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My latest update to Bricksmith for Macintosh is focused heavily on
viewing-related enhancements.
Bricksmith 1.3 adds the following
features:
- Multiple viewports
- Perspective in the 3D view
- Preset orthographic viewing angles (front, top, etc.)
- Speed improvements of up to 40% in a single viewport
- Select All works
- Added a Tutorial
- Use the mouse for zooming and scrolling! There’s both a “tool palette” and Photoshop-style hotkeys:
Zoom In:
| | space-command-click
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| | Zoom Out:
| | space-option-click
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| | Center:
| | command-click
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| | Smooth zoom in/out:
| | command-drag
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| | Pan-Scroll:
| | space-drag
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It also fixes the following bugs:
- Fixed glitch whereby parts might rotate unexpectedly when moved
- Fixed crash when removing then adding certain toolbar items
Bricksmith 1.3 was something of a monumental undertaking for me, and there were
several times when I was pretty sure I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
Implementing perspective (a vanishing point) was by far the worst. However, I am
delighted that I finally grasped the concept, because the distortions caused by
an orthographic camera were extremely annoying.
Perhaps the Number One
request I’ve received for this program is to provide preset viewing angles, like
“Front” or “Left,” so I’m happy to fulfill that wish as well. Note, however,
that perspective is ill-suited to such head-on views, so the camera
automatically switches back to orthographic when you view a model that way.
This is probably the last time you’ll see enormous speed gains, as all parts are
now drawn via OpenGL display lists.
On a side note, Bricksmith has now been
downloaded over 16,000 times. I’m guessing the overwhelming majority of those
users are getting their first taste of LDraw. But I would also very much like to
hear the needs of the truly devoted.
Bricksmith requires Mac OS X 10.3 or
later, and may be download it at http://bricksmith.sourceforge.net/. It is not
yet Intel native, but I will try it out as soon as I get access to an Intel
Mac.
Sincerely,
Allen Smith
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Bricksmith 1.3: Here's Looking at You, Kid
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| (...) Just installed this and I think it's great! I have a few questions. I was looking for a way to save each step as an image and for how to save or export a parts list to text. Are these features available? Russell BayLUG (18 years ago, 21-Mar-06, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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