MLCAD 3.4 can't import MPD

[Roger Boker]

I have created an MPD file and can't import it into MLCAD. Changing the extension to LDR doesn't seem to help.

My basic problem is that I have sub-assemblies that depend on other sub-assemblies (3 levels of nesting; the main model .LDR at the top level needs to include a .MPD file which itself is composed of two LDR files). As soon as I do "Multipart->Import model" it won't let me save as LDR. :-( I have to save that sub-assembly as MPD.

I need to save as LDR so that I can import the created LDR into the main model! Hope it's clear.

Thanks for any tips, Rog.

[Michael Heidemann]

Not completely, but it might not working what you like to do.

Just save with the extension you like, there is not problem. But I doubt that an mpd content file can be imported by mlcad.

[Tim Gould]

The short of it is that you can never nest an MPD. You either have to use one MPD for everything, or an MPD that accesses external _single model_ LDR files.

It is a very annoying and, IMO, silly limitation but one we're stuck with for now.

Since you will probably want to split the MPD files, Michael Heidemann should have pointed you to his MPDCenter

Tim

[Roland Melkert]

LDCad supports it

[Tim Gould]

Awesome. For some reason I thought you didn't. Nested MPDs make a million times more sense.

Tim

[Michael Heidemann]

How do you do that. I can not imagine another way I choosed for MPDCenter!

[Roland Melkert]

I keep track of internal and external names for all (sub)files.

So the main model of an mpd will be found using the os filename from other files and using the FILE meta name from within the same mpd.

Nested mpd usage comes pretty much natural because I use a location stack while loading, an mpd is just a virtual folder on that stack. Access to submodels inside any mpd is limited to other models inside that same mpd though (except for the main model via the external name).

[Allen Smith]

Bricksmith can reference external MPD files too, although I can't take credit for the code that does it.

There's certainly no syntatic reason why this cannot be done, nor does the standard prohibit it. I'd actually say the standard implicitly requires it now.

Allen

[Michael Heidemann]

Thanks for explaining, but my question was aimed on saving such a file and afterwards restore that nested mpd.

[Roger Boker]

Thanks for all the replies. I've realised that I am best off avoiding MPDs entirely. What I realised I needed to do was to use the Add->Part->Custom part to add an existing LDR file to my current LDR file so that it is nested. This then does what I want.

[Alex Taylor]

Indeed; it's pretty trivial to implement and in fact it would take a fair amount of effort to *prevent* it working if you've designed your parser sensibly. I can't imagine why MLCad doesn't support it.

If you (hand-)edit a file to have a type-1 line which references an .mpd, MLCad will load this but it will treat the referenced file as 'flat' - that is, everything in it will render, but all the sub-models will be drawn on top of each other... This rather suggests that there are *two* parsers: one for loading files to edit, and one for loading referenced files. Weird.