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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
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I got the urge to finish a set of instructions that I started years ago over
the weekend. I have the MPD complete but am running into some problems
generating a usable set of instructions using LPub.
- Where does the half_size.ldr file reside? Same directory as the model? LPub?
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Hi Mike,
Nice to hear from you!
In LPub 4, there is only the orientation file, because you can perform scaling
and orientation with one file. Duh! How many years did it take me to figure
that out! Hah! Look in the preferences section for the orientation file.
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- What is the syntax of half_size.ldr?
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It is standard LDraw type 1 line format.
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- Is there a way to move the parts that are contained in the PLI in a callout up to the top level PLI for the step? I’d prefer to have the parts for the whole step contained in one PLI and just show the assembly steps for the callout.
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You should be able to put your cursor on the background of the callout, and turn
off PLI per step. This should move the parts from the PLI to the parents PLI.
You would want to start at the most nested callout and work your way out.
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- Do all pages have to have the same orientation or can some be portrait and some landscape?
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Alas, no. Page size is global to the entire set of instructions, but PLI and
model scale are not.
Kevin
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
... snipped ...
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Hi Mike,
Nice to hear from you!
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I still come up for air every once in a while!
... .snipped ...
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Alas, no. Page size is global to the entire set of instructions, but PLI and
model scale are not.
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... snipped ...
I’ve resolved almost all of the issues I had run into but still have two I am
struggling with, hopefully someone will have some ideas. I’ve posted a draft
set of the instructions I am working on here:
http://www.carolinatrainbuilders.com/index.php/2010/09/early-draft-of-ctb-6600-instructions/
There is also a description of the issues I am running into but I’ll mention
them again for completeness.
- I have a number of pages where the step number isn’t appearing and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Is there something I should be looking for in the file to give me a hint? I must have done something without realizing it but I am not sure what to look for.
- The other issue I am dealing with is scaling - my Airport Shuttle is long - about 200 studs when it is all put together. This makes it hard to fit on a page. When I scale the final assembly all of the other step images scale too. I can’t seem to scale the image for just one step. Any ideas?
Any other suggestions are welcome.
Last question - is there a way to generate a complete BOM image for all of the
parts needed to build the model and add a BOM page at the end?
Thanks,
Mike
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> + I have a number of pages where the step number isn't appearing and I cannot
> for the life of me figure out why. Is there something I should be looking
> for in the file to give me a hint? I must have done something without
> realizing it but I am not sure what to look for.
It doesn't help much, but it appears only on pages with a submodel used twice
(x2). Perhaps it would help to see the mpd source file?
> + The other issue I am dealing with is scaling - my Airport Shuttle is long -
> about 200 studs when it is all put together. This makes it hard to fit on
> a page. When I scale the final assembly all of the other step images scale
> too. I can't seem to scale the image for just one step. Any ideas?
Right click on the model in the step where you want to reduce scale, choose
"Change scale" and choose your scale. LPub then ask if you want it to affect
this step only - choose yes. If you want the scale change to affect all
following steps, edit the source and remove "local" in !LPUB ASSEM MODEL_SCALE
statement inside the step (there may be simpler solution for that...)
>
> Last question - is there a way to generate a complete BOM image for all of
> the parts needed to build the model and add a BOM page at the end?
First you need to append a back cover page (go to last page, then edit / append
page). For some reason this command may not work the first time... Go to this
inserted page and edit / add bill of materials.
There may be only one bom page, so you'll need to reduce drasticaly scale in
configuration / bom setup
Philo
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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
... snipped ...
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I’ve resolved almost all of the issues I had run into but still have two I am
struggling with, hopefully someone will have some ideas. I’ve posted a draft
set of the instructions I am working on here:
http://www.carolinatrainbuilders.com/index.php/2010/09/early-draft-of-ctb-6600-instructions/
There is also a description of the issues I am running into but I’ll mention
them again for completeness.
- I have a number of pages where the step number isn’t appearing and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Is there something I should be looking for in the file to give me a hint? I must have done something without realizing it but I am not sure what to look for.
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Things seem fine through page 14, and then they go away. One of two things come
to mind. Either it is an LPub bug, or, possibly the page number is hiding
*under* the PLI? I’d make sure that the PLI is placed relative to the page
number.
You can always send me your MPD (which will be held in the strictest of
confidence), and I can look at it.
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- The other issue I am dealing with is scaling - my Airport Shuttle is long - about 200 studs when it is all put together. This makes it hard to fit on a page. When I scale the final assembly all of the other step images scale too. I can’t seem to scale the image for just one step. Any ideas?
