Subject:
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Re: Which CAD program recommended for Mac??
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad, lugnet.cad.dev.mac
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Date:
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Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:20:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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9375 times
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In lugnet.cad, Allen Smith wrote:
> In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
> > In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
> > > In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
> > > Keyboard controls for part insertion: Command-i to show part panel, tab and
> > > arrows to select part, Command-i again to insert part.
> > >
> > > (Tab navigation may require "All Controls" of System Preferences/Keyboard &
> > > Mouse/Keyboard Shortcuts/Full keyboard access to be set, but if you favor
> > > keyboard controls you owe it to yourself to enable this feature anyway.)
> > >
> > > Keyboard shortcuts to change grid granularity: Command-1, Command-2 and
> > > Command-3 for fine, medium, and coarse.
> > >
> > > Keyboard shortcuts to rotate parts: x, y, and z for rotation about the
> > > respective axis. Hold down shift as well to rotate in the opposite
> > > direction.
> > >
> > > Also, note that holding down option while moving parts with the arrow keys
> > > permits movement along the third axis. (Normally the arrows move parts in
> > > two dimensions relatively perpendicular to the view.)
> >
> > These last 2 seem to be undocumented. Thanks for the tip
>
> Sigh...Nobody ever reads the Read Me. Though those tidbits are indeed
> documented, I admit documentation is not my strong suit. I generally hope
> that users will explore menu items and find them to be fairly
> self-explanatory.
As Travis remarked, many people install a program and then forget about the Read
Me, myself included.
> >
> > > > - No way to select and move/rotate more than one part at a time.
> > >
> > > False.
> > >
> > > Shift-click to select multiple parts in any view or in the file contents
> > > list. You can also command-click in the file contents list to select
> > > multiple parts without selecting the intervening parts as well. (Shift- and
> > > command-clicking to select multiple items is just a Mac convention, I
> > > guess; try it anywhere you see a list of selectable items.)
> > >
> > > You can move and rotate a multi-part selection as a group using the
> > > keyboard (arrows + x/y/z) or the toolbar icons, just as with individual
> > > parts. The Move and Rotate panels available under the Edit menu provide
> > > greater control of these manipulations. In particular, the Rotate panel
> > > allows you to choose the type and origin of rotation.
> >
> > As above this is also appears to be undocumented and the Move/Rotate panels
> > don't have keyboard shortcuts (unless they too are undocumented). Multiple
> > selection and movement/rotation is a must given the high symmetry of most
> > Lego models. Also it helps things go quicker if I can duplicate and reuse
> > parts without re-adding them via the Parts Browser.
>
> I'm curious what kind of documentation you were hoping to receive with this
> software.
None what so ever. I often install open source (and even some commercial)
programs that have less documentation than yours.
> Some things that tripped you up I had always assumed to be
> conventional. For instance, you seem to be surprised that applying a command
> when multiple objects are selected would apply it to all of them. I take that
> behavior for granted.
No, no. If this is how what I wrote reads then I messed up. I agree with you,
this is a basic, expected behavior.
> The same goes for shift-click to do multiple selection.
> That's been around since at least MacDraw in the early eighties. Doesn't
> MLCad even behave the same way?
No. In Windows this is Control-Click (or Command-Click in the Mac world).
Shift-Click also has a multiple selection behavior but in a different way.
> It also seems like you might have been expecting documentation that provided
> a canonical listing of each menu item. Again, I guess I assumed a lot of that
> should be easy to find or self-explantory. Do I need a manual explaining that
> "Edit->Duplicate" creates a new copy of the selected part?
No, I don't expect any written documentation at all. Especially since this is a
program written by one person, on their spare time, and offered for free. Heck,
you program is better documented than my own (LDDP). What I do expected is that
if there are program features (and I consider keyboard shortcuts to be a
feature) that they can be easily found via menu items, tooltips, or other such
methods.
For example, nowhere in the BrickSmith interface can be found the shortcuts for
rotating parts. The rotate buttons don't have tooltips, nor are there any menu
items for rotating (except for the rotate dialog). How was I supposed to figure
out (besides the Read Me which I admittedly forgot about) that the x/y/z keys
rotate parts?
Maybe I'm reading too much into your words but you seem to be misconstruing my
criticisms as gripes. Nothing can be farther from the truth and I'm grateful
for a viable Mac platform LDraw editor. With some training and adjusting on my
part and some program improvements (which I'm willing to help out with once I
learn how to better use XCode) I think that BrickSmith will become my primary
LDraw editor.
-Orion
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Which CAD program recommended for Mac??
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| (...) Sigh...Nobody ever reads the Read Me. Though those tidbits are indeed documented, I admit documentation is not my strong suit. I generally hope that users will explore menu items and find them to be fairly self-explanatory. (...) I'm curious (...) (16 years ago, 5-Feb-08, to lugnet.cad, lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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