Putting comments into LDraw projects...

[Ahmed Elhassan]

What's the point of adding comments into an LDraw project anyway? I've noticed that comments inserted into a project don't appear anywhere in the graphical representation of the model that they have been inserted into. They also don't seem to be visible in the graphical representations of any assembly instructions built via LPub either.

The only place where I have actually seen comments listed is in the meta commands table in LPub and in the commands window of LDraw, where they would be of no actual usefulness if they are intended to point out important information on printed instructions for a model's physical assembly.

Here is my dilemma in regards to this. When replicating an official Lego model that I have purchase for the purpose of customization or working on designing an MOC project, I sometimes find that a piece I need or want to use doesn't yet exist in LDraw. I currently have all parts available for LDraw. I took the time to download the entire un-official parts zip file and add all it's contents to LDraw's parts library. In spots where I can't find a given piece, I use a placeholder piece as a substitute for it.

That in turn creates a problem for me. I need to indicate on the assembly instructions which placeholder piece corresponds to which actual piece on the model. At first I considered using comments, but found that they don't appear in the instructions. I need a way to point this out somehow, but I am currently at a loss for a method. I am trying to think of one, but haven't been able to come up with a way so far.

Anyone know if there is a way to make comments inserted in an LDraw project actually appear in the graphical image representing it in LDraw and LPub?

[Philippe Hurbain]

That requires to create a text (composed of triangles) in LDraw format. Ross Crowford's Txt2dat utility allows this. That's how I generated texts used in my visual LDconfig

[Ahmed Elhassan]

Ok, how am I supposed to use the Txt2dat utility? I downloaded a copy, but I see no instructions included with it on how I am supposed to get it to work. I am double-clicking on it, only for the program to open and then close immediately. Plus from the brief appearance of it's window, it looks like a command line program. Command line programs won't help me as I am DOS illiterate. I doubt that there are many people left these days who are literate with DOS as that OS was phased out and support for it in windows was discontinued starting with WindowsXP. I currently use Windows8.

[Philippe Hurbain]

There's a GUI written by Anders Isaksson, but it's no longer available on the web

I attached here a copy, you need to rename it to GUItx2d.exe instead of GUItx2d.exe.dat

The only documentation I can find is in French, here

Mikeheide, if you read this - maybe Txt2dat support would be a great addition to LETGUI...

[Tim Gould]

Plenty of people are command line literate. Windows7 (and presumably 8) contain a command line for them. As does OSX and Linux. If design-heavy Macs have kept it, it means it's useful to have.

Rather than complaining that other people didn't spend their free time coding a UI, maybe you should spend a few minutes to figure out how to run things from the command line. It's not hard.

Tim

[Michael Heidemann]

I have read this and will have a look at it.

[Stephen]

What's the point of adding comments into an LDraw project anyway?

Since no-one else addressed this specific question, here's where I use comments:

Firstly, I'll leave a comment next to a part where I think it conveys further information should I want to adjust the part at a later date. One good example is a rotated part where I will leave a note of the exact [and potentially obscure] angle I rotated so I can undo the rotation precisely later if needed. Another example is leaving a note of all the individual settings used on the Minifig generator since it doesn't allow you to edit an existing Minifig and often you'll need to recreate a Minifig from scratch just to make a minor adjustment say to the arms or something.

Secondly, I often use scripts to control my POV-Ray renders and I sometimes place very specific comment markers in the model which are read by the scripts and used in some way to alter what is being rendered.

There's probably other reasons I use comments too, those two are just the most common.