Bricksmith 2.6: Texture your world

[Allen Smith]

Bricksmith 2.6 adds the following features:

• Supports planar textures (LDraw TEXMAP language extension)
  
• Select multiple parts by dragging a rectangle around them
  
• Part Browser improvements:
  • Source-list UI
    
  • Part Browser search scope buttons for choosing all parts or selected category
    
  • Improved text-matching algorithm for search
    
  • Recognizes and searches !KEYWORDS in parts
    
  • Identify and categorize alias parts, and exclude them from searches
    
• New option for turntable-style model spinning (in which the model can't be rolled on its side)
  
  
• Substantial improvements to the handling of neighboring file references
  • Referenced neighbor files can be opened and edited; changes seen in parent document
    
  • Submodels in neighboring files will be drawn correctly
    
• New duplicated parts are inserted into last step instead of current one
  
• Document autosave
  
  
• Option-wheel (or just wheel) to zoom
  
• Command-Shift-C for color palette
  
• Removed nonstandard Officiality setting for models
  
• Speed improvements for models with many submodel references
  
• Speed improvements while hovering mouse over model
  

It also fixes the following bugs:

• Fixed crash on 10.7+ when closing windows or viewports
  
• Step display won't change the view rotation unless the step specifies it
  
• Pan-dragging is not affected by perspective distortion
  
• Zooming gesture locked in when view is orthographic; no interspersed rotations are permitted (prevents view from changing to perspective)
  
• Allow leading whitespace in any line
  
• Fixed primitives failing to be drawn in new submodels
  
• Fixed certain hang situations
  
• Avoid accessing Address Book to avoid scare dialog on 10.8
  

Bricksmith 2.6 has been a long time coming, but I think you'll agree there are some fantastic new features in it.

I am especially happy to announce that Bricksmith supports the new texture LDraw meta command! I am really excited to see this feature supported in an editor, and I hope to see some great new pattern parts soon. In Bricksmith 2.6, texture support is limited to planar textures only. I also don't currently support nested textures, and the drawing code has not been optimized. Lastly, there is not yet a GUI for adding the texture META. Obviously, these are all features slated for a future release. In the meantime, enjoy this TEXMAPped part:



I would also like to extend a special thanks to Ben Supnik, who contributed code for several of the great new internal features. Ben's work included the drag-a-rectangle-to-select feature and the neighbor file improvements, among others.

Bricksmith now requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later, and may be download it at <http://bricksmith.sourceforge.net/>.

Sincerely,
Allen Smith

[MoonMan]

Why did you drop PowerPC?

[Orion Pobursky]

Allen will have to speak to specifics but I'd imagine it's due to the need for some 10.6 programming API. Since 10.6 dropped PPC support consequently, Bricksmith has dropped PPC support.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Maybe I'll have to buy a Mac...

[Allen Smith]

Why did you drop PowerPC?

Alas, because a) I no longer have access to a 10.5 system to test on, b) some 10.6 APIs were used in Bricksmith 2.6, and c) Apple is intentionally making it extremely difficult to develop for older systems. Xcode 4 won't even compile PowerPC code. The only way to develop PPC applications is to have a computer running 10.6 and Xcode 3.2, and those are getting increasingly difficult to come by. While I do happen to have one (for the moment), Problems (a) and (b) were still hurdles too high to surmount.

Fortunately, Bricksmith 2.5.1 is pretty solid for your PowerPC computing needs.

Allen

[MoonMan]

Thanks for trying, and for supporting it as long as you did.

I've been using 2.4 due to two issues with 2.5.1.

The parts in the parts browser are drawn with some sort of distortion:


And I didn't care for the xyz coordinate display. The way I build models makes it unecessary, so it's just eating up screen real estate. I'm sure I'll have a new computer at some point, so this seems like as good a time as any to suggest you make it optional (if it's not already). It's a great program in any event. Thanks again.

[Allen Smith]

I have no idea what's going on with that part browser screenshot. This is the first report I've had on any such issue. Does it always display garbage like that? What happens if you change the view mode? (Control-click on the part preview and choose a differnt projection mode.) I'm pretty certain I tested 2.5.0 on a Power Mac G5 without seeing such a glaring issue.

Allen