To LUGNET HomepageTo LUGNET News HomepageTo LUGNET Guide Homepage
 Help on Searching
 
Post new message to lugnet.cad.devOpen lugnet.cad.dev in your NNTP NewsreaderTo LUGNET News Traffic PageSign In (Members)
 CAD / Development / 2633
2632  |  2634
Subject: 
Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.dev
Date: 
Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:28:15 GMT
Viewed: 
1214 times
  
Todd Lehman wrote:

In lugnet.cad.dev, Leonardo Zide <leonardo@centroin.com.br> writes:
Todd Lehman wrote:
What was the rationale motivating the hammer on BriCad?

TLG sent the author a letter saying that they had the copyrights over
the bricks/studs and if he didn't remove his pages he would be sued. The
author got so disappointed that he left the net.

Did Carsten ever post a copy of the letter or anything like that?  Anyone
know what year/month this was?  How about what country he lived in at the
time?  Very odd...  Obviously (er, apparently) TLG has lightened up
considerably since then.

--Todd

IIRC (this would be from e-mail he sent me that I almost certainly no
longer have,
and is stuff I know because I was making an attempt to port it to a
Windows version):

- It was LEGO Germany
- The dispute was over TLG's rights to "studded trade dress" (my take on
it was that his output looked TOO close to instructions -- especially
his solid colored stud sides)
- I don't think he ever shared the exact correspondence (at least not
with me <g>)
- The episode did not cause him to leave the net, instead he decided to
redo his
app to be more generic, renaming it btopia (for Brick-topia) and making
it more
generic so it supported non studs-up-only constructions.  I didn't like
the
new version much, it went to the same units in horizontal as vertical,
rather
than scaling properly for LEGO brick units for you, and it never really
improved
much over BriCAD 0.75...
- He ended up dropping btopia once he graduated college and get a Real
Job,
unfortunately.
- I asked him at that point if I could still get the BriCAD 0.75 sources
from him,
but he said he no longer had them; though I would have been welcome to
them.
I don't have btopia sources either.

- The original version of BriCAD (0.2, I believe) was developed on the
Amiga.
It chewed up Chip RAM at an incredible rate.  I had a copy of that
executable.
- The version most of us knew (0.75 +/-) ran under Linux, using
X-Windows
- The app was really cool, the first of its kind, and looked really
really
nice; but Carsten was a student when he wrote it, so it had some
learning-curve
"features"

- Take the previous three points, combine them with the facts that we
wanted
the source to compile to multiple platforms and have identical features,
and it
went into high flux when he decided to rearchitect it into btopia, and
you can
imagine that the Windows version never really got anywhere.  I was
waiting for
a stable release of btopia that never came, and it didn't seem worth it
once he
quit the project since I didn't like the way btopia had changed (he
actually pulled
some features out to redo them, and they never got added back).

- I didn't think in the end it was too bad, since LeoCAD came along, and
it
was far superior, IMHO.

-- joshua



Message has 7 Replies:
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
(...) You are probably more correct than me, I've never been able to talk to Carsten and I've never been able to use BriCad, Unix was very hard to install at that time and I wasn't a programmer (didn't knew much about computers). (...) You're right, (...) (25 years ago, 15-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
(...) You continue to amaze, Leonardo. To have not been a programmer that recently, and to have come up with LeoCAD and make it work so well, it shocks me a little (in a good way). :) (...) I wouldn't go that far. In fact, I'd caution that we be (...) (25 years ago, 15-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
On Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:28:15 GMT, Joshua Delahunty <dulcaoin@alumni.cse.ucsc.edu> wrote: [Update on the story of BriCAD and Carsten Gnoerlich] Thanks for the information, Joshua. I hadn't heard of btopia. Heck, the last thing I knew, I was (...) (25 years ago, 15-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
Snipped most of the message... ok.. all of it.. :-) I have some thoughts on why TLG hasn't thought about trying to shut this down... I'm sure they already know the group as a whole isn't very happy with them. To turn around, and try to shut down a (...) (25 years ago, 16-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
(...) If you liked the Windows version, you're going to be even more amazed when the Linux version is ready. :) I just hope that someone else gets impressed and offers me a job... (I'm going to graduate this semester and I realized I don't want to (...) (25 years ago, 16-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
(...) I have BriCAD 0.83 source, and possibly the earlier 0.75 source, in archive, if Carsten would like to have them. -gyug (25 years ago, 20-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
(...) Gee, hath my memory deceived me? Maybe it WAS 0.83 source I wanted (I think I had 0.75 source). Carsten wasn't interested, I was. I wanted to at least bring the functionality of BriCAD (as opposed to btopia) to Windows, and perhaps build it (...) (25 years ago, 21-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Parts for LDraw or parts for POV-Ray?
 
(...) Did Carsten ever post a copy of the letter or anything like that? Anyone know what year/month this was? How about what country he lived in at the time? Very odd... Obviously (er, apparently) TLG has lightened up considerably since then. --Todd (25 years ago, 14-Aug-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)

146 Messages in This Thread:
(Inline display suppressed due to large size. Click Dots below to view.)
Entire Thread on One Page:
Nested:  All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:  All | Brief | Compact

This Message and its Replies on One Page:
Nested:  All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:  All | Brief | Compact
    

Custom Search

©2005 LUGNET. All rights reserved. - hosted by steinbruch.info GbR