LDCad 1.6 (win+linux)

[Roland Melkert]

Hello all,

I finally managed to finish the final 1.6 version of LDCad.

Mostly bug fixes and some scripting tweaks.

I've also added a new example/animation featuring the 8852 set.

       

And a youtupe clip of its rendering by POV-Ray
https://youtu.be/ZeUtxgQp_7g

As always the latest version can be downloaded here:
http://www.melkert.net/LDCad/download

This will be (99.5% certain) the last 1.x version excluding one or two maintenance (1.6a etc) versions.

This because I want to concentrate on setting up a new (HQ) LDraw rendering engine. This project might lead to a 2.0 version but I'm not sure of that jet.

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hello all,

I finally managed to finish the final 1.6 version of LDCad.

Hi Roland,

Thanks! I think I found a bug though.

When I click Conditional Edges Method in the Prefs > LDraw menu the Static Edge Color is toggled.

[Roland Melkert]

When I click Conditional Edges Method in the Prefs > LDraw menu the Static Edge Color is toggled.

Stupid c++ switch statements

This has been in all 1.6 versions I think, I'll fix it in the next maintenance version as you can switch it back and its a non often used option anyway.

Thanks for reporting (although I wished you did so 2 days earlier   )

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hi Roland,

Something else very strange:
On my "old" Windows XP machine when I select one or more parts and want to select none I press Ctrl-shift-A to deselect nothing happens. It does not work.
The stranger part is that when I use remote control program like TeamViewer it does work!?
Even on my Mac.

What could this be?
I can remember it did work on previous versions of LDCad?

[Roland Melkert]

Hi Roland,

Something else very strange:
On my "old" Windows XP machine when I select one or more parts and want to select none I press Ctrl-shift-A to deselect nothing happens. It does not work.
The stranger part is that when I use remote control program like TeamViewer it does work!?
Even on my Mac.

What could this be?
I can remember it did work on previous versions of LDCad?

The only thing I changed between those versions which could influence XP/hotkeys is the upgrade of the GCC compiler I used for windows builds

I'll have to check on my own ancient XP system to see if this is a universal problem.

[Willy Tschager]

Wish of the day:

* I'd like to see (at least) the transparent colors drawn differently in the quick color bar to better distinguish them from the solid ones:


  LDCad1.jpg (Size: 101.7 KB / Downloads: 342)

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Wish of the day:

* I'd like to see (at least) the transparent colors drawn differently in the quick color bar to better distinguish them from the solid ones:

+1! (wonder why I didn't ask for that before...)

[Roland Melkert]

Wish of the day:

* I'd like to see (at least) the transparent colors drawn differently in the quick color bar to better distinguish them from the solid ones:

+1! (wonder why I didn't ask for that before...)

I could make them checkered.

[Willy Tschager]

I could make them checkered.

You should

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Wish of the day:

* I'm experimenting with chains for the first time and love the tool but one of them got totally twisted and I wish there was a button which resets everything back to default.

   

w.

[Roland Melkert]

* I'm experimenting with chains for the first time and love the tool but one of them got totally twisted and I wish there was a button which resets everything back to default.

Resetting templates is something I have been thinking about in relation with switching quality levels, but I never figured out a clean way of doing it. I will try again in 2.0 though.

As for that chain it looks like you added a third skin segment. Chains normally use two alternating (link) skin sections so if you delete the third one (probably the red one?) it goes back to normal.

[Willy Tschager]

As for that chain it looks like you added a third skin segment. Chains normally use two alternating (link) skin sections so if you delete the third one (probably the red one?) it goes back to normal.

Correct, but I have no idea who it got there.

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Wish of the day:

* I'd like to have a color button or icon which either quick sets the color 47 - Trans clean or makes the selected part even more transparent. I need this for my finetuning technique.

w.

[Owen Dive]

Wish of the day:

* I'd like to have a color button or icon which either quick sets the color 47 - Trans clean or makes the selected part even more transparent. I need this for my finetuning technique.

w.

Oh yeah, being able to temporarily make parts transparent (while not hiding them altogether) would be really useful in certain placement situations, even with part snapping - e.g. making sure that an axle-joiner is sitting precisely on the end of an axle.

