Subject:
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Re: The future of LDraw?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:59:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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21098 times
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In lugnet.cad, Dave Schuler wrote:
> For whatever reason, I've never made the shift to MLCad or other platforms, and
> I've been served very well James Jessiman's foundation programs. Lars Hassing's
> L3Lab and Kevin Klague's LPub have been invaluable as well, but everything I do
> that's Lego CAD-related (apocryphal or otherwise) starts in LEdit.
>
> Anyone who knows me knows that my particular brand-loyalty makes me a bit of an
> outsider in this community, and that's fair. However, speaking as an outsider,
> I can say that one thing that has really soured me on LDraw in recent years is
> the seemingly obsessive lawyer-ization of it, to the point that it's become less
> of an exercise in Lego design and more a monument to hyper-legalism and
> over-compartmentalized classification.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your thoughtful input. I might be one of the causes of the
bureaucracy you are referring to (in follow on posts). When I started to write
LDraw tools back in late 1999, I turned to lugnet's LDraw forum to ask for
guidance. I wanted to extend LDraw to support the markup concepts that we know
today as LPub and LSynth.
When I asked for recommendations on how to extend it, the only answer I got
was "Just make sure it doesn't break LEdit" from Steve Bliss. While succinct
and sufficient, it was lacking in any sort of guidance. I deduced that my
extensions should be in the form of meta commands. As I got more connected with
the community, I lobbied for some form of standards committee. My goal was not
to make there be lots more rules (I'm not a huge fan of lots of rules), but to
provide a good place to ask such questions. I think we're better off with the
LSC, even though this makes us a more formal group.
I also assisted in the formulation of the LDraw Steering Committee.
I can see how these formalizations can be a turn off for a grass roots effort
like LDraw, but I guess I see them as a sign of success of James' work. Maybe
if James were still around we would not have needed these things. I don't know,
maybe we didn't need them at all.
I do think that before LDD, LDraw was the only choice, so we did get more
newbies to LDraw. The LDraw tools are still superior to LDD in many ways. I
guess I don't know if I see that we have less people using LDraw than we have in
the past, but I may be wrong.
In the past decade, I think we've made significant progress on the "back end
tools" such as the fantastically realistic renderings made with POV-Ray, the
fast renderers such as LDGLite and LDView, upon which we have LPub to make
building instructions.
I know you're not into MLCad, and it is indeed so 1990's. I wish the front
end tools (model entry) were more modern, and some recent developments might be
heading in the right direction (Bricksmith, SR 3D Builder). Like you, I use the
tools I already know, so I've not tried them. I'd like an entry tool like LDD
(which I've hardly used).
I think that LDraw is no longer in its infancy, and maybe that is what you
miss.
I feel that LDraw is still vibrant and growing. In many ways, we're well
ahead of the tools LEGO uses internally, or at least that was true two years ago
when I gave a presentation on LPub at Brickworld.
Kevin
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: The future of LDraw?
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| (...) There is also LeoCAD, which has some great features MLCad doesn't have. It sufferes from not being able to use the official parts library (directly), but it's database is regularly updated. And as a bonus it's available for Linux too. I'm (...) (15 years ago, 20-Mar-10, to lugnet.cad)
| | | Re: The future of LDraw?
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| (...) Actually, there has been an 'entry tool' around since 1998 - BlockCAD (www.blockcad.net). While it's using part definitions of its own, and has a lot of limitations (studs up only, fixed rotation of parts, no Technic) you can save models in (...) (15 years ago, 20-Mar-10, to lugnet.cad)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: The future of LDraw?
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| For whatever reason, I've never made the shift to MLCad or other platforms, and I've been served very well James Jessiman's foundation programs. Lars Hassing's L3Lab and Kevin Klague's LPub have been invaluable as well, but everything I do that's (...) (15 years ago, 19-Mar-10, to lugnet.cad)
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