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Hi!
The other night I built an alternate ship using the pieces from my new B-Wing
kit. (Admittedly, I’m a wee bit late for last year’s
B-Wing alternate model
contest.) Although I haven’t prepared instructions for it - something I plan to
do eventually - I did model it in Bricksmith. The
MPD file is fairly well organized (but not perfect), so if someone was
interested they could probably reconstruct it without too much difficulty. I
built a docking cradle, too.
From certain angles I think it even bears a slight resemblance to some WWII-era
fighters:
 
CAD screenshots:
Brickshelf gallery
Not a terribly unique design, I’ll admit, but I thought it came out pretty well
nevertheless. What do you think?
Jim
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In lugnet.announce.moc, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
The other night I built an alternate ship using the pieces from my new B-Wing
kit.
What do you think?
|
I like the ship, and especially that you’ve done it up in LDraw on the Mac.
Cool. I’ll have to leave any other comments to the starwars and building
experts though.
What I really like about that particular cad picture is the way it
highlights the fix for a problem that’s been bugging me about some of
the parts for a while. I hope you don’t mind if I hijack a fork off
of your post to talk about it a bit.
If you look at the picture you can see some of the convex curved slopes
have a bit of a tiger striping pattern when shaded. But there’s also
an upside down dark gray convex curved slope part that doesn’t have the
problem. The good part uses a fan design to lay out the triangles so
they all meet at one point where the convex curve flattens out. The
bad design uses a zig zag pattern of triangles with lots of extra points
along a straight edge. It looks bad and uses extra points. Double plus
bad! Part designers, take note. Actually, I could swear there already
was, once upon a time, a mention in some part design guide somewhere
about not adding extra points along a straight edge.
Anyhow, have fun,
Don
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In lugnet.starwars, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.announce.moc, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
The other night I built an alternate ship using the pieces from my new
B-Wing kit.
What do you think?
|
I like the ship, and especially that you’ve done it up in LDraw on the Mac.
Cool. I’ll have to leave any other comments to the starwars and building
experts though.
What I really like about that particular cad picture is the way it
highlights the fix for a problem that’s been bugging me about some of
the parts for a while. I hope you don’t mind if I hijack a fork off
of your post to talk about it a bit.
If you look at the picture you can see some of the convex curved slopes
have a bit of a tiger striping pattern when shaded. But there’s also
an upside down dark gray convex curved slope part that doesn’t have the
problem. The good part uses a fan design to lay out the triangles so
they all meet at one point where the convex curve flattens out. The
bad design uses a zig zag pattern of triangles with lots of extra points
along a straight edge. It looks bad and uses extra points. Double plus
bad! Part designers, take note. Actually, I could swear there already
was, once upon a time, a mention in some part design guide somewhere
about not adding extra points along a straight edge.
Anyhow, have fun,
Don
|
Hi Don,
That problem has bugged me for a while but I didn’t realise there was such a
simple solution to it. I imagine that something similar can be done where both
edges are curves by setting up shells along the double curves.
Now I’m off the fix the primitive in my home copy :)
Tim
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Timothy Gould wrote:
| |
In lugnet.starwars, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.announce.moc, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
The other night I built an alternate ship using the pieces from my new
B-Wing kit.
What do you think?
|
I like the ship, and especially that you’ve done it up in LDraw on
the Mac. Cool. I’ll have to leave any other comments to the
starwars and building experts though.
What I really like about that particular cad picture is the way it
highlights the fix for a problem that’s been bugging me about some
of the parts for a while. I hope you don’t mind if I hijack a fork
off of your post to talk about it a bit.
If you look at the picture you can see some of the convex curved
slopes have a bit of a tiger striping pattern when shaded. But
there’s also an upside down dark gray convex curved slope part that
doesn’t have the problem. The good part uses a fan design to lay
out the triangles so they all meet at one point where the convex
curve flattens out. The bad design uses a zig zag pattern of
triangles with lots of extra points along a straight edge. It
looks bad and uses extra points. Double plus bad! Part designers,
take note. Actually, I could swear there already was, once upon a
time, a mention in some part design guide somewhere about not
adding extra points along a straight edge.
|
That problem has bugged me for a while but I didn’t realise there
was such a simple solution to it. I imagine that something similar
can be done where both edges are curves by setting up shells along
the double curves.
