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Hi all:
I'm very glad to announce the first alpha release of LeoCAM, a CAD derived
from LeoCAD that incorporates mechanical features in it. This project is
being developped by Francisco Gonzalez Garcia as his undergraduate final
project at the University of Girona, Spain, and I, Gustavo Patow.
The project outline is quite simple: we wanted to add mechanical features
to a Lego CAD. In order to do that, we wanted to take an existing CAD and
modify it in order to simplify the way we assemble models. That is, take
advantage of the natural Lego system to connect bricks (pieces in general)
and reflect this in the CAD. Thus, we contacted LeoCAD's author, Leonardo
Zide, asked for his permisson, took LeoCAD code and started working on it.
Up to now we've only defined the simpler Stud-StudInlet interactions, and
only for a small subset of the available parts, but with this we're able to
model tons of simple models in a quite straightforward way. Just select the
Stud and the StudInlet you want to connect, and connect them! Parts will
authomatically join and verify further conections made. When you finish, use
LeoCAD natural file system to save your work.
The whole system is very simmilar to was proposed as LCD, but we've
discovered that AFTERWARDS... Anyway, both systems are not incompatible, and
efforts could be done to join both proposals.
We would like to share our first achievements on this with the rest of the
LDraw comunity, releasing an "alpha" version for the people to start playing
with. The available downloads are:
I) The LeoCAM binary, including all files for an "unzip & play" installation.
Unfortunately, current version is Windows only...
II) The LeoCAM sources, but take into account that we're continuously modifying
them!
III) A small english documentation in PDF format. It's short, but describes
completely how to use the new features and our future plans.
In the future days a proper web page will be set up (thanks to Jacob Sparre
Andersen), but meanwhile you could directly download the files from:
http://www.ldraw.org/download/leocam/LeoCAM-Alpha-Binary.zip
http://www.ldraw.org/download/leocam/LeoCAM-Alpha-Source.zip
http://www.ldraw.org/download/leocam/LeoCAM-documentation.pdf
Hoping that our project will bring even more joy to the LDraw comunity, I
remain yours truly
Gustavo Patow.-
PS: Please, remember that this is only an "alpha" version...
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In lugnet.cad, Gustavo Patow writes:
> Hi all:
snip
> Hoping that our project will bring even more joy to the LDraw comunity, I
> remain yours truly
>
> Gustavo Patow.-
> PS: Please, remember that this is only an "alpha" version...
This is pretty amazing. Once you get the hang of it, you can add parts to a
model so quickly. Also, once two parts are "connected," moving or rotating
one part moves both parts together, like a submodel.
Now if I could just figure out the LeoCAD GUI better...
-John Van
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In lugnet.cad, John VanZwieten writes:
> In lugnet.cad, Gustavo Patow writes:
> > Hi all:
>
> snip
>
> > Hoping that our project will bring even more joy to the LDraw comunity, I
> > remain yours truly
> >
> > Gustavo Patow.-
> > PS: Please, remember that this is only an "alpha" version...
>
> This is pretty amazing. Once you get the hang of it, you can add parts to a
> model so quickly. Also, once two parts are "connected," moving or rotating
> one part moves both parts together, like a submodel.
This is cool! I'd love to see this develop further. Leo - if you're reading,
are you coming to BricksWest?? I'd love to sit down face to face again and
discuss the future of LeoCAD.
> Now if I could just figure out the LeoCAD GUI better...
This is still the main reason I don't use LeoCAD as an editor. Mouse
movements are incredibly challenging in the 3D view, and the key commands
don't follow LEdit standard (which I pushed to have implemented in MLCAD
early on).
I would love to see LeoCAD improve and become more widely accepted in the
community. Sometime I'll have to put together some ideas for an editor. Of
course, there is Karim Nassar's Artemis Project to refer to ;-)
I'm pretty quiet lately cause I've been working very hard on a (big) LDraw
related project. I (along with those working with me) will be ready to
announce it sometime in the coming weeks. After I'm done with it, I'll be in
a good position to start talking more with people about future development
for the LDraw community. :-)
-Tim
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In lugnet.cad, Tim Courtney writes:
> >
> > This is pretty amazing. Once you get the hang of it, you can add parts to a
> > model so quickly. Also, once two parts are "connected," moving or rotating
> > one part moves both parts together, like a submodel.
Looks pretty good, I haven't had much time to try it (at work now) so I
didn't understand very well how to connect 2 bricks but somehow I was able
to connect them and it looked nice.
> This is cool! I'd love to see this develop further. Leo - if you're reading,
> are you coming to BricksWest?? I'd love to sit down face to face again and
> discuss the future of LeoCAD.
When/where is it going to be?
> > Now if I could just figure out the LeoCAD GUI better...
What's confusing about it? I'd like to hear what other people think and
fix the problems.
