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Subject: 
Re: Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:23:37 GMT
Viewed: 
5378 times
  
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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.

Fair enough.  I didn't know they were always shipped disassembled.

Well, it's not shipped completely disassembled (arms and hands are pre-attached
to the torso, and legs are attached to hips).  However, I have certainly never
seen them shipped completely assembled as a minifig (except for the glued
keychains, which probably don't count here).


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.

The only files that LPub opens and analyzes are model and submodel files.  All
other opening and analyzing of part files is done by LDView and LDGLite.

That confuses me.  I don't understand how 680.dat, 681.dat and 682.dat can show
up in your BOMs if the model uses 4107488.dat, and LPub doesn't parse
4107488.dat itself.  I can see how they would show up if the model used them
directly to get the desired shape, but it sounds like lsynth would normally be
used for this, and LPub already recognizes that.  So how is it that when a user
uses 4107488.dat, 680.dat, 681.dat, and 682.dat show up in the BOM (which I
believe is the problem you want to solve)?

The point is that the model does *not* use 4107488.dat because that is not the
right shape for the model...... If everyone only ever used 4107488.dat, I would
not have brought it up.




Lets try a few other examples:

  a) technic turntable tops and bottoms can have a phase difference from 0 to
359 degrees.  If your design needs a phase difference other than what the
"complete" version does, you add your technic turntable as two pieces.

  b) same thing with motors.... the shaft can be at any angle WRT the body.  To
make this work, you would use a complete motor sans shaft, and a shaft.

These are good examples of your problem, but I'm not sure how an update to the
spec for official parts will help you.  Maybe I misinterpreted your whole
request, but having some pre-set format for part names for composite parts won't
help here.  Furthermore, if LPub isn't parsing the parts themselves anyway, then
I don't see how changes inside the part library would have any effect on the end
result in LPub.

Chris has told me how to recognize the complete parts.  What I am considering is
LPub scans the library for a list the "complete" parts.  I would add new code
to open up and examine the complete parts, and try to compress the list of
sub-pieces in the PLI into complete parts.



These two cases are the same thing, but in both cases you have to use two parts
(or subparts directly used in your model file), but you want the complete
version to show up in the part list images.  LEGO ships turntables and motors
completely assembled.

I agree that there needs to be a way for LPub to recognize this case, but I
don't think the solution belongs in the spec, and I also don't see how the
solution would impact official parts.  My suggestion would be another LPub
begin/end meta pair to say "all lines between this begin and end should be
treated as a single part in the BOM".  Note: since it seems that I'm
fundamentally misunderstanding something about what is going on, I could easily
change my mind about this.  I'm not dead set against updating the spec, I just
don't see how the behavior you've described would warrant it, based on my
understanding of what you have described.

We have that already.



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.

I didn't know the *always* part was a given.  If so, then there is no issue for
minifigs.

I can't recall having ever seen a set that contained minifigs that didn't have
the minifig building steps at the very beginning of the set's instructions.
Having said that, the arms, legs and hands can all be at arbitrary angles if the
figure is placed into the model in the instructions, so it's still theoretically
possible that it would be good to have a fully built minifig show up in a BOM.
I still think this would better be served by LPub-specific meta-commands in the
model itself, though, since the user obviously couldn't put their custom-posed
minifig in the official library.

Obviously I don't buy sets with minifigs....... :^)


--Travis

Kevin



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
 
(...) Sorry. I misinterpreted your initial post. I just went back and reread it, and see that it doesn't actually say that the user used 4107488.dat, but it does seems to imply this (at least to me). (...) I had forgotten about that new format for (...) (16 years ago, 18-Sep-08, to lugnet.cad)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Request for more stringent naming of (Complete|Shortcut) parts
 
(...) Well, it's not shipped completely disassembled (arms and hands are pre-attached to the torso, and legs are attached to hips). However, I have certainly never seen them shipped completely assembled as a minifig (except for the glued keychains, (...) (16 years ago, 18-Sep-08, to lugnet.cad)

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