Subject:
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Re: Mac Brick CAD 2.2b1 New Release
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev.mac
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Date:
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Tue, 30 Mar 2004 06:41:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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1973 times
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Hi Andrew,
I’ve been occupied lately but I was finally able to test drive 2.2b1 for many
hours this past week. So, weighing in again...
I’m absolutely enjoying MBC!... most especially now that I understand what you
were saying about moving the field with the cursor keys (gleeful “A-HA” moment,
followed by an ashamed “doh!”, evening-out to a pleasant “y-yeah-h”). Building
lots of stuff.
Getting down to the brass tacks of beta-testing and wish-listing, here are
things I’ve noticed while playing...
- This may be a part definition problem and not MBC, but the central tube in the double slope bricks extends through the slope plane. The same occurs with 2x2 cones---possibly with other elements, too.
- Sometimes the menu color selection does not reflect the actual color of the part. I’ve had colored pieces labelled gray in the menu, as well as gray pieces labelled a different color (and this did not include the “shadowed” elements). Happens usually when a part is first inserted.
- I’m understanding better the problem with the odd shift-multiple-select behavior. When parts overlap it is non-intuitive as to what is being selected. For example, selecting a brick near its bottom edge may actually select the brick below it, this is because the area clicked overlaps the bottom brick’s stud... and somehow it takes precedence.
- In the DAT Drawer, after deleting an element or step, the DAT text doesn’t reflect the change (doesn’t refresh) until the drawer is closed and opened again.
- Part Grouping and/or MPD support soon? :-)
- In the Finder, when MBC is not the active application, selecting the field (main application) window makes MBC active... however, the same is not true for the Part Selector Palette (PSP). An inactive PSP window may gain focus (become active) when selected but the MBC application will still remain inactive in the background.
- I still would like to see the PSP as a drawer or at least a vertical window. Check out the new version of Transmit FTP client (http://www.panic.com/transmit/), the main window has the ability to show two open drawers simultaneously (right and below).
- It would be excellent if the PSP list column headers (“Part” and “Description”) sorted the part names, as do clicking column headers in Finder windows.
- I miss being able to rotate an element in the PSP preview, and I’d rather double-click the list to insert the element, instead.
- Color palette: Need more colors represented! I type in a custom number and the element goes dim/gray. Also, and I don’t know if this is an LDraw convention, but the color map doesn’t match official Lego colors (ie., 4 should equal orange, not red, and 6 should equal green, not brown... etc., etc.). Also, is it possible to do a mini-paintbox of color swatches instead of a list? (us visual folk think faster this way). May could get more colors in smaller space as an extra bonus.
- I finally figured out that non-category elements are found under “None” in the PSP list. However...
I’m terribly disappointed that the LDraw folks haven’t done a better job at
cleaning up the part names and meta statements in the updates, and, on top of
that, I really wish there were more categories. It’s absolutely painful
scrolling through a list of printed or modified elements and their variants each
time I look for just a standard brick.
In regards to a solution, is it possible to incorporate into MBC a way of
toggling the PSP list between other name/category classifications such as
Bricklink’s or Peeron’s? Maybe a simple look-up table would do the trick.
I hope my comments are helpful. But, even as is, I feel MBC is superior to the
other Lego CAD apps I’ve used. Just within the few weeks I’ve used it, it’s
truly gotten to be an extension of my thinking. What a wonderful tool!
Jim Green
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Mac Brick CAD 2.2b1 New Release
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| Great stuff Jim, where possible I'll answer interspersed with your comments (...) I've noticed this too on some bricks. It has to do with the fact that some parts use negative scaling when drawing some primitives. Both OpenGL and LDRAW can handle (...) (20 years ago, 30-Mar-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Mac Brick CAD 2.2b1 New Release
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| After the level of input from the previous release, I've managed to update MBC again to version 2.2b1 This release fixes a couple of major memory bugs and also mainly adds some of the features that have been requested recently (and before) It is now (...) (20 years ago, 29-Feb-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac)
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