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 16:19:43 GMT
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Viewed:
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1763 times
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In lugnet.cad, Don Heyse wrote:
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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.
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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.
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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 am all for saving myself a lot of unneccesary effort, and I think that the
existing tools do most of the job. I finally found LDDP yesterday (not sure how
I missed it before) which is definitely a MAJOR improvement over Notepad. :)
Between LDDP, MLcad, and LDView, it seems that I’m 90% of the way to where I
could see this going. Some features that I could see being useful are:
- Ability to easily overlay a scaled/rotated wire-frame of the part over a scan of the actual part, to verify the proportions and provide “digital caliper” functionality.
- Ability to define one section of a symmetrical part, and have the program automatically generate the redundant portions at various angles. (I know you can manually do this in MLcad, and that you can mirror a design around the axes, but not so easy for designing a 3-blade propellor, for example.)
- Automated “snap to object” CAD features to avoid gaps.
- Scripted generation of part definitions to simplify iterative design methods.
- Never having to say “you really should learn matrix manipulation” to a potential parts author. I mean, I think I have a pretty good grasp of that, having worked on a ray-tracing engine in the past, but I still need to look stuff up whenever I use it. Filling the brain with such details really intereferes with the overall process and adds unnecessary hurdles for the casual designer. Really, what are computers for if not doing matrix operations for us?
It looks like my project might make a good LDDP plug-in. I’ll consider that as
my best option moving forward.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Any Interest in a Program for Creating/Editing Parts?
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| In lugnet.cad, Chris Phillips wrote: Some features that I could see being useful are: Google is your friend. Some of these ideas have already been worked on. Make sure to run some searches before re-inventing. (...) Make sure you check out the (URL) (...) (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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| (...) This question comes up every so often, and I always like to (URL) point out> Paul Easter's (URL) 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 (...) (18 years ago, 4-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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