Owen.

[Willy Tschager]

Stupid me. I cannot find the command to refresh the library after I have downloaded some unofficials from the PT and place them in my unofficial folder. Hints are welcome.

w.

[Roland Melkert]

Stupid me. I cannot find the command to refresh the library after I have downloaded some unofficials from the PT and place them in my unofficial folder. Hints are welcome.

Library changes should be automatically detected when you start the program.

[Willy Tschager]

Stupid me. I cannot find the command to refresh the library after I have downloaded some unofficials from the PT and place them in my unofficial folder. Hints are welcome.

Library changes should be automatically detected when you start the program.

I know this. But I want to add parts to my library during the build as I come them across, without shutting the prog down.

w.

[Jaco van der Molen]

Library changes should be automatically detected when you start the program.

I know this. But I want to add parts to my library during the build as I come them across, without shutting the prog down.

I think this is not possible. However, changing any model outside LDCad (in say a texteditor, good ol MLCad, LPub3D), including parts, should trigger a prompt reload.
Adding a part does not do this. I could be wrong though.

[Roland Melkert]

I know this. But I want to add parts to my library during the build as I come them across, without shutting the prog down.

I think this is not possible. However, changing any model outside LDCad (in say a texteditor, good ol MLCad, LPub3D), including parts, should trigger a prompt reload.
Adding a part does not do this. I could be wrong though.

I'm sorry it is indeed not setup to detect/add parts to the library during runtime, it only reloads already known ones upon changes. Any addition to the library needs a restart of the program.

[Roland Melkert]

I've finally finished rendering the 8852 animation in POV-Ray

https://youtu.be/ZeUtxgQp_7g

It took 30 hours which I let running on the background now and then, hence the two month delay.

[Merlijn Wissink]

Probably not that useful since you're working a major new version, but I still wanted to let you know that LDcad still sometimes crashes on my machine when I switch between 2D en 3D view. It's by far not as often as with one of the earlier alpha versions; it happened to me 3 times in a ~month now or something like that.

Also the logs don't show anything suspicious at all. It just crashes and that's it. I sadly don't have any more information that that.

Just FYI 

[Merlijn Wissink]

A question: is there an easy way to (automatically or semi-manual) convert all LQ pneumatic tubes to HQ pneumatic tubes?

[Roland Melkert]

A question: is there an easy way to (automatically or semi-manual) convert all LQ pneumatic tubes to HQ pneumatic tubes?

The only quick way is to do a search and replace in a decent text editor.

You'll have to replace the "0 !LDCAD PATH_SKIN" lines with the ones from the LQ version.

Don't forget to press ctrl+shift+f5 (while inside the editing area) after loading the changed model to force LDCad to regenerate the fallback code for all submodels

Or remove all the "0 !LDCAD GENERATED" blocks to let it regenerate automatically upon next save.

[Merlijn Wissink]

[...]
Don't forget to press ctrl+shift+f5 (while inside the editing area) after loading the changed model to force LDCad to regenerate the fallback code for all submodels
[...]

Ah, I see. I already expected I had to (semi) manually edit the file, but I wasn't sure what LDCad would do since it actually saves the generated parts in the file. I didn't know there was a shortcut to regenerate the parts. That's cool! I'll probably need to do it within the next ~2 weeks, so I'll see then how it goes. Thanks! 

[Kevin]

I'm running into a problem in LDCad that I'm hoping someone can help me with.  Custom parts that I define are not picking up the LDraw primitives like 4-4ring and 4-4disc or my own primitives coded within the same file.  For example, here is a custom tile as it appears in MLCad:

   

Here is the exact same file as displayed in LDCad:

   

Any ideas?

Thank you.

Kevin

[Roland Melkert]

Any ideas?

Ether it can't load the primitives or they are using wrong winding.

The top of your dat states it uses Counter Clock Winding (CCW) so any polygon or primitive using Clock wise winding will be invisible when viewed from the outside.

MLCad's software rendering doesn't apply the culling so for that program winding doesn't matter. Modern hardware expects winding info though.

