LDCad 1.1 Public Alpha

[Roland Melkert]

Hello all,

Like many of you know, I've been working on 2D (ortho) editing support for LDCad. The thing is, it's mostly done but currently I lack the time to completely get it 'beta' worthy for general release.

Because it will take me quite some time to get there I decided to release the current version as a Alpha version so more advanced LDraw users could test it and give me feedback on the new Ortho mode.

I'm very much anticipating the thoughts of the 'old school 2D editors rule' people out there

You can download the alpha here:

www.melkert.net/action/download/LDCad-1-1-Public-Alpha-1-Win-32.rar

www.melkert.net/action/download/LDCad-1-1-Public-Alpha-2-Win-32.rar

Only the windows archive version is available for now. It will take me some extra time in order to get an Linux executable ready, so for the moment I will only do that upon request.

This release is aimed at the experienced user, so I think there is no need for a long intro/manual here. Most of the text on melkert.net/LDCad still applies to this version so that should do for now.

Just play around with the mouse and menu structure (right click anywhere).

If you have any comments/questions let me know ether here or directly by email.

And remember this is an Alpha version, it could escape and terrorize the village at any time

In closing, some pictures ....






edit: Updated to alpha 2

[Willy Tschager]

Roland,

the screenshots look very promising! Well done.

w.

[Roland Melkert]

It's been a week.. and it's still very quiet, anyone played around yet?

I've found (and fixed) some issues myself, so I probably release an Alpha 2 soon. If anyone has additional issues I would like to try and fix those in that version too.

[Damien Roux]

I didn't try it yet.

But I would have a suggestion for the future. Would be more than good to be able to work directly on part edition within your software. To be able to place quad, triangles and primitives by moving vertexes and having automatic swapping on vertexes. I don't know if you see what I'm meaning but this might simplify a lot part creation. And I don't think such kind of software already exists.


I will try yours anyway, it looks nice !

[Roland Melkert]

I do plan to add part editing support to some degree at some point, mostly because I might want to take a shot on creating parts myself some day. But there are many features I want to add first (like flexible parts, minifig generator, auto snapping etc).

Also a while back Nils Schmidt announced his plans to create a pure part editor, and him being a part author he probably would do a better job on it. See this thread:

http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=4918,4918

[Roland Melkert]

I've uploaded Public Alpha 2

www.melkert.net/action/download/LDCad-1-1-Public-Alpha-2-Win-32.rar

It fixes numerous bugs and added some (minor) features (static rotation center, copy/paste options, extra grid snap options, etc) See "changeLog.txt" in the docs folder for all changes.

[teamcpc]

We check your program using the tente bricks and some tente models, and this is the result:



We can't run your program with Intel graphic cards and using others we can't see the left icons, just X.

[Roland Melkert]

Seems a minor (lack of) OpenGL features issue:

The crosses are a result of the textures not being powers of 2 in dimensions which is not supported on older (some budget) OpenGL implementations (In such cases it draws the cross as a fallback). But in essence it's not a showstopper, cause editing still works you just have to do some blind navigating using hints in the bin (you can still click on the crosses to go inside the subbin whom will show normal ldraw parts just fine.).

You could fix the issue by replacing all png's in the gui/default folder by pictures that are square and power of 2 in dimensions. I might add a special gui template for older OpenGL implementations myself at some point though.

The edge lines are the way they are because the OpenGL implementation you are using lacks vertex shader support (or only has an out dated version). In that case the renderer defaults to always drawing all conditional edges like normal edges. You can change that behavior in the main/preferences/LDraw menu by adjusting the "Draw conditional edges" option (set it to disabled).

Also because you are using a modified/custom version of the LDraw library the default bin groups are not that effective, although the 'by category' one should show all parts one way or another because it's generated. You might consider creating custom part bin content if you want to use this library in a easy to access way.

But all this aside, you should be able to edit models using this Library and hardware (used with the screenshot) just fine.

[edit] Just so you know, I solved the texture issue in the pending 1.1 beta version, it will no longer matter if the OpenGL implementation supports non power of two sizes from that version on.

[Roland Melkert]

Some additional info:

The (very) bad OpenGL performance (rendertime of >1500ms) you are experiencing could also come from using the wrong (MS) drivers.

Have you tried the Intel drivers?

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/

Intel's drivers should supply hardware acceleration and better feature support, the MS ones often only supply software rendering, Or are you on a virtual machine?