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Go to the final page, put your cursor on the assembly step and right click. You
should be able to set the model scale just for that step.
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Any other suggestions are welcome.
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Given that your overall model is more wide than tall, had you considered using a
more landscape set of page dimensions? Go to page configuration and swap the
numbers in page dimensions to get landscape.
Did you know that you can resize PLI’s by dragging the mouse? It would seem you
might be able to merge page 11 and 12 if you shorten the PLI in step 7....
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Last question - is there a way to generate a complete BOM image for all of
the parts needed to build the model and add a BOM page at the end?
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Add a trailing cover page, then you should be able to use the “Insert BOM” menu.
Thanks for the nice comments about LPub on your web page. Did you know that you
can create a cover page and insert a picture into the cover page? You should
not *have* to use Acrobat for that.
Kevin
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
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... snipped ...
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Things seem fine through page 14, and then they go away. One of two things
come to mind. Either it is an LPub bug, or, possibly the page number is
hiding *under* the PLI? I’d make sure that the PLI is placed relative to the
page number.
You can always send me your MPD (which will be held in the strictest of
confidence), and I can look at it.
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I’ve moved the PLI around thinking it was underneath it but it didn’t seem to
make a difference. I will send you the MPD file so you can take a look at it.
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- The other issue I am dealing with is scaling - my Airport Shuttle is long - about 200 studs when it is all put together. This makes it hard to fit on a page. When I scale the final assembly all of the other step images scale too. I can’t seem to scale the image for just one step. Any ideas?
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Go to the final page, put your cursor on the assembly step and right click.
You should be able to set the model scale just for that step.
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I tried it but even though I told it to apply to only this step, the scale was
applied to the entire set of instructions. I will try it again and see if I can
get it to work.
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Any other suggestions are welcome.
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Given that your overall model is more wide than tall, had you considered
using a more landscape set of page dimensions? Go to page configuration and
swap the numbers in page dimensions to get landscape.
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I tried both landscape and portrait orientations and settled on portrait as it
seemed to fit the majority of the pages better.
Enhancement request: Allow per page size overrides! ;-)
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Did you know that you can resize PLI’s by dragging the mouse? It would seem
you might be able to merge page 11 and 12 if you shorten the PLI in step
7....
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I didn’t know that - I will give that a shot. I have a couple places where I
ended up with only one step on a page when it would make the instructions flow
better if there were two.
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Last question - is there a way to generate a complete BOM image for all of
the parts needed to build the model and add a BOM page at the end?
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Add a trailing cover page, then you should be able to use the “Insert BOM”
menu.
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Ok - got that working, thanks. The Insert BOM menu was greyed out until I added
the back cover page, just adding a page wasn’t sufficient.
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Thanks for the nice comments about LPub on your web page. Did you know that
you can create a cover page and insert a picture into the cover page? You
should not *have* to use Acrobat for that.
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I tried to create a cover page and insert an image but it was offset from the
top and left edges. My cover image is exactly 11x8.5, the same as my page size
and when I inserted the picture, it didn’t “fit” correctly. Even scaling the
picture down so it was smaller than the page didn’t fix the problem, I still
ended up with extra white space on the top and left and the picture not centered
on the page. I solved it by saving my cover image as a PDF in Photoshop and
then replacing the page in Acrobat. I think it makes the final file size larger
than it should be though.
Mike
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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
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... snipped ...
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Things seem fine through page 14, and then they go away. One of two things
come to mind. Either it is an LPub bug, or, possibly the page number is
hiding *under* the PLI? I’d make sure that the PLI is placed relative to
the page number.
You can always send me your MPD (which will be held in the strictest of
confidence), and I can look at it.
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I’ve moved the PLI around thinking it was underneath it but it didn’t seem to
make a difference. I will send you the MPD file so you can take a look at
it.
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I found a bug in LPub.
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- The other issue I am dealing with is scaling - my Airport Shuttle is long - about 200 studs when it is all put together. This makes it hard to fit on a page. When I scale the final assembly all of the other step images scale too. I can’t seem to scale the image for just one step. Any ideas?
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Go to the final page, put your cursor on the assembly step and right click.
You should be able to set the model scale just for that step.
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I tried it but even though I told it to apply to only this step, the scale
was applied to the entire set of instructions. I will try it again and see
if I can get it to work.
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Yes, your highest level model is interesting because the entire model is
expressed as steps in submodels, so when it placed the model scale meta, it did
it at the top of the step (which is before all the add lines of the submodels).