Now I’m off the fix the primitive in my home copy :)
|
If you fix that one, perhaps you can take up the challenge of
the wedge brick. I
don’t think we ever solved that one properly for ldraw.
Enjoy,
Don
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad.dev, Timothy Gould wrote:
| |
In lugnet.starwars, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.announce.moc, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
The other night I built an alternate ship using the pieces from my new
B-Wing kit.
What do you think?
|
I like the ship, and especially that you’ve done it up in LDraw on
the Mac. Cool. I’ll have to leave any other comments to the
starwars and building experts though.
What I really like about that particular cad picture is the way it
highlights the fix for a problem that’s been bugging me about some
of the parts for a while. I hope you don’t mind if I hijack a fork
off of your post to talk about it a bit.
If you look at the picture you can see some of the convex curved
slopes have a bit of a tiger striping pattern when shaded. But
there’s also an upside down dark gray convex curved slope part that
doesn’t have the problem. The good part uses a fan design to lay
out the triangles so they all meet at one point where the convex
curve flattens out. The bad design uses a zig zag pattern of
triangles with lots of extra points along a straight edge. It
looks bad and uses extra points. Double plus bad! Part designers,
take note. Actually, I could swear there already was, once upon a
time, a mention in some part design guide somewhere about not
adding extra points along a straight edge.
|
That problem has bugged me for a while but I didn’t realise there
was such a simple solution to it. I imagine that something similar
can be done where both edges are curves by setting up shells along
the double curves.
Now I’m off the fix the primitive in my home copy :)
|
If you fix that one, perhaps you can take up the challenge of
the wedge brick. I
don’t think we ever solved that one properly for ldraw.
Enjoy,
Don
|
I’m wondering if something can’t be done for general fits between two or three
parabolas (perhaps I’m best to start with one parabolas and two lines). I’m
trying to think of things but unfortunately geometry is my weakest branch of
mathematics.
Tim
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In lugnet.starwars, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
If you look at the picture you can see some of the convex curved slopes
have a bit of a tiger striping pattern when shaded. But there’s also
an upside down dark gray convex curved slope part that doesn’t have the
problem. The good part uses a fan design to lay out the triangles so
they all meet at one point where the convex curve flattens out. The
bad design uses a zig zag pattern of triangles with lots of extra points
along a straight edge. It looks bad and uses extra points. Double plus
bad! Part designers, take note. Actually, I could swear there already
was, once upon a time, a mention in some part design guide somewhere
about not adding extra points along a straight edge.
|
I have to wonder if I’m partially to blame. Perhaps the part author was using
LDView (thumbnail is linked to bigger image, generated by LDView):
Everything looks great there.
--Travis
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
In lugnet.starwars, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
If you look at the picture you can see some of the convex curved slopes
have a bit of a tiger striping pattern when shaded. But there’s also
an upside down dark gray convex curved slope part that doesn’t have the
problem. The good part uses a fan design to lay out the triangles so
they all meet at one point where the convex curve flattens out. The
bad design uses a zig zag pattern of triangles with lots of extra points
along a straight edge. It looks bad and uses extra points. Double plus
bad! Part designers, take note. Actually, I could swear there already
was, once upon a time, a mention in some part design guide somewhere
about not adding extra points along a straight edge.
|
I have to wonder if I’m partially to blame. Perhaps the part author was
using LDView (thumbnail is linked to bigger image, generated by LDView):
Everything looks great there.
|
Yeah, your default settings tend to hide certain surface flaws. Your
light source (where is it by the way?) and smooth shading are as effective
as dim lighting and heavy makeup. Perhaps not the best thing for a parts
designer to be using. But if you zoom in for a closer look, even in
ldview you can still see the bumpy waffled surface when you spin those
parts around. And even smooth shading doesn’t completely hide the
wrinkles close up.
I wonder if there’s a way to get ldview to use a different set of
preferences when the user is obviously looking at a part?
