New (unofficial) part not recognized by MLCad

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hi all,

There is a strange problem going on I cannot solve.

I have added a new unofficial part to my library downloaded from the partstracker.
It concerns part 11211 Brick, Modified 1 x 2 with Studs on 1 Side.

I have put it in <LDRAWDIR>Unofficial\Parts and I use the [SCAN_ORDER] option in MLCad.ini.
However MLCad cannot find the part.
I generated a new partslist from MLCad... no succes. The part is not in the list.
So I decided to put the parts in the official parts folder and generate a new parts.lst file using good old mklist.
It ended up in the parts list just fine.
However, it does NOT show in MLCad and I cannot find it.

I have put it in my model using Insert new part and then browse for it in <LDRAWDIR>\Parts\11211.dat. It added it just fine to the model and it showed. Saving the model, closing MLCad, start MLCad again en open the file gives an error:
File 11211.dat not found! Continue loading?

Putting the part file in the same folder as my model does not help either.
How is this possible? Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Jaco

[Willy Tschager]

How any versions of MLCad are on your disk? Is the MLCad.ini stored in more than one place? Are the shortcuts on the desktop/start menu to the right version?

It had happend that people launched a version of MLCad stored in A but edited the MLCad.ini in B.

w.

[Jaco van der Molen]

I still have 3.30 somewhere, but I am sure I open the exe of 3.40.
There is only one MLCad.ini on my system and that is in the same folder as the 3.40 executable.

But it is getting more stranger now: I have opened my model in LDView and now MLCad does recognize the part too!

However, if I start MLCad 3.30 it cannot find the part.
It is still in the official parts folder. In any case I thought putting a part file in there would mean LDraw could find it even if it is not in the parts.lst file.

[Steffen]

yep, this happened to me many times.
nowadays I'm using a text diffing tool to compare the different mlcad.ini instances and make sure they have the proper content.

[Steffen]

You can try generating the parts list using mklist.exe.
I never used that feature from inside MLCad, always have used mklist.exe.
If you look into the text file parts.lst in your LDRAW folder, does the added part appear there?

[Jaco van der Molen]

Steffen, I don't mean to be rude, but I did use mklist to generate a parts list (see my original post ;-)
I have searched my entire system for another MLCad.ini but only found one other instance in a zip file.
This is a very weird problem, that has somehow been solved by loading the model once in LDView.
I've been working with LDraw and MLCad for many years. In fact since MLCad is there and I have never encountered such problem.
The only thing I can think of that I have recently done a complete system sweep and clean up of files, registry and so.
I think I must try another new part and see if I can recreate the problem and solve it again.

[Roland Melkert]

Are there any weird (unicode) characters in that file or its header ? I don't know for sure but given MLCad's age it might be ansi only.

This could only affect the tree view depending on used components etc.

[Philippe Hurbain]

The only interaction with LDView I can see is that LDView downloads missing files in the ldraw/unofficial folder. But that doesn't explain the missing files you still have with MLcad 3.3 except if this one has a different configuration...??? If I remember correctly MLCad 3.4 sets it configuration in Windows registry?

[Steffen]

sorry, I have somehow missed your sentence that you had already tried mklist.

[Jaco van der Molen]

OK, I searched and searched and found! An old folder in C:\Program Files\LDraw\ etc....
Presumably a left over from a test I did once with the AIOI.
Loading the model in LDView caused it to download the file and put it in the folder MLCad was looking, hence it worked.
It probably has to do with some vague registry entries and me cleaning and repairing my registry with some tools.
Thank you all for thinking with me :-)