I moved the meta manually to after all the submodels, and it worked. Sorry you
have to do that manually, it is hard to figure out a usage model for placing
meta commands that fits *all* possible cases.
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Any other suggestions are welcome.
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Given that your overall model is more wide than tall, had you considered
using a more landscape set of page dimensions? Go to page configuration and
swap the numbers in page dimensions to get landscape.
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I tried both landscape and portrait orientations and settled on portrait as
it seemed to fit the majority of the pages better.
Enhancement request: Allow per page size overrides! ;-)
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Egads.... makes my brain hurt with regards to printing.
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Did you know that you can resize PLI’s by dragging the mouse? It would seem
you might be able to merge page 11 and 12 if you shorten the PLI in step
7....
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I didn’t know that - I will give that a shot. I have a couple places where I
ended up with only one step on a page when it would make the instructions
flow better if there were two.
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Using placement features new to LPub 4 (placing callouts relative to step
group), I was able to eliminate about 1/3 of your pages.
Also, LPub 4 tries to size the PLIs in step groups based on the size of the
assembly step automatically if you do not have metas that specify PLI
constraints. I removed a bunch of your PLI constraints (using the edit window),
and this helped things pack more densely.
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Last question - is there a way to generate a complete BOM image for all of
the parts needed to build the model and add a BOM page at the end?
|
Add a trailing cover page, then you should be able to use the “Insert BOM”
menu.
|
Ok - got that working, thanks. The Insert BOM menu was greyed out until I
added the back cover page, just adding a page wasn’t sufficient.
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Hmmm.... I will dig into this. BOM should not be limited to back cover page
(i.e. it should be placable on front cover page). It is not placable on pages
with steps.
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Thanks for the nice comments about LPub on your web page. Did you know that
you can create a cover page and insert a picture into the cover page? You
should not *have* to use Acrobat for that.
|
I tried to create a cover page and insert an image but it was offset from the
top and left edges. My cover image is exactly 11x8.5, the same as my page
size and when I inserted the picture, it didn’t “fit” correctly. Even
scaling the picture down so it was smaller than the page didn’t fix the
problem, I still ended up with extra white space on the top and left and the
picture not centered on the page. I solved it by saving my cover image as a
PDF in Photoshop and then replacing the page in Acrobat. I think it makes
the final file size larger than it should be though.
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The problem here is that the PDF library limits things to specific page sizes,
*and* those page sizes are in centimeters, not inches. When you specify a size
LPub finds the closest page size from this list
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.5/qprinter.html#PaperSize-enum
that wholly encloses the page size you specified.
8.5x11 is a little smaller than its metric counterpart.
Someday I’ll figure out one of two things: how to do custom page sizes, or
create a drop down list of only the sizes you can use.
Kevin
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
... snipped ...
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Using placement features new to LPub 4 (placing callouts relative to step
group), I was able to eliminate about 1/3 of your pages.
Also, LPub 4 tries to size the PLIs in step groups based on the size of the
assembly step automatically if you do not have metas that specify PLI
constraints. I removed a bunch of your PLI constraints (using the edit
window), and this helped things pack more densely.
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Another thing that LPub 4 does is automatically center step groups and assembly
steps in the center of the page. If there is a single step and with callout(s)
on the page, then LPub calculates the enclosing box of the assembly and
callout(s) and centers it in the center of the page. It does the same thing for
a page with a step group with callouts placed relative to the step group.
This way, the instructions tend to be automatically centered.
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Hmmm.... I will dig into this. BOM should not be limited to back cover page
(i.e. it should be placable on front cover page). It is not placable on
pages with steps.
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LPub will let you “Add Bill of Materials” on front or back cover pages, but not
on pages with steps.
Kevin
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
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The problem here is that the PDF library limits things to specific page
sizes, *and* those page sizes are in centimeters, not inches. When you
specify a size LPub finds the closest page size from this list
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.5/qprinter.html#PaperSize-enum
that wholly encloses the page size you specified.
8.5x11 is a little smaller than its metric counterpart.
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It’s true that 8.5”x11” (US letter size) is not the same size as metric A4, but
the above page includes an entry for QPrinter::Letter, which is exactly
8.5”x11”, so unless that’s not supported by LPub, I don’t think that’s the
problem. Remember, one inch is exactly 25.4 mm, so 8.5 inches is exactly 215.9
mm. So the fact that Qt internally use metric units shouldn’t hurt anything, as
long as those metric units can at least resolve one tenth of a millimeter.
--Travis
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