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Subject: 
Re: MPD Parts? (and a confession)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.dev
Date: 
Thu, 25 Mar 1999 18:10:41 GMT
Viewed: 
876 times
  
On Thu, 25 Mar 1999 14:24:51 GMT, "Ben Bennett" <sink@limey.net> wrote:

Okay, so it is easy to display an MPD file, but what do people think about
allowing part files to be MPDs?

I suggested this for LDraw2.  I think Jacob is including some variation of
this idea.

And Paul Gyugyi is actively talking about supporting this in LDLite.  I
think (but I'm not sure) Lars is going this way in L3P as well.

This would allow making the sub-parts that are related to a part to be
packaged with the part.  The trick is how to determine what file an MPD
partname is defined in.  If you call LDLite with the MPD as an argument the
problem is resolved since all of the parts in the MPD are loaded & available,
but if a model refers to a partname that is in an MPD which file do you look
in?  My best guess is to say that MPDs can be used as parts _but_ the filename
must be the same as the first partname in the MPD, and when the MPD is loaded
all parts in the MPD are loaded.  But this could lead to problems when someone
perverse uses the first part from the MPD and also uses some other part from
the MPD.  This alone is not problematic, but when they decide to stop using
the first part but keep the second around, they get a file not found error.

One thing Gyug is talking about to help with this is to allow MPD's to be
loaded as subfile archives.  So at the top of your model, you'd explicitly
include your MPD, and then any parts could make use of the files in the
MPD.

It only really seems right to C programmers...

And my confession, I am using LDraw (& friends) for evil.  I am not modelling
Lego but rather Rokenbok (see http://www.limey.net/~fiji/rokenworld/ for
details).

Cool!  I thought about modeling K'nex in LDraw, but never pursued the idea.
K'nex is even further from LEGO than Rokenbok -- K'nex has no
compatibility.

And the Rokenbok beams are not really Lego like so that I can't use
the regular LDraw primatives.  And all of the Rokenbok parts are slightly
different sizes so I can't make a new set of generic Rokenbok primitives, but
since each part has some symmetry I have sub parts that are related to the
whole part family (the beams come in different sizes, where the sizes are
determined by how many blocks long they are).  But it would be convenient to
make the sub-parts part of the part file that they are used by rather than
clutter the "name space" of parts with all sorts of irrelevant sub parts.
The solution to the above may be to just suck it up and make them separate
file and just use the SubPart tag to prevent the namespace from being
cluttered.  But I am not sure where to find the "official" definition of the
Part/SubPart Official/Unoffical tags (I don't think the FAQ helps).

You could:

- Just store your common files in the current LDraw\p directory.  This will
keep them out of the parts-catalog namespace.
- Install LDraw a second time, say to RDraw\.  Then delete any un-useful
files from RDraw\p, RDraw\models, and RDraw\parts.  Then you can add any
'common' files to either RDraw\p or RDraw\parts.  Putting them in RDraw\p
will also keep them out of the name-space.
- Put the subfiles in LDraw\parts\s.  This directory is used for subfiles
which are not used for many different parts.  But to reference a file in
LDraw\parts\s, you have to include s\ as part of the filename.  Part 2593
is one example of this.
- Store the subparts in the LDraw\parts directory, and put a ~ on the front
of their names.  This will cause LDAO to ignore these files.  But other
programs would think they are parts.

Steve



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: MPD Parts? (and a confession)
 
(...) Cool. I have it implemented and it works tolerably well. (...) modelling (...) Rokenbok is mostly not compatible, only the plates have the requisite nubs on them. But that is cool since you can build any Lego construction off the plates and (...) (26 years ago, 25-Mar-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)
  Re: MPD Parts? (and a confession)
 
Steve Bliss wrote in message <36fa79e0.2302399@lu...et.com>... (...) And the class system I had the idea for(e.g. archive.mpd::curlpart.dat to access curlpart.dat without loading archive.mpd)only seems kind of right to C++ programers. (26 years ago, 1-Apr-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)

Message is in Reply To:
  MPD Parts? (and a confession)
 
Okay, so it is easy to display an MPD file, but what do people think about allowing part files to be MPDs? This would allow making the sub-parts that are related to a part to be packaged with the part. The trick is how to determine what file an MPD (...) (26 years ago, 25-Mar-99, to lugnet.cad.dev)

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