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I proxy this on behalf of Sergio Reano, who for some technical reasons is not
able to post to LUGNET. Please post here your comments but cc: also to Sergio
via mail.
Hi everybody,
my name is Sergio Reano and I'm a programmer and Lego fun from Italy.
In the last few years I have had little time to play with real bricks and
decided to mix passion and informatics to create a new Lego CAD software to
enjoy Lego at least while I was in front of the screen.
The program I came up with, called SR 3D Builder, is IMHO very innovative
compared to MLCad or Lego Digital Designer 'cos it is able to recognize
automatically connections between LDraw parts and, based on that, to manage
hinges, rotation axels, gears. Additional functionality is planed for the
future.
To allow connection detection, I have associated the most common connections
like studs, axles, pins with the subpart representing an existing connection. In
short: every time the program finds a STUD.dat subpart it adds a connection of
the STUD type with the same coordinates. The connections it manages are almost
the same you can find in http://www.ldraw.org/Article135.html, but minifigs and
most of the hinges are still not implemented.
Problem is; it's really hard to create a connection when there is no subpart I
can associate with. The only way I found was to patch every single .dat part by
hand, adding lines which describe this kind of connection (especially hinges).
The program plus the patched parts definitions can be freely downloaded from
http://staff.polito.it/sergio.reano (a link has also been added to the download
section at LDraw.org). Please have a look at it and let me know what you think
about.
As you might already guess there are a lot of parts to patch, and I'm feeling
kind of lost with the huge library out there. What I'm looking for are helping
hands to patch the parts (the software you'll need will be provided).
Furthermore, I would like to establish contact with someone of the LDraw
organization in order to work out a standard for the connections.
I have contacted Willy Tschager and he has proposed a standard based on meta
commands:
0 !NEW CONNECTION conn_type, xpos,ypos,zpos, xorient, yorient, zorient
where
- conn_type identify connection type (stud, hinge, ...)
- x,y,z pos identify connection position
- x,y,z orient identify connection orientation
which would be ok for me, even though I currently use a different code (you can
find the technical specification on my site).
I would be really happy hearing form you (especially form those willing to patch
;-) You can contact me at: Sergio[dot]reano(at)polito{dot}it
Thank you,
Sergio
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In lugnet.cad, Willy Tschager wrote:
> I proxy this on behalf of Sergio Reano, who for some technical reasons is not
> able to post to LUGNET. Please post here your comments but cc: also to Sergio
> via mail.
>
>
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> my name is Sergio Reano and I'm a programmer and Lego fun from Italy.
>
> In the last few years I have had little time to play with real bricks and
> decided to mix passion and informatics to create a new Lego CAD software to
> enjoy Lego at least while I was in front of the screen.
SNIP
>
> I would be really happy hearing form you (especially form those willing to patch
> ;-) You can contact me at: Sergio[dot]reano(at)polito{dot}it
>
> Thank you,
>
> Sergio
This sounds very good to me. I will give it a try the next days.
cu
mikeheide
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In lugnet.cad, Willy Tschager wrote:
> I proxy this on behalf of Sergio Reano, who for some technical reasons is not
> able to post to LUGNET. Please post here your comments but cc: also to Sergio
> via mail.
>
>
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> my name is Sergio Reano and I'm a programmer and Lego fun from Italy.
>
> In the last few years I have had little time to play with real bricks and
> decided to mix passion and informatics to create a new Lego CAD software to
> enjoy Lego at least while I was in front of the screen.
>
> The program I came up with, called SR 3D Builder, is IMHO very innovative
> compared to MLCad or Lego Digital Designer 'cos it is able to recognize
> automatically connections between LDraw parts and, based on that, to manage
> hinges, rotation axels, gears. Additional functionality is planed for the
> future.
<snip>
>
> I would be really happy hearing form you (especially form those willing to patch
> ;-) You can contact me at: Sergio[dot]reano(at)polito{dot}it
>
> Thank you,
>
> Sergio
Very cool Sergio -- I was quite pleased by the speed of the rendering! Since I
don't know the ldraw keyboard commands I was a bit at a loss on how to "place" a
part or rotate a part -- also camera operations as well. I'm looking at the help
keyboard/mouse reference a bunch :)
Great job and keep up the work!
-mark
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Willy Tschager wrote:
>
> I would be really happy hearing form you (especially form those willing to patch
> ;-) You can contact me at: Sergio[dot]reano(at)polito{dot}it
>
> Thank you,
>
> Sergio
Why can't I install 'normally' to program files. It makes all kind of
weird folders in documents and settings now. Not to happy with that
personally.
But that aside it's sounds very promising, unfortunately it crashes on
my machine.
first I get an exception about a missing jpg
************** Exception Text **************
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: C:\Program Files\ldraw\Images\NoImage.jpg
at System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(String filename, Boolean
useEmbeddedColorManagement)
at System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(String filename)
After that It completely crashes on opening an model.
I suspect it's due to the location of the LDraw library on my system.
But I can't seem to change it anywhere (otherwise I could test with an
copy in c:\ldraw).
Hope this helps you to fix things. I would love to test the connection
functionality.
Greetings,
Roland
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Roland Melkert wrote:
> Willy Tschager wrote:
> >
> > I would be really happy hearing form you (especially form those willing to patch
> > ;-) You can contact me at: Sergio[dot]reano(at)polito{dot}it
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Sergio
>
> Why can't I install 'normally' to program files. It makes all kind of
> weird folders in documents and settings now. Not to happy with that
> personally.
I didn't have any problems with weird folders in documents and settings you just
unzip the files wherever you want and it will setup itself (which you can unzip
to a new folder under Program Files.) The only issue I have (which is an issue
with the .Net Framework) is that the application icon has to be located in the
root folder in the start menu (I can't move the icon somewhere else cause when
you restart the app it will recreate its icon).
EDIT: Well I did find out a way to do what I want -- after I unzip the files I
create my own shortcut to the SR3DBuilder.application file -- this is the real
file that launches the app (I think I had to run setup.exe first).
>
> But that aside it's sounds very promising, unfortunately it crashes on
> my machine.
>
> first I get an exception about a missing jpg
>
> ************** Exception Text **************
> System.IO.FileNotFoundException: C:\Program Files\ldraw\Images\NoImage.jpg
> at System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(String filename, Boolean
> useEmbeddedColorManagement)
> at System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(String filename)
>
>
> After that It completely crashes on opening an model.
>
> I suspect it's due to the location of the LDraw library on my system.
> But I can't seem to change it anywhere (otherwise I could test with an
> copy in c:\ldraw).
>
> Hope this helps you to fix things. I would love to test the connection
> functionality.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Roland
I went to the registry under HK_Current_User\Software\Lego3DCad and modified the
BaseDir entry there to point to the LDRAW directory that I have.
I also was getting the exception on the image folder. On Sergio's web site he
has a zip of part images that I downloaded and unzipped in the LDRAW directory
-- that fixed the exception.
-mark
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