Updating the Library

[Cam's Bricks]

Hello,

I have always been confused about how I should update the library. I typically use LDCad and LPub3D with LDView for quick viewing. 

Is there a "best practice" to keep both the Official and Unofficial libraries up to date? 

Additionally I have dozens of custom parts I use for train wheels and other details in my MOCs and I feel like I dont quite understand where to put those. I currently have a "Custom_Parts" folder with a sub "p" and "s" folder for parts that need that. 

Thanks in advance.

[Willy Tschager]

In case you didn't mix official and unofficial or custom parts:

* Delete Complete.zip in the LDraw root folder
* Delete the P and Parts folder
* Delete the Unofficial folder

* Download a fresh Complete.zip to the root
* Extract the P and Parts folder
* Download a fresh unofficial zip
* Extract the P and Parts folder to an Unofficial folder in the root.

w.

[Cam's Bricks]

In case you didn't mix official and unofficial or custom parts:

* Delete Complete.zip in the LDraw root folder
* Delete the P and Parts folder
* Delete the Unofficial folder

* Download a fresh Complete.zip to the root
* Extract the P and Parts folder
* Download a fresh unofficial zip
* Extract the P and Parts folder to an Unofficial folder in the root.

w.

I think what triips me up is that complete.zip contains a root "ldraw" folder 

So do I do this:

• Backup my custom parts
  
• Delete ldraw
  
• export new complete.zip
  
• export ldrawunof.zip to a folder called "unofficial" inside the now created ldraw root folder?
  
• copy my "custom_parts" folder to the ldraw root folder? 
  

I am really just lost at the hierarchy and the naming conventions used.

[N. W. Perry]

I think what triips me up is that complete.zip contains a root "ldraw" folder 

So do I do this:

• Backup my custom parts
  
• Delete ldraw
  
• export new complete.zip
  
• export ldrawunof.zip to a folder called "unofficial" inside the now created ldraw root folder?
  
• copy my "custom_parts" folder to the ldraw root folder? 
  

I am really just lost at the hierarchy and the naming conventions used.

That should work fine. Are you getting errors that make you wonder about your setup?

Any directory containing "p" and "parts" folders is a valid LDraw library. The official library is just these two folders inside the root "ldraw" folder (along with "models", which is optional). The compressed file "complete.zip" is also, by itself, the official library. Programs such as LDCad can read directly from this zip file.

So in other words, you can have two official libraries side-by-side in your root folder: one compressed, consisting of the zip file, and one normal, consisting of the two folders extracted from the zip file.

Also inside your root folder, you can have additional libraries. These need to be inside a sub-directory, like "Unofficial" or "Custom Parts" (I call mine "User"), and each of these sub-directories needs the same "p" and "parts" folders inside it. If you have sub-parts, then "parts" needs to contain a sub-folder "s". If you have low-res or hi-res primitives, then "p" needs to contain the sub-folders "8" and/or "48" respectively.

As with the official library, you can have side-by-side copies of the Unofficial library: the compressed file ldrawunf.zip, and the sub-directory "Unofficial" (or whatever you name it) containing the usual "p" and "parts" folders.

The trick sometimes is which order to search the directories, which you can usually specify in your software. I usually search Unofficial before Official, because some unofficial parts are newer revisions of official ones. If I'm actively working on part authoring, I'll sometimes place User above Unofficial, so that my parts-in-progress will appear first. But when I'm finished I'll usually move User back down the list so I don't see old work files in place of unofficial or official parts. Alternately, I have a directory called Top, which is a library that is always searched first, and which only contains one or two parts that I'm actively developing at that moment, or anything that I want to "force" to appear.

The only wrinkle to that process is that LDView, apparently, will always search Official first, so if I load up a part I'm working on, I might, for example, see older versions of its subparts because they are official.

[Willy Tschager]

   

Hope this helps.

w.

[Cam's Bricks]

That should work fine. Are you getting errors that make you wonder about your setup?

I am not getting any errors, I have just didnt see a consistency in the hierarchy from the two libraries available from ldraw.org. I have been doing it as you have described your setup but I wanted to just verify that was correct. I want to make updating my parts libraries easier when I am working on projects. 

Thanks for your help!

[Cam's Bricks]

Hope this helps.

w.

This does thanks!

[N. W. Perry]

I am not getting any errors, I have just didnt see a consistency in the hierarchy from the two libraries available from ldraw.org. I have been doing it as you have described your setup but I wanted to just verify that was correct. I want to make updating my parts libraries easier when I am working on projects. 

Thanks for your help!

OK! Yeah, you should be fine—as Willy points out, the most important thing is to keep your Official and Unofficial libraries unaltered; that way you can just overwrite them whenever an update comes out.

P.S. We should maybe start thinking of "Unofficial" as "Uncertified"—technically, the Official library is all the certified parts, and everything else is unofficial (including not-yet-certified parts on the Tracker, but also any custom or third-party parts). But we tend to think of the uncertified tracker parts as being the "official" unofficial library…