BrickPad for iOS

[Ken Drew]

As some of you know, I have a new iOS app for viewing LDraw models. BrickPad has been released in the App Store.

App Store link for BrickPad.

And the BrickPad home page.

I'm already working on some changes as well as new features. I would love to hear your feedback.

Enjoy,

Ken

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

Really nice work.

Some feedback:

• I really like the fact that with two fingers, I can do rotate, pan, and zoom all in one gesture (brickView does one at a time).
  
• There is no directional lighting as I have become accustomed to in other LDraw applications. (Just a personal taste thing.)
  
• Loading time (while objectively still short) is long when compared to other LDraw applications. No longer an issue as of update 1.1.1, many thanks.
  
• As far as I can tell, there is no perspective viewing mode. (Models can only be viewed orthographically.)
  
• I like the fact that you can navigate steps with a slider, it's a cool effect to just drag it and see a model build itself very quickly.
  
• I really like the fact that models are saved as long as they are loaded once and until you delete them. Graphics wise I would rather use brickView, but because models are so much more easily accessible in BrickPad I believe it will become my more-often-used iOS viewer.
  
• It doesn't show up in App-Store searches (it does now)
  

The following images have been turned into links because they took up a lot of space on the page and are no-longer relevant.


iTunes search:
http://i.imgur.com/zQtC7.png

iPhone App-Store search:
http://i.imgur.com/lwUG1.jpg


It took me a while to realize that I could just find the app-store link on my phone... But the app certainly doesn't have very good visibility if I have trouble finding it when I know it exists and I'm actively looking for it.


Clicked link, opened in iTunes:
http://i.imgur.com/3wcob.png

Clicked link on iPhone, opened in App-Store:
http://i.imgur.com/Qj3Qy.jpg

[Ken Drew]

I did provide search terms but I think it will take a while to fully propagate through the App Store.

Ken

[Travis Cobbs]

The search found it when I looked just now on my iPod Touch, but it didn't show up in the list of suggestions while I was typing. I suspect everything will be updated soon.

[Travis Cobbs]

Here's a tip that I discovered while testing the app before its release. Mobile Safari refuses to let you open most (all?) LDraw files on the web in an external viewer, but instead just shows the files as text. To get around this problem, view and LDraw file in Safari (looking at the text), then edit the link in the link bar, replacing http:// with brickpad://. As soon as you hit Go after doing that, the LDraw model will be opened in BrickPad.

[Ramón Figueroa-Centeno]

Aloha,

A bookmarklet will do the job:

Code:

javascript:window.location=%27brickpad://%27+window.location.toString().replace(%27http://%27,%27%27)

Create a bookmark in Safari, call it BrickPad, save it. Open the bookmark and replace the URL with the above code.

Enjoy,

Ramón

[Travis Cobbs]

Cool. Thanks!

[Steffen]

very cool!

just for completeness, here is a "LEGO instructions" app for Android I just saw,
but it just shows pre-rendered images.

however, I think that the images are generated using LDRAW....

https://market.android.com/details?id=co....legosteps

the funny thing is that the transfer of the pre-rendered images will take much more bandwidth
for the users than downloading a CAD model...

another funny thing is that the app users complain about not enough models to be available -
well, we have the OMR.........

[Ken Drew]

THAT IS COOL!

Thanks for the tip!

Ken

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

However, the proper solution is still to notify the site admin that they should configure their webserver to recognize LDraw files and deliver them as the proper mime-type.

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

BrickPad was just updated 5 days ago! (now version 1.1.1)

Many thanks to Ken for writing this nice viewer.



The changelog found here is reproduced below:

What's New in Version 1.1.1
BrickPad 1.1.1 includes bug fixes as well as new features:

• Fixed a memory leak.
  
• Improved memory. Loading large models (~2000 parts) back to back is now possible.
  
• Improved the performance when loading models. Loading times have been cut by more than 2/3.
  
• Title now conforms to LDraw Library Header specification.
  
• Automatically download missing, unofficial parts.
  
• Improvements in the rendering of lines.
  
• Updated to use the 2011-2 version of the LDraw parts library. This update includes 474 new parts.
  

Also, if you would like a chance to have your model included in the next release, email your model to brickpad-model(at)kenrickdrew[dot]com. Show off your creations to the world. See http://www.kenrickdrew.com/brickpad/models.html for more details.

Thank you all for your support and feedback. Keep the suggestions and feedback coming.

[Jaco van der Molen]

Wrote an e-mail to feedback, but I'll repeat my (perhaps dangerous) question here:
Any chance this app can be ported to the Android platform?

[Ken Drew]

For the benefit of everyone else, here was my reply to Jaco:

Unfortunately, at this time I don't have the time for an Android version. I would love to do an Android port, but I barely have time for BrickPad. However it is on the todo list, so when I get BrickPad where I want it, I'll do a port.

Ken

[Patricia Moya Nosquera]

Have you got any plan about a port to android?

I find this ldraw viewer for java but it seems to be beta:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/bHahOgDz7TQ

But the author show the code:

http://code.google.com/p/foo-org-ve/

[Ken Drew]

Have you got any plan about a port to android?

I find this ldraw viewer for java but it seems to be beta:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/bHahOgDz7TQ

But the author show the code:

http://code.google.com/p/foo-org-ve/

Nice.

I don't have any short term plans for BrickPad on Android, but long term.... The biggest factor is time (not enough of it).

Ken