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I’ve been using Bricksmith quite regularly
recently (it’s a great program, Allen). I thought it would be neat to share some
ideas about how to get the most out of it, and I’d like to invite anyone else
with similar hints to contribute them to this thread as well. Even if they are
not new ideas (I doubt mine are), I think it would be a useful reference for
people new to LDraw on the Mac and in general.
As noted among its existing
Feature Requests (.rtf), Bricksmith doesn’t display coordinate axes. However,
it is not too hard to fake it with a couple of perpendicular LDraw lines that
extend a long way in either direction:
A variation on the same idea that can also be useful is to use lines to create
small crosshairs:
The nice thing about this technique is that you can simply cite the axes or
crosshair as an MPD submodel. Just make sure the axes themselves are located at
0,0,0 with no rotation (or whatever is appropriate for your situation). This
allows you to easily introduce more than one crosshair or set of axes into an
assembly you’re working on and to position or orient them however you like.
(Insert lines by selecting “Line” from the “Model”->”Insert Primitive” menu.
Double-click the line item in the file contents drawer to show the Line
Inspector where you can set the coordinates of the line.)
I’ve started using these techniques to help align important elements such as
hinges with the origin of the sub-model. Once that’s done, rotating the
sub-model in a parent model causes it to pivot nicely around the hinge (I’m
curious if this is what the “Focus spin around selection” note refers to in the
feature requests). This makes it easier to almost “play” with movable parts like
wings, doors, and joints right in LDraw, as there’s no need to nudge things to
get them to line up again after rotation.
I also posted an
MPD
file that just contains some example axes and crosshairs. Eventually I’d like
to update the other MPD files I’ve previously posted to utilize this kind of
alignment.
That’s all for now! I hope somebody may find this useful.
Jim
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: Bricksmith tips and techniques
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| (...) I made some custom rotation icons for the Bricksmith toolbar to go with the XYZ-RGB color scheme of the coordinate axes. This is what they look like: (URL) Bricksmith toolbar with XYZ-RGB colorized rotation icons>> I would like to submit them (...) (17 years ago, 16-Feb-07, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, lugnet.cad, FTX)
| | | Re: Bricksmith tips and techniques
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| Jim DeVona wrote: [...] Bricksmith doesn't display coordinate axes. However, (...) [...]> (...) Hey, That's cool. I still am using the same old computer, so LDGLite is the LDRAWing tool of choice for me, but never the less, that is a cool trick. (...) (17 years ago, 21-Feb-07, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, lugnet.cad)
| | | Re: Bricksmith tips and techniques
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| (...) Thanks. I love to have happy users! (...) Good gosh, someone is even digging through my CVS repository! The reason you're not able to commit anything, incidentally, is because you are not listed as a Developer on my project. Anyway, if you (...) (17 years ago, 27-Feb-07, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, lugnet.cad, FTX)
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