Subject:
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Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Thu, 1 May 2003 00:32:19 GMT
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Viewed:
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2740 times
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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh writes:
> I have been watching this thread with interest. Personally I find the
> prospect that LEGO is going to potentially open up some of their
> intellectual property to the community pretty interesting and not something
> you see happen very often.
I agree and I think it'll represent a great step toward enhanced
collaboration with the community.
> How they do this remains to be seen and there has been an awful lot of
> speculation on what it all means. I am actually somewhat surprised with
> regard to the level of skepticism voiced on this topic. The prevailing
> thought seems to be that LEGO is trying to take over the area of the
> community that has been to date served by L-Draw.
I don't get that impression... I think LEGO will strive to work with the
LCAD/LDraw community to
establish new standards. I think the skepticism arises out of uncertainty
about the level of openness
of the file formats and out of concerns about LEGO patents and possible
cross-platform issues.
If the LXF format is as flexible, extensible, and wonderful as I think we
expect it to be, then it's
certainly within the realm of possibility that the LXF format could totally
replace the LDraw file
format within a year or two. Now I don't mean to suggest that tools like
MLCAD would be obsolete,
only that the LDR/MPD/DAT format may become obsolescent. Is that good or
bad? I don't know. I
know I'd be sad to see an open format be replaced with a proprietary one,
especially one
encumbered by patents.
*If* this happens, and we're all sharing LXF files in the future instead of
LDR/MPD/DAT files, it
*could* still be a totally beautiful thing. It seems likely, though, that
in order to discuss intimate
details of parts creation in LXF format, it will be necessary to convert the
LXF part file into ASCII text
through some sort of data structure dump. Some sort of LXF-dumping syntax
is likely to emerge
quickly and be standardized upon. (Perhaps LEGO will provide a tool for
this, perhaps not.) The
reverse will also be needed in order to update part files with changes.
Wouldn't XML be a logical
choice for the ASCII dumping syntax? And if so, why not create new parts
masters in XML instead of
LXF? A part master in XML could then be turned into .lxf, .dat, .pov, etc.
It seems patently obvious (no pun intended) to me that an XML-based part
masters would be a lot
more general and give more freedom than LXF-based masters. I don't know how
I'd manipulate LXF
files in Perl or Java, for example.
If you're a parts designer, would you rather design parts directly in LEGO's
proprietary LXF format or
instead in an open-standards XML-based format that could easily be
translated to LXF as a special
case?
> > > I can totally respect that. I would just ask that you give the benefits
> > > equal thought too. What do you get by buying in?
> >
> > Honestly, I don't see any benefits for the LCAD community in supporting the
> > LXF format, unless the LXF format is so many more light years ahead of the
> > LDraw format that the effort of supporting LXF would be miniscule compared
> > to the benefits.
>
> Not seeing any benefit is a pretty bold statement -
Ok, I think you missed the "unless" clause of my sentence above. :-)
> cetainly not one that should be made on the community's behalf based on
> the limited knowledge we have regarding what LEGO is really going to do.
I'm sorry if that was confusing. I didn't mean to make a statement on the
LCAD community's behalf.
What I mean is that *I* don't see anything that the LCAD community has to
gain by supporting the
LXF format, unless the LXF format is light years ahead of the LDraw format
(and it may well be).
> [...]
> Wouldn't it be nice if it was simply avaible from LEGO is a parts library?
> Presumably it wouldn't need to be verified - it comes directly from the
> source.
Absolutely, that would be awesome. That's been sometime wished for by many
for a long, long
time.
> [...]
> Suppose that LEGO releases a new LXF formatted parts library every month.
> Now suppose that new elements are included in the parts library in the same
> month that sets that contain them hit the street. There is zero ramp time
> for users of CAD tools (assuming they support the LXF format) to start using
> these new parts.
In order to benefit from the data contained within the parts library, is it
absolutely necessary for CAD
tools to support LXF natively?
Couldn't a tool simply convert the LXF parts into a neutral, open-standard
format and forget about
LXF?
> Again, maybe, maybe not. Raising the capabilities of the LDraw file format
> may be a fair amount of work too. Some of the features in LXF may not be
> implementable with the L-Draw format. What if the LXF format supports
> collision detection and/or connection points (the ability to define legal
> connections)? I have built models where parts were askew by one or two
> L-Draw units (LDU) were not obvious until I rendered it with POV. By that
> time it is pretty late in the instruction creation process for me - it would
> be nice to know that two parts were intruding on each others space.
>
> Imagine if the train track parts were smart enough to understand what a
> legal connection is. A replacement for Track Designer might not be as much
> work for someone to undertake. Right now no one can update or enhance Track
> Designer because no one knows where the source code is! So the choice is to
> either live with what we have or write a new one from scratch and
> re-engineering all of he connection smartness that Track Designer currently
> has. If the LXF library includes connection points, this may not be such a
> daunting task.
>
> If the converter is really good and easy to use, probably not much. If the
> converter is cumbersome and produces poorly converted parts, then support
> for LXF may provide the application developer quite a bit. Developers want
> access to the broadest library of high quality parts. If that library is
> the L-Draw based one, they will support that. If LXF looks like it will be
> a better solution and/or allow them to solve problems they currently can't,
> then they will add support for LXF.
Points well taken. But is that better than extracting the data from the LXF
parts libraries and
converting the parts to a new, slightly more general, vendor-neutral,
open-standard file format
that's owned by the open LCAD community?
--Todd
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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| (...) I don't think that's really a fair and answerable question. As a parts designer, I'd rather work in the format that is (a) the least work for me and (b) gives me the results I want. As a parts designer, I'm not terribly concerned about (...) (21 years ago, 1-May-03, to lugnet.cad)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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| I have been watching this thread with interest. Personally I find the prospect that LEGO is going to potentially open up some of their intellectual property to the community pretty interesting and not something you see happen very often. How they do (...) (21 years ago, 30-Apr-03, to lugnet.cad)
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