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Subject: 
RE: Challenge/Request for the CAD gurus
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Sun, 11 Nov 2001 01:49:33 GMT
Reply-To: 
<bram@poSPAMLESS.cwru.edu>
Viewed: 
727 times
  
richard marchetti writes:
A newbie is more than likely just screwed unless they are
unusually motivated. The sad part is that many of the
applications are QUITE good and easy to use if you are not
a newbie to graphics applications.

Sounds like the first time I encountered LDraw in 1996 or 97...
Of course the lack of a 3D view and my lack of experience with
DOS command lines didn't make things any easier.

As it stands he uses terms like "comment" as
if every reader were a programmer and would know what that
means. That's not the case. Talk down to us readers, Baby!
Tell us what you're gonna say, say it, and then summarize
what has been said.

Believe it or not, that takes a ton of time.  My LDraw tutorial
took at least a full week of work to complete [1].  It's not all
fun and games either.
  Secondly, POV-Ray is not an easy program to use.  To really
use it efficently, you need some understanding of programming.
The less the author expects of his reader, the more he has to
write, and the more it will scare him off of the project.
  Pushing an entire tutorial on one person is not the way to go.
Perhaps, some of the POV gurus (myself, I suppose, Jeremy
Sproat, Coby Basset, Karim Nassar, Mladen Pejic, etc) need to
write an indepth outline of the procedures, and then people
who understand *that* can flesh out some of the step to step
details.  Eventually, it should get to a point where a newbie
can understand it.  Other people could HTMLize the content and
add appropriate screenshots.
  However, as Sproat said, we need direction!  What do people
Have trouble with?  What did you have trouble with when you
got started?  (I can't remember, it's been too long, and too
much has changed in the meantime)

But if the LDraw project doesn't stay focused I fear that
none of it will happen to anyone's satisfaction. I just
happen to think that better documentation is a must, that an
easier installation scheme would improve things
substantially, and that the layout of ldraw.org could use
some tweaking too.

I think the installation scheme should be given very high
priority now that we have a working parts updater set in
place.  When that works, writing documentation will be
easier since everything will be organized in a more uniform
manner.
  However, when I think of how long it takes to just write
this post, the project seems even more overwhelming...
--Bram

1) http://library.thinkquest.org/20551/home.html


Bram Lambrecht
bram@cwru.edu
www.bldesign.org



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Challenge/Request for the CAD gurus
 
"Bram Lambrecht" <bram@cwru.edu> wrote in message news:000001c16a53$1c...1681@bl... (...) Matt Gerber and I have been chatting about the very same subject at the moment. What we both think is that people should break it up - we develop an outline of (...) (23 years ago, 11-Nov-01, to lugnet.cad)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Challenge/Request for the CAD gurus
 
Bram has hit it squarely, as has Jake. Put the two voices together and you get three main ideas... Ldraw should be: 1. Simple to Download 2. Simple to install 3. Simple to understand (i.e. DOCUMENTATION) I would pull back from Jake's request to the (...) (23 years ago, 11-Nov-01, to lugnet.cad)

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