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Subject: 
Re: Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:19:40 GMT
Viewed: 
5163 times
  
In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
  As thorough as this document is, it is incomplete or ambiguous in the area of
describing "compound parts".  For example 4107488.dat, "Technic Tread (Complete
Shortcut)" is actually composed of multiple of 681.dat, 680.dat, and 682.dat
instances.

Shouldn't 680.dat, 681.dat, and 682.dat all be in the parts/s directory?  They
don't represent real pieces of plastic (or rubber in this case), so I don't
understand why they are modeled as such.  Or do synthesized sub-parts get
treated differently?


  Without guidance, LPub happily shows N 680.dats, M 681.dats, and O 682.dats,
which make absolutely no sense to LDraw novices.  Sure, the version of LSynth
that our dear friend Willy uses, automatically solves this problem.......
but.....

  Where possible I'd like LPub to automatically know that N 680's, M 681's and O
682's means one 4107488.dat in the part list image.  Think of a more simple
case: Minifigs...... as dear as they are, the are compound parts.

  I'd like LPub to see N instances of battle droid head, battle droid torso, two
battledroid arms, and two battledroid legs and realize that they are a
battledroid.

I think the minifig/battle droid case is fundamentally different from the
technic tread case, and care should be taken not to confuse the two.  The
technic tread is a single piece of flexible rubber that has a shortcut part that
represents one popular shape that it is used in.  The minifig is something that
is constructed from multiple real life pieces.  I understand that what you want
is something that can be used for both cases, and be recognized by LPub, but
care definitely needs to be taken.

On a side note, LDView automatically considers any sub-files of a "part" to not
be a part (for the purposes of scaling for seams).  It seems to me that LPub
should probably do the same, which would solve your problem with 4107488.dat.
After all, if someone has declared something to be a part (either via a header
comment or by putting it in the parts directory), then it seems safe to assume
that it really is a part, even if it is composed of other parts.


  How will it know this?  Look at all examples of "compound parts" in all the
official and unofficial parts directories and know what they are composed of.

  I've come up with simple rules for detecting "compound parts".....

    grep "Compound" * > foo
    grep "Shortcut" * >> foo

but this is a heuristic, not a perfect algorithm.  If we could come up with a
more precise "complete shortcut" description, it could be much more computable.

I'm not sure why this is necessary.  If you treat sub-files of parts as not
being parts, then you get this automatically.  Since there's already an official
way to specify that something is a part (header comment), I don't see why a new
"official compound part" definition is needed.  Or do you feel that having
sub-files of parts not be parts will lead to combining of parts into one single
part when they shouldn't be?

On a side note, remember that LEGO instructions always give instructions for how
to assemble mini-figs, battle droids, Martians, etc.  So I'm not even really
sure how those would fit into this discussion at all, since they would be built
from multiple parts in the instructions.  The only edge case I see is the
minifig hands and arms, which come pre-connected to the torso.

--Travis



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
 
(...) I guess they should be, but they are not. (...) Fair enough. I didn't know they were always shipped disassembled. (...) The only files that LPub opens and analyzes are model and submodel files. All other opening and analyzing of part files is (...) (16 years ago, 17-Sep-08, to lugnet.cad)
  Re: Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
 
(...) <SNIP> (...) Yes, they should, but the "mistake" was made eight years ago, before we had the clarity that time brings to standards implementation. The same applies to 754-756, at least. For backward compatibility reasons we can never remove (...) (16 years ago, 18-Sep-08, to lugnet.cad)

Message is in Reply To:
  Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
 
Hi, I want to start by thanking the LDraw Standards Committee for all their diligent work in stratifying the documentation on LDraw Header format: (URL) As thorough as this document is, it is incomplete or ambiguous in the area of describing (...) (16 years ago, 17-Sep-08, to lugnet.cad)

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