Subject:
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Idea for a new feature in a Lego CAD program.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Fri, 8 Oct 2004 19:49:00 GMT
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Viewed:
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1464 times
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I was thinking about how difficult it is to build things in MLCad. It’s not
technically difficult to build them, but it is difficult to position things
properly. Even when you think you have a piece positioned properly, it ends up
coming out wrong (or atleast slightly off) in the POV render. This was just a
quick idea, but i thought it would be an interesting feature to add little
pieces of data (rather, local x/y/z points) to a part, and each little piece
will define a snap point. Each piece should have at least one snap point.
Each point will be where snap points of other parts snap to the points of the
current part. For example, each prong of a lego brick will have its own snap
point, so when you add another piece on top of the brick, the snap points of the
second brick will automatically snap to a prong. If you continue to move the
brick in any certain direction, the brick will continue snapping points together
until the brick is away from the prongs of the first brick. Also, for bricks
with the holes throughout the center (technic bricks) there will be snapping
points for pins in the center of each hole. For pins, there would be snapping
points in the center of each snapping area on the real pins. For example, on the
long pins that hold 3 bricks, there will be 3 snap points on that type of pin.
Yes, this would take a lot of work, but it would make the world of virtual
lego building a LOT easier. I highly doubt anyone is going to go through and
edit each and every DAT file to add snapping points But im sure if there was
someone willing to implement this snapping system in to their LDRAW modeler, or
even the original LDRAW itself, then there would be a few people who wouldnt
mind in helping edit the parts files themselves. It would be a large project and
would take a while, but if there was enough demand and support, as well as
enough patience for the people who are editing the files, then it could get
done.
Anyway, i just thought i’d let you all know my idea, althought it probably wont
ever happen.
Oh, and a quick note, there would probably be some sort of identifier needed to
identify different snapping points, so that a pin wouldnt try to snap to a prong
of a brick, and instead snap to the hole in a technic brick (or liftarm).
Thanks for reading. :)
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Idea for a new feature in a Lego CAD program.
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| This has been talked about in the past. There's even a lugnet group devoted entirely to one of the proposals: (URL). I believe that the author of the Glide app is the only person to announce an intention of producing an LCD-based implementation. I (...) (20 years ago, 8-Oct-04, to lugnet.cad.dev, FTX)
| | | Re: Idea for a new feature in a Lego CAD program.
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| (...) BlockCAD (see sig.) has snapping. In fact it's impossible to put parts inside each other there. OTOH, BlockCAD has many other limitations (studs up only, 90 degrees turning only, limited part library) so it's usability depends on what you are (...) (20 years ago, 9-Oct-04, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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