[LDPartEditor] 0.8.43 Beta Released (Improved Lines2Pattern / Bug-Fix)

[Nils Schmidt]

Hey,

it took me a while to fix the !TEXMAP SPHERICAL rendering in LDPE... here it is


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

Changelog:
(3 new features and 4 bug fixes)

With this release you will be able to...

• ...check an option during setup which associates *.dat files to LDPartEditor.
  
• ...benefit from an enhanced surface creation by Lines2Pattern.
  
• ...see the poles correctly on !TEXMAP SPHERICAL.
  

The following critical issues were fixed:

1. Ytruder still generated triangles sometimes when it should generate quads.
   
2. Switching the manipulator via keyboard (translate, rotate, scale) "cleared" the current transformation.
   
3. Selecting a color for the font in Txt2dat did not work. Letters were always rendered in black.
   
4. Fixed a rare NullPointerException which occured while closing the application.
   

What will the next release 0.8.44 deliver? Usability improvements, major changes to the "BFC / TEXMAP" render mode.

---

The program was tested intensively with "real world" files.
However, it is still a beta version and something can go wrong in about 140.000 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 "LDPartEditor.exe" to start LDPE.
   
4. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "run.sh" to start LDPE.
   

Alternatively, you can download a setup file to install LDPE on Windows.
When you install/extract LDPE on Windows you will find your LDPE configuration files under
{drive}\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\LDPartEditor
It is not recommended to use the "update.bat" script when you installed LDPE via the setup file.
Manually install the new version instead.

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".
   

It is not recommended to use the "update.bat" script when you installed LDPE via the setup file.
Manually install the new version instead.

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.

[Nils Schmidt]

LDPE's next version will replace the bulky raytracing implementation with an order-independent-transparency (OIT) approach.
Due to technical limitations this will be supported by the new OpenGL 3.3 based renderer, only.




Technical background: The older OpenGL 2.0 based renderer draws the LDraw part line by line and therefore OIT is not trivial/possible to implement.
The old renderer uses ray casting to calculate the resulting colour which has a very bad performance.
Nowadays, you could calculate this on the GPU... but GPGPU realtime ray-tracing is not the right choice for LDPE's technology stack.

[Willy Tschager]

Bug of the day:

* when you open a file from the "Last opend file" list it opens only in the 3D editor but not the Text editor.

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Sorry Nils, but this is stronger than me:

* All this right-button clicking and hovering for BFC view or Special Cond. Line mode is highly frustrating. My personal impression is that changing views from front to left and back to 3D are the actions I perform the most and all those are hidden in the contextual menu.
"Right-Click (or click in the top left corner) -> View Actions -> Close view" just to close one of the views when in review mode ... come on.

I really, really wished I had that view toolbar I asked for a long time ago!

Please forgive me my rant.

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Sorry Nils, but this is stronger than me:

* All this right-button clicking and hovering for BFC view or Special Cond. Line mode is highly frustrating. My personal impression is that changing views from front to left and back to 3D are the actions I perform the most and all those are hidden in the contextual menu.

Thanks, I will include this in version 0.8.45.

"Right-Click (or click in the top left corner) -> View Actions -> Close view" just to close one of the views when in review mode ... come on.

I created a new issue for this (#690).

Please forgive me my rant.

It's not a rant. Your feedback is great

[Nils Schmidt]

The next release will include a window which allows you to directly modify the coordinates of a single vertex.
It took a while to find the correct UI components for this feature.

I need to finish and test the implementation. I am also planning to move the window to the upper right corner.
It will take 2-3 days for a clean approach (16-24 working hours).


Then there is issue #418 next on my list.
After that, I want to release 0.8.44 asap.

[Nils Schmidt]

The next release will include a window which allows you to directly modify the coordinates of a single vertex.
It took a while to find the correct UI components for this feature.

Unfortunately, there are technical problems with the ongoing implementation of the vertex window.
It does not run on all of my testing machines. Sometimes the window is covered by the 3D canvas.
I fear that I will now need about three to four weeks to implement and test a stable workaround for this issue.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Long time no bug
Either very few remaining, or I learnt how not to trigger them!

Nonetheless.... these lines are not shown by LDPE, only their vertices appear.

Code:

2 24 262.5 -2 .00000000000000000000000000000202575 262.5 0 0
2 24 217.5 -2 .0000000000000000000000000000010656 217.5 0 0

Of course they do show up if I round the almost zero value.

[Nils Schmidt]

I will release version 0.8.44 on the upcoming weekend.