Alternative is to remove the CERTIFIED CCW line from the file, LDCad will do dual sided rendering (slower) for files without known winding.

[Philippe Hurbain]

According to the MLCad screenshot, part seems done as a mpd file. Are mpd supported for parts?

[Roland Melkert]

According to the MLCad screenshot, part seems done as a mpd file. Are mpd supported for parts?

Yes, it doesn't care about mpd/ldr/dat during loading. It only cares about something being a part or not at rendering time (to decide to flatten the data of not).

[Kevin]

According to the MLCad screenshot, part seems done as a mpd file. Are mpd supported for parts?

It's an mpd file because it contains the full model I'm building.  The custom tile within the mpd is a .ldr file, and the digits are .dat file.

[Kevin]

Any ideas?

Ether it can't load the primitives or they are using wrong winding.

The top of your dat states it uses Counter Clock Winding (CCW) so any polygon or primitive using Clock wise winding will be invisible when viewed from the outside.

MLCad's software rendering doesn't apply the culling so for that program winding doesn't matter. Modern hardware expects winding info though.

Alternative is to remove the CERTIFIED CCW line from the file, LDCad will do dual sided rendering (slower) for files without known winding.

The CCW was the problem.  I commented that out of each tile and got everything back.  I then went back and fixed the primitives and restored the CCW and everything was still there.  My guess is that I selected the wrong orientation when I exported the design from LDPatternCreator.

Thanks for the help!

Kevin

[Roland Melkert]

Probably not that useful since you're working a major new version, but I still wanted to let you know that LDcad still sometimes crashes on my machine when I switch between 2D en 3D view. It's by far not as often as with one of the earlier alpha versions; it happened to me 3 times in a ~month now or something like that.

Have you found any 'scenario' leading to this or is it totally random?

I'm doing bugfixes this week so I want to take another look but without a scenario or at least some details about the working environment I can't even begin to look for it in thousands of lines of code

Weird bugs can sometimes be as simple as a 1 2 3 scenario, I just recently found this one (also seemed random) in the same way

Put a dynamic part with auto groups (e.g. pneumatic hose) in group layer 0
close the file.
close any other file -> CRASH

[Merlijn Wissink]

Probably not that useful since you're working a major new version, but I still wanted to let you know that LDcad still sometimes crashes on my machine when I switch between 2D en 3D view. It's by far not as often as with one of the earlier alpha versions; it happened to me 3 times in a ~month now or something like that.

Have you found any 'scenario' leading to this or is it totally random?

I'm doing bugfixes this week so I want to take another look but without a scenario or at least some details about the working environment I can't even begin to look for it in thousands of lines of code

Weird bugs can sometimes be as simple as a 1 2 3 scenario, I just recently found this one (also seemed random) in the same way

Put a dynamic part with auto groups (e.g. pneumatic hose) in group layer 0
close the file.
close any other file -> CRASH

It's totally random (at least it seems to me). I do have a feeling that it has a higher chance of appearing shortly after I switch between 2D and 3D view (and possibly quickly moving the camera after switching), but I cannot confirm that at all.

The last time it happened I reopened the file, did the pretty much exact same thing and nothing happened. It's been more than a week now without the problem (and I've been heavily using LDCad last couple of days); it's very rare. Also, the last time it happened I looked into the logs and there was nothing out of the ordinary there.

It could just as well be something specific on my PC and not really a bug in LDCad.

[Roland Melkert]

On my "old" Windows XP machine when I select one or more parts and want to select none I press Ctrl-shift-A to deselect nothing happens. It does not work.
The stranger part is that when I use remote control program like TeamViewer it does work!?
Even on my Mac.

What could this be?
I can remember it did work on previous versions of LDCad?

It seems to work on my XP system, so I think this is specific to your system, maybe some other program is capturing that specific key combination?

[Roland Melkert]

I've finished fixing all known bugs (except for the rare one Merlijn report above)

If anyone has additional bugs please report them now so I can fix them too before releasing 1.6a.