Don
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad.dev, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad.dev, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
I have to wonder if I’m partially to blame. Perhaps the part author was
using LDView (thumbnail is linked to bigger image, generated by LDView):
Everything looks great there.
|
Yeah, your default settings tend to hide certain surface flaws. Your
light source (where is it by the way?) and smooth shading are as effective
as dim lighting and heavy makeup. Perhaps not the best thing for a parts
designer to be using. But if you zoom in for a closer look, even in
ldview you can still see the bumpy waffled surface when you spin those
parts around. And even smooth shading doesn’t completely hide the
wrinkles close up.
|
My light is a directional light pointing in exactly the same direction as the
camera. In LDView 3.1, you can actually override this with an undocumented
command line option. I hope to have light direction (single directional light)
as a new feature in LDView 3.2. Some future LDView might support more arbitrary
lighting (including multiple light sources).
| |
I wonder if there’s a way to get ldview to use a different set of
preferences when the user is obviously looking at a part?
|
I could probably do that, but the smooth shading is actually useful when editing
a part, because it can highlight missing (or incorrect) conditional lines. It’s
not fool-proof, since correct conditional lines don’t necessarily result in
smooth shading. On the other hand, I suspect that most part authors that use
LDView for inspection of their parts would prefer to have the smooth surfaces
look good in LDView.
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad.dev, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad.dev, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad.dev, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
I have to wonder if I’m partially to blame. Perhaps the part author was
using LDView (thumbnail is linked to bigger image, generated by LDView):
Everything looks great there.
|
Yeah, your default settings tend to hide certain surface flaws. Your
light source (where is it by the way?) and smooth shading are as effective
as dim lighting and heavy makeup. Perhaps not the best thing for a parts
designer to be using. But if you zoom in for a closer look, even in
ldview you can still see the bumpy waffled surface when you spin those
parts around. And even smooth shading doesn’t completely hide the
wrinkles close up.
|
My light is a directional light pointing in exactly the same
direction as the camera.
|
Ah yes, the trusty helmet mounted flashlight look. Too much glare for
me. I prefer the sort of lighting delivered by the mid-afternoon sun,
beaming down from high over the left shoulder. But that’s a personal
preference, I suppose.
| |
In LDView 3.1, you can actually override this with an undocumented
command line option. I hope to have light direction (single
directional light) as a new feature in LDView 3.2. Some future
LDView might support more arbitrary lighting (including multiple
light sources).
|
Nice idea to have it configurable. Don’t forget to consider the old
light.dat method that’s been kicked around for just about forever.
| |
| |
I wonder if there’s a way to get ldview to use a different set of
preferences when the user is obviously looking at a part?
|
I could probably do that, but the smooth shading is actually useful
when editing a part, because it can highlight missing (or incorrect)
conditional lines. It’s not fool-proof, since correct conditional
lines don’t necessarily result in smooth shading. On the other
hand, I suspect that most part authors that use LDView for
inspection of their parts would prefer to have the smooth surfaces
look good in LDView.
|
You’re probably right, but that doesn’t make it a good idea to use
only one source for visual verification.
I think just about every couple of months I point out the “part in
process” picture on this page as the closest to what I’d consider an ideal part
development environment. LDView plays a prominent part, but it’s
assisted quite a bit by l3lab. Now some things look positively
hideous in l3lab, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look. Actually
I think maybe the two ldview windows in that picture might be running
with different settings. That’d be an acceptable solution for a
part designer who prefers the default ldview settings. Just make
sure to open a 2nd window with flat shading and some of the other
fancy stuff turned off, to reveal the hidden flaws.
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In lugnet.starwars, Don Heyse wrote:
| |
In lugnet.announce.moc, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
The other night I built an alternate ship using the pieces from my new
B-Wing kit.
What do you think?
|
I like the ship, and especially that you’ve done it up in LDraw on the Mac.
Cool. I’ll have to leave any other comments to the starwars and building
experts though.
|
Thanks! I enjoy recording models in LDraw after I’ve made them because the
process of methodically disassembling and reassembling them for input is very
different from the casual way I initially build them. It’s just sort of fun to
look at a structure from these two different perspectives.
| |
What I really like about that particular cad picture is the way it
highlights the fix for a problem that’s been bugging me about some of
the parts for a while. I hope you don’t mind if I hijack a fork off
of your post to talk about it a bit.
|
Not at all! I’m pleased to be able to facilitate the discussion. I hope to
participate in a few more in the future, especially where contributions to the
state of LDraw on Mac OS X can be made.
Be well,
Jim
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