Leonardo
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In lugnet.cad, Gustavo Patow writes:
> Hi all:
>
> I'm very glad to announce the first alpha release of LeoCAM, a CAD derived
> from LeoCAD that incorporates mechanical features in it. This project is
> being developped by Francisco Gonzalez Garcia as his undergraduate final
> project at the University of Girona, Spain, and I, Gustavo Patow.
[...]
> We would like to share our first achievements on this with the rest of the
> LDraw comunity, releasing an "alpha" version for the people to start playing
> with. The available downloads are:
>
> I) The LeoCAM binary, including all files for an "unzip & play" installation.
> Unfortunately, current version is Windows only...
> II) The LeoCAM sources, but take into account that we're continuously modifying
> them!
> III) A small english documentation in PDF format. It's short, but describes
> completely how to use the new features and our future plans.
>
> In the future days a proper web page will be set up (thanks to Jacob Sparre
> Andersen), but meanwhile you could directly download the files from:
>
> http://www.ldraw.org/download/leocam/LeoCAM-Alpha-Binary.zip
> http://www.ldraw.org/download/leocam/LeoCAM-Alpha-Source.zip
> http://www.ldraw.org/download/leocam/LeoCAM-documentation.pdf
>
> Hoping that our project will bring even more joy to the LDraw comunity, I
> remain yours truly
>
> Gustavo Patow.-
> PS: Please, remember that this is only an "alpha" version...
Gustavo:
I grabbed the binary zip, unpacked it, and then noticed that it
was Windows. I kicked Windows out of my house about 5 years ago
;-) I grabbed the source and attempted to compile them under a
stock Red Hat 7.3 distribution of Linux. Here are my notes; I hope
you find them useful. All in all, I thought there were very few
problems, concidering this is an `alpha'.
Enjoy,
-Wayne
=====================================================================
Linux (RH7.3) LeoCAM alpha Compile problems:
1. Putting spaces in directory names is not Linux/Unix user friendly.
2. ./depend.sh needs to have execute bit set. (Something
weird is going on here; I haven't figured it out yet.)
3. common/project.cpp refers to Resource.h (commented out)
4. common/utilidades.h refers to Matrix.h (instead of matrix.h.)
5. The following files do not end in a new-line:
common/lista.h
common/listaConnector.h
common/listaPieza.h
6. In common/library.ccp:
161, 750, 1159: AfxMessageBox() undeclared (commented out)
_gcvt undeclared() (Added #define _gcvt(a, b, c) gcvt(a, b, c) )
7. #include <afxwin.h> from:
common/utilidades.h (commented out)
common/matrix.cpp (commented out)
8. common/project.ccp bombs:
g++ -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib/glib/include
-I/usr/X11R6/include -O2 -Wall -Ilinux -Icommon -DLC_LINUX -g -c -o
common/project.o common/project.cpp
common/project.cpp: In method `void Project::HandleCommand (LC_COMMANDS, long
unsigned int)':
common/project.cpp:5050: `ID_FRAN_DISCONECT_ASSEMBLING' undeclared first use
this function)
common/project.cpp:5050: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for
each function it appears in.)
common/project.cpp:5057: `ID_FRAN_DISCONECT_ALL' undeclared (first use this
function)
common/project.cpp:5120: `AfxMessageBox' undeclared (first use this function)
common/project.cpp:5096: warning: unused variable `bool trobat'
common/project.cpp: In method `void Project::propagarAssembling (Piece *)':
common/project.cpp:8774: warning: unused variable `int i'
common/project.cpp: In method `void Project::assembling (Conector *,
Conector *)':
common/project.cpp:8805: warning: unused variable `sirMat4d invDinToWorld'
common/project.cpp:8806: warning: unused variable `sirMat4d transformacion'
common/project.cpp:8806: warning: unused variable `sirMat4d nuevaMatriz'
common/project.cpp:8806: warning: unused variable `sirMat4d invRot'
common/project.cpp: In method `void Project::crearDatosConectores
LC_FRAN_SEL_DATA *)':
common/project.cpp:8887: `_itoa' undeclared (first use this function)
common/project.cpp: In method `void Project::restaurarOcupados ()':
common/project.cpp:9006: warning: `Piece *dinamica' might be used uninitialized
in this function
common/project.cpp: In method `void Project::restaurarLibres ()':
common/project.cpp:9083: warning: `Piece *dinamica' might be used uninitialized
in this function
make: *** [common/project.o] Error 1
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In lugnet.cad, Leonardo Zide writes:
> In lugnet.cad, Tim Courtney writes:
> > >
> > > This is pretty amazing. Once you get the hang of it, you can add parts to a
> > > model so quickly. Also, once two parts are "connected," moving or rotating
> > > one part moves both parts together, like a submodel.