These are the release notes so far:

--==1.6a (??-September-2017)==--
Fixed:
- [LDraw] Files with a single char "=", "_" or "~" description no longer generate categories of the same single character.
- [Menus] Clicking the "conditional edges method" option no longer also changes the "static edge color" option in the LDraw menu.
- [PartBin] Parts with category names existing only out of non filesystem characters (e.g. "=" or "?") will no longer cause problems in combination with part bin catList groups. (rare program freezes/crashes)
- [PartBin] catList groups no longer cause empty cells in higher groups when their first group is an (invisible) empty one.
- [Editing] Fixed multiple issues regarding "Selection insert" from the stepping menu. It now works as expected in any (sub)model and no longer clears the selection.
- [Editing] Closing a file containing an auto group (e.g. pneumatic hoses) whom at time of closing is at group layer zero will no longer cause a program crash upon the next file close.
- [Path] The path point properties dialog no longer fails to apply the last entered position/orientation when the user presses the enter key directly after changing a cell.
- [Scripting] The aniTools module now includes the genTools module so it no longer depends on the using script to do so.
- [Shadow] Fixed/improved snap and mirror info for multiple parts.
- [POV-Ray] Exporting 'cropped' textures is now handled correctly.


Improved/Changed:
- [Rendering] LDraw textures now use mipmaps if the driver supports glGenerateMipmap.
- [GUI] Increased the margin for window resizing as it was especially hard to resize an undocked window on some Linux desktops.
- [ColorBin] Transparent colors will now be rendered 'checkered' in the history bar of color bin windows.
- [ColorBin] Color numbers above 1024 will now be shown using hexadicimal notation, this was previously only done for >=FFFFFF.
- [Editing] "Selection insert" now supports alternative insertion targets.
- [Templates] Tweaked the minifig chain templates for better link spreading/filling.
- [POV-Ray] Parts using textures will no longer cause a parsing error when they are used with a color 16 reference unless the resulting script actually tries to use it.
- [Shadow] Did some generic cleanup/tweaking.


Added:
- [ColorBin] You can now directly enter a color number to use as the working color by typing it followed by pressing enter while the mouse is over the working color caption in a color bin window. You can also click the caption to open a simple input dialog.
- [Templates] Added "power functions 2", "power functions sensor" and "minifig chain with studs" templates.
- [Shadow] Added info for a handful of parts (incl power functions 2).

[Merlijn Wissink]

[...]

- [Templates] Added "power functions 2", "power functions sensor" and "minifig chain with studs" templates.

[...]

A few Technic templates that are also missing:

• The new long pneumatic cylinder
  
• The new long and thing pneumatic cylinder
  
• The new pneumatic hand-pump
  
• PF E-motor (although probably rarely used)
  

[Evert-Jan Boer]

I installed version 1.6 (and 1.6 beta 1) on a new laptop today, I simply cannot get part snapping to work. It does work on my normal PC, no clue if I am missing a setting somewhere.

It looks like the program is trying to do snapping, but for example technic pins do not snap to technic beams properly? I cannot compare settings with my normal PC now, perhaps someone knows what I might be overlooking...

[Philippe Hurbain]

A few Technic templates that are also missing:

• The new long pneumatic cylinder
  
• The new long and thing pneumatic cylinder
  
• The new pneumatic hand-pump
  

These would rely on still unofficial parts... But like you I dream to see LDCad offer some support for unofficial parts! (and also an easy way to provide installable extensions of templates, snapping/mirroring info, sets parts bins, etc...)

PF E-motor (although probably rarely used)

Yes, this one is official for a long time - though as you mention, fairly oddball...

[Philippe Hurbain]

I installed version 1.6 (and 1.6 beta 1) on a new laptop today, I simply cannot get part snapping to work. It does work on my normal PC, no clue if I am missing a setting somewhere.

It looks like the program is trying to do snapping, but for example technic pins do not snap to technic beams properly? I cannot compare settings with my normal PC now, perhaps someone knows what I might be overlooking...

