Changed Part Number Database

[Eric Albrecht]

I've recently obtained a new computer and therefore reinstalled all my LDraw programs and library from scratch. It is a good thing to clean house now and then. However, I've run into a serious problem caused by progress. I'm very happy to see that so many unofficial parts have finally been moved to official in the many recent library updates. However, many parts have changed part numbers over the course of many updates. I have hundreds and hundreds of LDraw models archived on my computer, and I find that a great many of them are now broken. I don't mind updating them, the problem is that there is no easy way to find out what happened to an old part. When an old part doesn't load, it doesn't show up in the parts tracker and it doesn't show up in the official library either. I am left scouring the Internet trying to find out what 30039.dat was (for example) so that I can replace it with the current part. Is there any kind of database which tracks old part nnumbers when they change? This would be really useful. I've got my own table now with about 30 parts in it.

[Tim Gould]

Hi Eric,

Personally I wouldn't support such a list in any official capacity, although if you wanted to share what you've done on the wiki I wouldn't argue.

Unofficial part numbers should not be considered fixed until they appear in a library. And they should be included as a sub-model. Of course we don't all do this (I certainly don't) but it is 'best practise' and should be encouraged. I definitely think it's a case of caveat emptor if you choose not to do this.

Tim

[Philippe Hurbain]

Hi Eric,
Unfortunately, there is no such list (something I regret, though it is not so simple as many other changes may have changed such as orientation and origin). The only way to play it safe is to embed unofficial parts in model mpd, something that Orion's MPDWizard does very well.

[Chris Dee]

Eric

Everything Tim said, but are you sure you have the complete library installed, because your example (30039.dat) has never been affected by a move. It was first issued in 2005-01, re-issued in the complete library refresh 2008-01 and updated in 2009-03.

Since 30039.dat is an alias for 3070b.dat, is it possible that you omitted to install the Aliases (and Physical Colour) Parts? These library sections are optional in the Windows Installer.

[Eric Albrecht]

Good question. I used the All-in-One installer and used the default options so I don't know how I would have missed the aliases. Is there an easy way to add them without running the whole installer again?

I understand that the best practice is to include all the unofficial parts in your MPD, but that hasn't been very practical for me in the past, especially a couple of years ago when there were so many unofficial parts. I do almost all Technic models and sometimes 1-2 to 3/4 of all the parts in the model were unofficial.

[Chris Dee]

You can re-install/upgrade the parts library using the LDraw1201.exe download from here. That will give you the choice about the Alias and Physical Colour library sections. Or the complete.zip from the same page will refresh the whole library without any installation user interface.