[LDPartEditor] 0.8.38 Beta Released (New CSG Engine)

[Nils Schmidt]

Hey,

this release package includes a lot of new features and bug fixes.
LDPE is now more than five years old!
There are still big goals on my roadmap (LDPatternCreator compatibility, custom plugins, Vulkan support, virtual/augmented reality...).
And I just can't stop to implement new features/enhancements, too ;)


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

Changelog:
(12 new features and 9 bug fixes)

With this release you will be able to...

• ...use a brand new CSG engine (with automatic mesh optimisation, its on by default)
  
• ...remove the "UPDATE" info from the part type line with a quick fix.
  
• ...add the "Unofficial_" prefix to the part type line with a quick fix.
  
• ...use Isecalc on the current selection by default.
  
• ...benefit from the fact that "Move Adjacent Data" gets restored on start.
  
• ...use the new part type "Part Flexible_Section".
  
• ...see a pop-up dialog with progress bar + cancel for "Calculate Line Intersection Points".
  
• ...use a "Coplanarity Heatmap Mode" to visually identify coplanar quads.
  
• ...see some info that the CSG optimisation will only work if the file is displayed on the 3D editor.
  
• ...turn the new CSG mesh optimisation off (with the meta command 0 !LPE CSG_DONT_OPTIMISE)
  
• ...set the optimisation threshold of the CSG edge collabser (with the meta command 0 !LPE CSG_EDGE_COLLAPSE_EPSILON 0.9999. The default value is 0.9999. Please use higher or unlikely lower values greater zero and lower one only if necessary.)
  
• ...set the optimisation threshold of the CSG T-junction finder (with the meta command 0 !LPE CSG_TJUNCTION_EPSILON 0.1. The default value is 0.1 LDU. Please use lower or unlikely higher values greater zero only if necessary.)
  

The following critical issues were fixed:

1. MeshReducer did a wrong check for common points.
   
2. The label for hints, warnings, etc. was cut off.
   
3. TJunctionFinder was not able to fix T-junctions automatically.
   
4. When you double-clicked on the last word in the last line, the last character of the file was not selected.
   
5. The visible line size for CSG selections was not always correct.
   
6. Subdivision silently removed all condlines (now it warns about this!)
   
7. The quick fix for missing part type didn't remove the truncated "0 !LDRAW_ORG" meta command.
   
8. "Radio buttons" were not highlighted on the grid icons and in the Ytruder tool dialog.
   
9. Rare NullPointerException during a double click on the text editor problem tree.
   

What will the next release 0.8.39 deliver? You will get more text-editor features and it will fix edge selection issues.

---

The program was tested intensively with "real world" files.
However, it is still a beta version and something can go wrong in about 120.000 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, this version 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:

• 64-bit Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.8
  
• OpenGL 2.1 compatible Graphics Card
  
• Operating System (64-bit): Windows [7 or newer], Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=14.4], Mac OS X [>=10.6]
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon II (>2.0Ghz)
  
• RAM: 4GB
  
• Video-Memory: 1 GB
  
• Free Disk Space: 100 MB
  

Recommended Requirements:

• Operating System (64bit): Windows 7,8,10, Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=14.4], Mac OS X [>=10.6]
  
• OpenGL 3.3 compatible Graphics Card
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor with 4 cores (or more)
  
• RAM: >4 GB
  
• Video-Memory: >1 GB
  
• Free Disk Space: 512 MB
  
• For a faster start, LDPartEditor and the LDraw™ library should be installed on an SSD.
  

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

[Willy Tschager]

And I just can't stop to implement new features/enhancements, too

You know how much I love your genius work but I would love it even more if you could work on my pretentious wishlist for LDPC before you dive into new features for LDPE  

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Today, I fixed an issue (#640) which deactivated the CSG mesh optimisation when one of the 3D view had the wireframe render mode enabled.

The workaround is to switch to another render mode (e.g. "No Backface Culling"). This affected only the old OpenGL 2.0 render engine.

The bugfix will be included in the next 0.8.39 release.

[Nils Schmidt]

You know how much I love your genius work but I would love it even more if you could work on my pretentious wishlist for LDPC before you dive into new features for LDPE  

I will release a new version of LDPatternCreator in the next year. Please have some patience

[Willy Tschager]

Bug of the day:

* Old alternative key for middle mouse button (in my case the space bar) does no longer work. Setting a new key combination does not work. Middle mouse works. Linux Mint 17.3

Feature request of the day:

* Hour glass or progress bar when downloading stuff from the PT for PartReview.

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Bug of the day:
* Old alternative key for middle mouse button (in my case the space bar) does no longer work. Setting a new key combination does not work. Middle mouse works. Linux Mint 17.3

I tried to reproduce this under Ubuntu 16.04 and an up-to-date KaOS 2017 without success.
Did you focus the text editor or some input field by mistake?

Feature request of the day:
* Hour glass or progress bar when downloading stuff from the PT for PartReview.

I created an issue for the progress bar (#641).

[Willy Tschager]

STOP! The above applies to Version 0.8.37 Beta (2017-08-30). Your download page doesn't offer 0.8.38 yet.

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

STOP! The above applies to Version 0.8.37 Beta (2017-08-30). Your download page doesn't offer 0.8.38 yet.

w.

Sorry, I forgot to update it there... Now the download page is pointing to the right version.
Alternatively, you can download it from sourceforge, too.

[Willy Tschager]

Bug of the day:
* Old alternative key for middle mouse button (in my case the space bar) does no longer work. Setting a new key combination does not work. Middle mouse works. Linux Mint 17.3

I tried to reproduce this under Ubuntu 16.04 and an up-to-date KaOS 2017 without success.
Did you focus the text editor or some input field by mistake?

No, I rotated in 3D holding down the middle mouse button and tried to do the same with the space bar as I'm used without success.

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

I tried to reproduce this under Ubuntu 16.04 and an up-to-date KaOS 2017 without success.
Did you focus the text editor or some input field by mistake?

No, I rotated in 3D holding down the middle mouse button and tried to do the same with the space bar as I'm used without success.

w.

Thanks for your info!
I was able to reproduce this by setting up a virtual machine with Linux Mint 17.3 and installed the latest version of LDPE.
I did also install older LDPE versions to see if it worked well before (and it was).
I will try to fix this ASAP by re-implementing the function calls which are triggered by the mouse buttons.

[Willy Tschager]

You know how much I love your genius work but I would love it even more if you could work on my pretentious wishlist for LDPC before you dive into new features for LDPE  

I will release a new version of LDPatternCreator in the next year. Please have some patience

  Smiley.jpeg (Size: 9.99 KB / Downloads: 22)

w.