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Subject: 
Re: LDD vs LDraw
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:16:57 GMT
Viewed: 
1735 times
  
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
   In lugnet.cad, Timothy Gould wrote:
  
  
  • 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.

Apart from looking nicer I don’t think there’s any viewing that LDView can do that MLCad can’t.

While mostly true, I think you’re minimizing the utility that a really good 3D view could provide to MLCad. (Note that this isn’t meant as a put-down of MLCad; implementing a really good 3D view requires effort that might best be used for other features.)

Bearing in mind that LDView wasn’t created in such a way as to be usable in an editor (although it could be modified to allow this), here are the LDView features that I think would be useful in the 3D view of an editor:
  1. Speed. Being able to rotate most models in realtime helps a lot in examining a model for problems.
  2. Solid rotation. This kind of relies on the above point in order to be effective. The bounding box rotation in MLCad is there presumably to go faster.
  3. Rotation center same as model’s center (at least as an option). Having it rotate in wireframe around the model’s origin, and then jump when you let go leaves a lot to be desired.
  4. Good lighting. It’s hard to provide a definition for “good” in this context, but lighting can sometimes help in seeing problems with a model.
  5. Decent quality transparency. Stipple transparency can be fast, but it has one major drawback: the first transparent surface hit complete hides all transparent surfaces behind it. This can lead to transparent parts in the interior of a design disappearing completely visually.
  6. Cutaway. Hold down control while zooming in in LDView, and it cuts into the model to see inside. Not sure how useful this would be in an editor.
Obviously I have some bias, being the author of LDView, but I think at the very least that the first five points above are valid. It’s worth noting that LeoCAD has the first two points covered. (LeoCAD also has blended transparency instead of stipple, but it draws parts in their entirety all at once. So if you have two different colored transparent pieces connected to each other, you get some odd effects at some angles.)

--Travis

Hi Travis,

I frequently use LDview during the editing for the reasons you outline above. My point was more in argument against the “zoom and rotation” section of the comment. I would love to have a renderer as good as LDView implemented in MLCad.

Tim



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: LDD vs LDraw
 
(...) While mostly true, I think you're minimizing the utility that a really good 3D view could provide to MLCad. (Note that this isn't meant as a put-down of MLCad; implementing a really good 3D view requires effort that might best be used for (...) (18 years ago, 13-Dec-06, to lugnet.cad, FTX)

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