LDDP user questions

[Orion Pobursky]

I'm beginning a ground up rewrite of LDDP in order to take advantage of new language features and cross platform technology. Before I get too far, I have a few questions ask the LDDP users:

• What is your preference for interface: Multiple document windows or tabbed browsing?
  
• Error check as a separate window or integrated into the margin of the document?
  

I had a few more but I seem to be drawing a blank right now. I'll ask if I remember.

[Willy Tschager]

Orion Pobursky Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> [*] What is your preference for interface:
> Multiple document windows or tabbed browsing?

Tabbed

> [*] Error check as a separate window or integrated
> into the margin of the document?
> [/list]

Integrate

For the rest check out:

http://www.holly-wood.it/betatest/lddp/l...hlist.html

(To be honest I haven't touched that page for ages and don't recall any more what's already live but I definitely want that split window feature. Also - some requests have also been fulfilled by Philo's tools or Datheader, so thx for that to the guys-D.

BTW what is the most recent STABLE version?

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

This is great news!

I prefer the tabbed version too. I'd appreciate to have a close icon on each tab.
Integrated check is OK for me. One improvement I'd like: in present version, once you check a file, it is automatically re-checked at each reload. This is a pain for big files. I'd prefer that the check be done only once when the button is pressed.

Other improvements (I presently use version 2.0.4)...
- sometimes checking a file generates an error. When I get this again I'll keep the file for you.
- the file reload on external change is not yet perfect (need to press OK twice, sometimes more)
- When changing color of a LDraw line, rounding is done even if "only perform rounding when using auto round function" is checked.

I guess some other wishes will come up later...

Philo

[Chris Dee]

I'd like to see the ability to move/rotate by a user-specified amount, not just one of the three available scales. This is the main thing I miss from LDAO.

Chris

[Orion Pobursky]

Willy Tschager Wrote:
> For the rest check out:
>
> http://www.holly-wood.it/betatest/lddp/lddp_wishli
> st.html

What do you think I use for inspiration when adding new things?

> BTW what is the most recent STABLE version?

That's a hard question. Whatever is on Sourceforge, 2.0.4 I believe. I've done so much tinkering the last few years that, while the user facing elements are pretty much the same, the underlying code base is very much different. As a result, the code is very hodgepodge and I'm continually finding things that should have been removed long ago. Hence the one of the many reasons I'm starting over.

[Philippe Hurbain]

> I'd like to see the ability to move/rotate by a
> user-specified amount, not just one of the three
> available scales.
+1 !
Another wish would be homogeneous symmetry: presently, when doing a mirror operation, primitives are mirrored according to their own origin while other elements are mirrored across the world origin (0,0,0).

[Philippe Hurbain]

Re-reading Willy's list, I see that many suggestions I made here are already in the list, while some others have been totally or partially implemented in latest version (eg. Value select tool).

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

Any chance us mac users could get some love?

I could always just run it in wine, but then I would lose the external program interaction which I grew so fond of on PC (like loading the model in a viewer in one click if my memory serves me correctly). It would be AMAZING to have a native LDDP on mac.

[Orion Pobursky]

Seeing as that my primary machine is a Mac Book Pro and I develop LDDP via virtualization so I don't have to reboot my machine, this is absolutely high on the list. That said, it may be a while as I'm still trying to untangle as much of the program as possible from platform dependence.

[Steffen]

As far as I know, LDView is using C++ plus Qt, so porting this application to Mac
should be possible in principle, as Qt version for Mac exists:
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/wiki/Support_for_Mac_OS_X
However, of course, this will still take some time,
as I think that LDView internally might still use some Windows specifics somewhere.

[Orion Pobursky]

LDView already exists for Mac. I use it quite a bit

[Philippe Hurbain]

OK, I'm reviving an old thread, and I should have raised this issue before, but... There is an old bug in LDDP that catches me quite often: if you preview a modified file using LDView, the "file modified" flag is cleared, and you can close the file or quit LDDP without any warning. Here is the latest time I got caught, didn't save after changing background color.

[Tim Gould]

Can we make suggestions here too? If not split the thread

I'd like to see a 'Move by vector' and 'Rotate by normal/angle' added to LDDP.

For the latter I like to keep my largest rotation at 30degrees but, with rounding, this can (and has) end up with rounding errors. Of course there are ways around this, but it would be nice to simply click and select (Normal vector 0 -1 0, Angle 90) and thus rotate 90 degrees around the y-axis.

Let me know if you need any help with the mathematics of the normal/angle rotation.

Tim

[Orion Pobursky]

Ok cool. I'm desperately far behind on my update project for LDDP but I'd like to have an upgrade out by April/May at the latest.

[Daniel Goerner]

Here are a few things that I experienced using LDDP:

It crashes. I don't know what's causing it, but it happens from time to time when I click on the X to close it. It starts blinking and it can just be closed via the taskmanager.
Error List sometimes doesn't work. It gives an error message, something like "floating division by 0". Mostly when a pattern comes fresh out of LPC. When I checked it with DATHeader and have already corrected a lot of stuff, then the errorlist works.

I find the rotation buttons very confusing. They're not working as in MLCad although they're using almost the same symbols. If the arrow goes CCW the part should turn CCW.

[Ronald Vallenduuk]

I know this is an old thread but it's kinda on-topic for my question.

When I use the rotation buttons in LDDP it uses rotation centre <0, 0, 0>. Is there currently a way around this that I am missing?
If not, can a future version have the option to rotate a part using its own location as centre?
For example if I put a 1-4ndis.dat in the right location but wrong rotation it would be great to just rotate it where it is. Make sense?

[Ronald Vallenduuk]

Request for the next update:
When I switch between windows using [alt]+[tab] and I get back to LDDP, the focus is not on the editor. I have to click into the editor before I can start typing again.
Would be great if that could be fixed...

[Philippe Hurbain]

No way to change rotation center I know... And symmetry of type 1 lines is buggy

[Orion Pobursky]

The update will be a little long in coming as I'm in the middle of a complete rewrite and don't have as much time to devote to this as I once did. I'm hoping I can be done by the new year.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Good luck, Jim!