Subject:
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Re: Any Interest in a Program for Creating/Editing Parts?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Mon, 4 Dec 2006 15:17:50 GMT
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Viewed:
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1779 times
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In lugnet.cad, Chris Phillips wrote:
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When you say “other editing helper applications” are you implying
that programs like what I am proposing already exist? That would
certainly save me a lot of redundant effort. Can you name a few of
these apps so I know where to look?
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This question comes up every so often, and I always like to
point out Paul Easter’s
utilities page.
It’s got several nice utility programs and parts, and is loaded with
great ideas on how to make the most of your screen real estate when
creating parts. Check out the tricycle dev screenshot. It’s got
several l3lab and ldview windows open, probably in polling mode to
update automatically on any changes, and possibly with the part slowly
spinning in one of the ldview windows. He’s also got LDAO open for the
enhanced text editor functionality. LDDP would
work here as well, and comes with several functions and addional
plugins for part designers.
Perhaps you should consider what you can add to this suite of tools
with your program rather than doing it all yourself? Something that
can help find and directly manipulate primitives would be a really
nice addition. Just make sure it can share the file with all the
other tools while you’re working.
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I had in the past tried my hand (somewhat unsuccessfully) at
creating some new LDraw parts. I found the tutorials on ldraw.org
to be helpful, but I was surprised at how “manual” the process
seems to be. (Edit the file in Notepad? Seriously??) Being a
software geek, I found it easier to write a C program to transform
coordinates and use printf() statements to write the .DAT file.
This made it a lot easier to define cylinders and arcs, and to
create pieces with a lot of symmetry. (Yes, I know I should be
using sub-parts, but I’m still getting the hang of it.)
I recently took a fresh look at this code and tried to at least
finish coding up a part. Growing tired of the process of switching
back-and-forth between my program and (the very awesome) LDView, I
added rudimentary graphics to show the general shape of the part on
screen as it was being generated. Then it struck me that the
program could evolve into an interactive part editor without a
whole lot of effort.
So I am wondering if there would be any interest in a program like
this, or would I be re-inventing functionality that is already
provided somewhere else? For example, I see that one of the
tutorials mentions using MLcad to rotate primitives and do some of
the other heavy lifting required for authoring parts. I don’t want
to spend a lot of time polishing this program for public release
unless there is an actual need.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Any Interest in a Program for Creating/Editing Parts?
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| (...) Thanks for that link! Very helpful for me, especially since many of the links to tools (both here in .cad and on ldraw.org) appear to be broken. (...) I am all for saving myself a lot of unneccesary effort, and I think that the existing tools (...) (18 years ago, 4-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Any Interest in a Program for Creating/Editing Parts?
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| (...) When you say "primitives", do you really mean "sub-parts?" (Or do I have it backwards?) To be clear, I would plan to fully support the use of sub-parts, as well as the ability to copy/paste portions of pre-existing part definitions. This (...) (18 years ago, 3-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad)
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