identical line detection. LDPE detects now duplicates during input with very low latency.
  
• ...benefit from a better "Save As..." implementation. It shows a warning if a file is going to be overwritten.
  
• ...set the thickness of the lines (type 2 or 5) to zero.
  
• ...to see your LDraw username / real name on the header dialog ("Add a comment or header entry...").
  
• ...benefit from the fact that the position of the divider between the text and the 3D editor gets restored on start.
  
• ...use buttons to quickly "fullscreen" either the text or 3D editor and a third icon which restores the divided view.
  
• ...use buttons to maximise / rearrange the area on the left side of the 3D view (selection, snapping, part tree, primitive area).
  
• ...set the second line for an angle protractor to a defined length.
  

The following critical issues were fixed:

1. "Toggle Comment" / "Toggle !TEXMAP" caused data corruption when it was toggled on the last line of a file.
   
2. The "Selection:" tab was broken (it was not possible to edit lines, distance meters and subfile references)
   
3. You were not able to open a file in the text editor sometimes (on separate window mode).
   
4. Wrong line width was used in "Special Condline Mode" / "Random Colour Mode".
   
5. When you opened a file in the 3D editor sometimes it was not added to the recent file list.
   

What will the next release 0.8.23 deliver? Bug fixes*, maybe more unit calculator features, buttons for view angles, buttons for every(!) action from the 3D context menu... usability should be more important for 0.8.23.

* oh dear..., I still need to reproduce some errors...

---

The program was tested intensively with "real world" files.
However, it is still a beta version and something can go wrong in about 100.000 lines of code.

Make sure that you choose the right architecture for your OS and Java Virtual Machine (JVM) (64bit or 32bit).
A short guide how to check if a 64bit JVM is installed on your system is located at the bottom of this message.

1. Download the zip-Archive
   
2. Extract the archive content to the location of your choice
   
3. On windows, double-click "run.bat" to start LDPE.
   
4. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "run.sh" to start LDPE.
   

Please note that this software is in the beta stage. Although, LDPE 0.8.22 was tested, there are already known issues  for this release. There is a potential risk of data loss.

You can search for updates if you do the following steps:

1. On windows, double-click "update.bat" to search for updates.
   
2. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "update.sh".
   

I listen carefully to your requests and possible complaints. Please leave me a message, with your thoughts and wishes to further improve the software.

LDPE is a 3D CAD application: The overall system requirements are higher. While I recommend to use a powerful 64-bit multicore system, it could be possible, to run LDPE on older machines as well.

System Requirements:

Minimum System Requirements:

• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.8
  
• OpenGL 2.1 compatible Graphics Card
  
• Operating System (32/64bit): Windows [XP; Vista; 7 or newer], Mac OS X [>=10.6], Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=10.4]
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon II (>2.0Ghz)
  
• RAM: 4GB
  
• Video-Memory: 512 MB
  
• Free Disk Space: 100 MB
  

Recommended Requirements:

• Operating System (64bit): Windows 7, Mac OS X [>=10.6], Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=10.4]
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor with 4 cores (or more)
  
• RAM: >4 GB
  
• Video-Memory: >=1 GB
  
• Free Disk Space: 512 MB
  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to check your JVM version (32- or 64-bit):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can try on the command line:

Code:

java -d64 version

If it's not a 64-bit version, you'll get a message that looks like:

Code:

This Java instance does not support a 64-bit JVM. Please install the desired version.

In general, I recommend to install the 64-bit version of the JVM for Java 8.

[Willy Tschager]

* Looks like rounding is broken. No rounding is performed when there are errors in the code such as:

2 24 -6.541 -7.889 0.8001 -6.448 -8.31 1.716 -6.757 -7.852 2.173 -5.659 -8.935 1.548

Didn't know that.
* Playing with the "Expand/Reset Area" my video driver collapsed. Log:


  hs_err_pid13256.zip (Size: 6.86 KB / Downloads: 1)

* Like the fullscreen toggle!
* As a user I'd like that "Restore Area" sets the divider to the point before I "Expanded Area" and not right in the middle. After I have worked with it a little bit I changed my mind. The "Expand Area" should work as a toggle. One click -> Fullscreen, click again -> back to the size it was before, and the divider in the saved position. "Restore Area" should work as it is right now. 

Thanks, w.

[Nils Schmidt]

No rounding is performed when there are errors in the code such as:

2 24 -6.541 -7.889 0.8001 -6.448 -8.31 1.716 -6.757 -7.852 2.173 -5.659 -8.935 1.548

Didn't know that.

Yes, only valid lines are parsed for data. I could change the parser logic to find "vertices" in lines like this:

3 16 0 0 0 1 1 1 (incomplete triangle)
3 16 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 2 2 3 0 0 ("triangle" with four vertices)

...but I won't do that

* Playing with the "Expand/Reset Area" my video driver collapsed.
* As a user I'd like that "Restore Area" sets the divider to the point before I "Expanded Area" and not right in the middle. After I have worked with it a little bit I changed my mind. The "Expand Area" should work as a toggle. One click -> Fullscreen, click again -> back to the size it was before, and the divider in the saved position. "Restore Area" should work as it is right now.  

Sure, I will further improve the "fullscreen toggle" feature! I would like to investigate what was going on, but I need the error_log.txt file, too.
I can only try to fix your driver issue if LDPE had thrown an exception before.
I guess, I should disable the repaint loop for the primitive area on resize. It flickers a lot. This might be the root cause for your driver issue, but I am not 100% sure.
Nope...
Your Intel graphics driver seems to be out of date...?
Someone had a similar issue with minecraft: https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-94900
There could be some hardware compatibility issue, too... Maybe Intel's IGP is not compliant to OpenGL (they made an implementation mistake).
While looking into the crystal ball... I do not really care about Intel's APU design. I am excited for AMD's Zen architecture... and will build a Zen PC with a dedicated FirePro graphics card in the future, but I digress...

[Willy Tschager]

Just submitted this fixed part to the PT:

http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg.../30224.dat

Without LDPE fixing would have been an awkward job. Thanks for this great prog.

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

LDPE has a lot of context menus. I guess the "standard user" will not know these menus.
I have to provide access to these functions in a different way...

New GUI enhancements for version 0.8.23:

• The menu key from the keyboard will now open the context menu on the 3D view and the file tree.
  
• You can hover the cursor over a "gear" to open the context menu on the 3D view without the right mouse click.*
  
  
• Now, there are buttons for the context menu actions from the file tree...
  
• ...and there are buttons for the "Problems" tab to "Quick Fix" the selected problem.
  

To put it in a nutshell, you don't need the right mouse click anymore, to access the features from the context menu.
You can still use the right mouse click to open a context menu.

* I choose this implementation, because I do not want to add 30 buttons to one 3D vew.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Just had the opportunity to test LDPE mesh reducer tool. Impressive!