>
> Looks pretty good, I haven't had much time to try it (at work now) so I
> didn't understand very well how to connect 2 bricks but somehow I was able
> to connect them and it looked nice.
>
> > This is cool! I'd love to see this develop further. Leo - if you're reading,
> > are you coming to BricksWest?? I'd love to sit down face to face again and
> > discuss the future of LeoCAD.
>
> When/where is it going to be?
>
> > > Now if I could just figure out the LeoCAD GUI better...
>
> What's confusing about it? I'd like to hear what other people think and
> fix the problems.
Leonardo:
Two comments:
1. One of my fellow BayLUG members is a *very* pro-Linux.
Much to my suprise he wound up using MLCAD to do his
MOC instruction manuals. When I asked him "why?",
his response has that LeoCAD could not read and write
files that interoperated with MLCAD. My gut reaction
to this statement, is that it should be almost trivial
to get LeoCAD to read MLCAD generated files and write
files that MLCAD can subsequently read.
2. I never found the LeoCAD GUI to be particularly hard, but
I did notice that I never wanted to move bricks around
with the mouse; instead, I always used the keyboard because
I couldn't precisely position anything any other way. It
may be sufficient to add a mode to LeoCAD to allow people
to use LDraw/MLCAD keyboard bindings.
My $.02,
-Wayne
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In lugnet.cad, Wayne Gramlich writes:
>
> 1. One of my fellow BayLUG members is a *very* pro-Linux.
> Much to my suprise he wound up using MLCAD to do his
> MOC instruction manuals. When I asked him "why?",
> his response has that LeoCAD could not read and write
> files that interoperated with MLCAD. My gut reaction
> to this statement, is that it should be almost trivial
> to get LeoCAD to read MLCAD generated files and write
> files that MLCAD can subsequently read.
What do you mean by that? LeoCAD has been able to read/write .dat files
for years.
> 2. I never found the LeoCAD GUI to be particularly hard, but
> I did notice that I never wanted to move bricks around
> with the mouse; instead, I always used the keyboard because
> I couldn't precisely position anything any other way. It
> may be sufficient to add a mode to LeoCAD to allow people
> to use LDraw/MLCAD keyboard bindings.
I use the keyboard exclusively too but I never thought that following the
LEdit keys was so important to other people. I'll work on that.
Leonardo
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In lugnet.cad, Leonardo Zide writes:
> In lugnet.cad, Tim Courtney writes:
> > This is cool! I'd love to see this develop further. Leo - if you're reading,
> > are you coming to BricksWest?? I'd love to sit down face to face again and
> > discuss the future of LeoCAD.
>
> When/where is it going to be?
www.brickswest.com
Feb 14-17, Carlsbad, CA.
You still in the LA area?
-Tim
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In lugnet.cad, Leonardo Zide writes:
> In lugnet.cad, Wayne Gramlich writes:
> >
> > 1. One of my fellow BayLUG members is a *very* pro-Linux.
> > Much to my suprise he wound up using MLCAD to do his
> > MOC instruction manuals. When I asked him "why?",
> > his response has that LeoCAD could not read and write
> > files that interoperated with MLCAD. My gut reaction
> > to this statement, is that it should be almost trivial
> > to get LeoCAD to read MLCAD generated files and write
> > files that MLCAD can subsequently read.
>
> What do you mean by that? LeoCAD has been able to read/write .dat files
> for years.
Alas, I did not know that. After your telling me, I dug
around the http://www.leocad.org/ site and found:
http://leocad.org/faq.htm#G4
I must have read that a long time ago and forgotten it.
Maybe a GUI tweak to specify the save format? I don't
know.
I will tell my friend that .DAT file reading and writing
are very possible. I will see if that changes his mind.
This should be interesting. I'll report back what I find out.
[...]
-Wayne
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Wayne Gramlich wrote:
> In lugnet.cad, Gustavo Patow writes:
> I grabbed the binary zip, unpacked it, and then noticed that it
> was Windows.
To be fair, Gustavo noted that in his announcement.
> I grabbed the source and attempted to compile them under a
> stock Red Hat 7.3 distribution of Linux. Here are my notes; I hope
> you find them useful. All in all, I thought there were very few
> problems, concidering this is an `alpha'.
Nice to hear that you got time to go as far as to try to
compile the program. Have you made a patch and sent it
directly to Gustavo (or to his student doing the actual coding)?
I suspect that there will be more problems than what you
have found. IIRC LeoCAD/LeoCAM uses different GUI libraries
for Linux and MS-Windows. This could mean that there are
lots of GUI code that has to be reimplemented in the Linux
specific parts of the source code.
Play well,
Jacob
--
City X'ers mail van (building instructions):
http://jacob.sparre.dk/CityXers/Postbil/
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