I can see two reasons:
- your library is not properly configured (eg. wrong path to shadow.csl). Press F11, if configuration is OK you should see connectivity indicators on all studs, tubes, holes...
- You are in grid setting mode, not snapping mode (click on GS in the compass thingy). Snapping mode shows a green PS instead of red GS. Note that GS is (currently) default mode for a new installation)

[Jaco van der Molen]

I've finished fixing all known bugs (except for the rare one Merlijn report above)

If anyone has additional bugs please report them now so I can fix them too before releasing 1.6a.

These are the release notes so far:

--==1.6a (??-September-2017)==--

Added:

Could you add a icon change for the save button(s)? I gave this as wish for 2.0, but perhaps you can take it with 1.6x?
For the rest: very happy! Thanks for all your effort.

[Roland Melkert]

A few Technic templates that are also missing:

• The new long pneumatic cylinder
  
• The new long and thing pneumatic cylinder
  
• The new pneumatic hand-pump
  

These can be inlined from the complete parts. This is even the preferred method now as the existing pneumatic cylinder templates predate the inline feature. I'll probably wont include them (non spring/flexible templates) at all in 2.0 as their maintenance (especially the wheel/tyre ones) is kinda intensive.

These would rely on still unofficial parts... But like you I dream to see LDCad offer some support for unofficial parts! (and also an easy way to provide installable extensions of templates, snapping/mirroring info, sets parts bins, etc...)

Templates don't care about the source of their parts, as they are nothing more then normal (non mpd) ldr's placed in a special location.
But I don't like including unofficial depended templates as most users don't install the unofficial library causing them to wonder about all the red crosses
With snapping info I don't like doing unofficial parts because of all the dependencies, I rather do it the 'right way' once a new offical library is released. But nothing stops you from creating your own templates/shadow files.
I do hope to make it all more modular (installable as Philio calls it) for the 2.0 version though.

PF E-motor (although probably rarely used)

Yes, this one is official for a long time - though as you mention, fairly oddball...

Totally missed that one, will add it.

[Roland Melkert]

Could you add a icon change for the save button(s)? I gave this as wish for 2.0, but perhaps you can take it with 1.6x?
For the rest: very happy! Thanks for all your effort.

I could add it to the hint, as the icon itself is hard coded static and takes a too big a change for a 1.6a version, For 2.0 I'm planning to have a much more 'animated' gui so it will be much easier to do.

[Roland Melkert]

I installed version 1.6 (and 1.6 beta 1) on a new laptop today, I simply cannot get part snapping to work. It does work on my normal PC, no clue if I am missing a setting somewhere.

It looks like the program is trying to do snapping, but for example technic pins do not snap to technic beams properly? I cannot compare settings with my normal PC now, perhaps someone knows what I might be overlooking...

I can see two reasons:
- your library is not properly configured (eg. wrong path to shadow.csl). Press F11, if configuration is OK you should see connectivity indicators on all studs, tubes, holes...
- You are in grid setting mode, not snapping mode (click on GS in the compass thingy). Snapping mode shows a green PS instead of red GS. Note that GS is (currently) default mode for a new installation)

Like philo wrote snapping is disabled by default as I like to encourage new users to learn the grid method first because of the way snapping is implemented in LDCad (needs help from the grid for some parts).

The only other thing I can think of is the shadow library is somehow not deployed (file writing restrictions) so it can't be loaded. The F11 test should indicate that.

[Evert-Jan Boer]

I can see two reasons:
- your library is not properly configured (eg. wrong path to shadow.csl). Press F11, if configuration is OK you should see connectivity indicators on all studs, tubes, holes...
- You are in grid setting mode, not snapping mode (click on GS in the compass thingy). Snapping mode shows a green PS instead of red GS. Note that GS is (currently) default mode for a new installation)

Like philo wrote snapping is disabled by default as I like to encourage new users to learn the grid method first because of the way snapping is implemented in LDCad (needs help from the grid for some parts).

The only other thing I can think of is the shadow library is somehow not deployed (file writing restrictions) so it can't be loaded. The F11 test should indicate that.

Fixed! F11 did not show anything, for some reason the section <LDrawPaths> in main.cfg did not include the shadow library path, I think from a previous installation with insufficient permissions.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.