Subject:
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Re: LDD vs LDraw
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:37:28 GMT
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Viewed:
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1908 times
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In lugnet.cad, Timothy Gould wrote:
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Hi Chris,
Some of what you ask for in MLCad can already be done...
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That doesn’t surprise me; most of what I know about MLcad was learned by
trial-and-error.
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I have used LDD (a little) and MLcad (occasionally over several years) and
had already given this topic some thought, so here goes. If I were writing
a new CAD program, it would do everything MLcad can do today, plus:
- I like the way that LDD knows how pieces connect, and “snaps” them into place. OTOH, I have found MLcad to be difficult to consistently place parts at “integral” locations, regardless of the snap resolution. I need flexibility sometimes, but not nearly as often as I need the parts to line up correctly.
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This surprises me. I’ve never had a problem.
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I must be doing something wrong, but whenever I place a new part it seems to
appear in an arbitrary location in one plane, and doesn’t “snap” to an integral
plate height or 1/2 stud location. Even if I’m using the most coarse snap
settings when I insert a part, I usually have to switch to the highest snap
resolution, zoom in, micro-adjust the part alignment, then switch back to coarse
snap again. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, but I’ve never quite figured
out how to do it right.
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- Easier manipulation of hinged or axled sub-assemblies? Would be nice to be able to “play with” a model and have gears mesh, or tweak a hinge and have all of the affected pieces rotate in space. (I know that’s a tall order, but MLcad is soooo good already that there’s not much else missing.)
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You can sort of do this with submodels
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I guess I need to learn how to use them. But from a naive user’s POV, MLcad’s
“group” feature is intended for defining “sub-models”, and it’s really all
semantics beyond that. Maybe “group” should create a sub-model automatically?
I don’t know.
But I have designed models where (for example) I’ve clustered an axle and all of
its gears and collars as one sub-assembly. It would be nice to be able to
easily modify the sub-assembly by just double-clicking on the axle, instead of
having to manually extract it from the model.
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- I love LDView’s rendering, zoom and rotation capabilities for inspecting models. Would like to see that level of realism and ease-of-use built right into the CAD program itself.
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Apart from looking nicer I don’t think there’s any viewing that LDView can do
that MLCad can’t.
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The level of realism has distinct advantages in terms of being sure that you’re
using proper colors, or spotting small problems with parts placement. And I
love LDview’s ability to spin the model in space. (Release the mouse button
while dragging and the model spins forever.)
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- LDD does a better job of categorizing parts by default than MLcad. Would be nice if there was an easy way to find basic bricks, plate, tile, Technic, etc. without having to dig through a million “brick with xxxx pattern” items. The Favorites folder in MLcad helps, but could be refined to improve the initial “out-of-box” experience.
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This can be done by setting up your part filters properly. I can’t remember
the details but I’m sure some other .cad denizen will.
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I don’t doubt that there’s a way to do it, but it isn’t obvious to the casual
user, and the default organizational tree is not as well organized as LDD. (In
all fairness, LDD is dealing with a pre-defined, limited subset of parts, but
still...) I think if there was an easy way to define a “virtual parts bin” and
share these with others as a separate file, it would be a very useful feature.
Depending on what I’m trying to design on any given day, it would be nice to
just select a parts palette with a certain organization and start building. It
shouldn’t be necessary to completely re-configure the entire CAD program just to
do this kind of thing for each project.
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- Easier hierarchical model editing. If I need to edit a sub-assembly in MLcad, must move it somewhere, un-group, edit, re-group, then replace. This becomes a nightmare with nested group hierarchies. Would be nice if I could easily edit a group in its own window without having to temporarily disband the group or use multiple DAT files.
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Submodels do all this. Using groups instead of submodels seems like asking
for problems.
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Good advice! Again, I must learn how to use them. Maybe MLcad shouldn’t have
groups, but should only support submodels? Or is there another intended use for
groups that I am missing?
I’m not trying to be critical of the existing tools, but it seems that some of
my problems are caused by my own lack of RTFM, some are a result of
unclear/missing documentation, and some are a case of being baffled by
overlapping (and seemingly identical) features. As a software engineer, I’ve
found that there is a big difference between “you can already do that” and “it
is obvious and painless for anyone to do that.”
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | MLCad Parts Tree (was: LDD vs LDraw)
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| (...) That's a cool idea. In the meantime, if you look in the MLCad program directory, there's a file called MLCad.grp. This contains all the grouping information for the parts tree. The organization of the file is pretty straightforward. In my copy (...) (18 years ago, 13-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad)
| | | Re: LDD vs LDraw
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| (...) The simplest way would be if peeron.com could serve a set inventory as an LDraw file - then you just load the set into MLCad and rearrange the pieces. As a side note, LDList ((URL) has the possibility to load a set description and only show (...) (18 years ago, 13-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad)
| | | Re: LDD vs LDraw
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| (...) Well, MLcad cannot click things into place. I've learned over the years to be careful to add parts to the model when using course grid, and then switch to medium or fine as necessary. MLCad will allow you to place on whatever grid resolution (...) (18 years ago, 13-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: LDD vs LDraw
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| Hi Chris, Some of what you ask for in MLCad can already be done... (...) This surprises me. I've never had a problem. (...) You can sort of do this with submodels (...) Apart from looking nicer I don't think there's any viewing that LDView can do (...) (18 years ago, 13-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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