Coaster designer

[Ronald van der Velden]

Hello there!

After a few years of not using the LDraw-family of tools, I bought the Lego coaster set 10261 and decided to start a little hobby programming project on the side. I'm working on a roller coaster designer tool. Specifically, I'm trying to include two pieces of functionality that will be useful additions to the already existing tools:

• Instead of positioning each brick individually, just add them at the end of the track automatically, similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon (anybody?  )
  
• And... it will automatically generate a nice support structure, based on the position of the tracks, avoiding collision with the track itself or having too many pillars and ideally also connecting them with horizontal bars like in the 10261 set
  

The first bit is working including a simple renderer, open/save functionality, parts list and (obviously) export to LDR; I'm roughly halfway the support structure algorithm (it places pillars optimally at the right X/Z coordinates based on the track, but only uses the 2x2 round brick so far and doesn't generate horizontal connections   )

In the coming weeks I hope to add some screenshots here. Really curious to hear any suggestions or ideas you may already have!!

Best regards,
Ronald

[Philippe Hurbain]

Welcome here Ronald!

An automated roller coaster generator... looks like a great project indeed
Reminds me a bit the castle creator (though the purpose is very different, semi random for the casle generator, directed here).

Keep us in touch with your progress!!!

[Orion Pobursky]

This sounds like an awesome program for making coaster animations. Look forward to the release

[Gerald Lasser]

That sounds great!

Do you know the Track Designer or BlueBricks? Both are only 2D only so mainly user for Train Tracks.

Can't wait to see your program. I build a Rollercoaster 150 x 80 x 100 cm, using LDCad as a trial....puh

[beatriz gonzalez]

That sounds great!

Do you know the Track Designer or BlueBricks? Both are only 2D only so mainly user for Train Tracks.

Can't wait to see your program. I build a Rollercoaster 150 x 80 x 100 cm, using LDCad as a trial....puthat

that sound aswome the 2d model for the track dessgine of the lego rollercoster
maria

[Ronald van der Velden]

Thanks for all your enthusiastic responses! I've been making some progress in the past week again. Still not entirely happy with how the support structure is generated, so I may rewrite part of the algorithms to further improve this. But the overall idea still looks pretty cool - based on a simple sequence of track pieces the program automatically calculates a full LDR model.

To give an idea, see attached picture (rendering done by LDView) :-)

[Lasse Deleuran]

That is a great result so far. I see that it is already able to handle all types of pieces, as well as crossing sections.

What are your plans for the designer part? And will it be able to generate starting ramps as well?

[Roland Melkert]

After a few years of not using the LDraw-family of tools, I bought the Lego coaster set 10261 and decided to start a little hobby programming project on the side. I'm working on a roller coaster designer tool.

Cool project.

If you're more interested in generating the coaster then worrying about rendering and LDraw code generation you could consider using the scripting functionality of my LDCad to generate the models.