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Subject: 
Re: What about a LEGO TECHNIC tutorial
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.mlcad
Date: 
Tue, 7 Jun 2005 20:51:02 GMT
Viewed: 
10525 times
  
In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
In lugnet.cad, Eduardo Vazquez Harte wrote:
I whould love to do my LEGO TECHNIC sets also in ldraw but I found it
hard and bit complex to do.
So what if someone does a tutorial for me or anyone that want's to have their
TECHNIC sets in Ldraw format?

I don't mind if the tutorial is showing how to do set with MLCad or ldglite.

Thanks

Hi Eduardo,
  All the models I enter are technic.  Compared to brick building, technic is
much harder. With the standard bricks, everthing is turned multiples of 90
degrees, and  studs line up parallel to the x,y, or z axis.

  Jaco is right, it would take a lot to write up a tutorial for technic.

  For me, the biggest issues is rotations.  Technic allows for many more
orientation angles than the standard brick.  Rotating about X,Y, and Z axiz are
pretty good, but I usually have to adjust the "fine" grid settings rotation to
something like 1 degree.  Also I typically set the fine moement settings much
smaller than the default.

Mine settings are movement
Large Move(XYZ)=10 Rotate(XYZ)=22.5
Medium Move(XYZ)=1 Rotate(XYZ)=15
Fine Move(XYZ)=0.001 Rotate(XYZ)=0.5

I spend most of my time in Medium and do ultrafine adjustments in Fine.
I do occasionally (namely when working with the 1x7 Bent liftarms) set meduim to
27.125 or 62.875 (sorry not at my desk, those 2 are approximations for the
angles of a 3x4x5 right Triangle which the bent arms are bent to match)

  It sure would be nice to have a few more setting levels.

Or even just the ability to create a set of custom rotation buttons with
specific rotations.
  One problem with technic designes is that axis of rotation are often not
parallel to the X,Y or Z planes.  I use GROUPS to collect all parts related to a
rotation axis, so they are easy to work with.  Then I rotate them so the
rotation axis is parallel to one of the X,Y, or Z axis'.  From there, I rotate
the group the amount needed.  I then have to reverse the original rotations to
get the group oriented back to the original rotation axis.

  It sure would be nice to be able to pick an axle or pin, and use that to
define a rotation axis.  From there you could rotate the group clockwise or
counter clockwise.

  I spend a lot of time managing the rotation point....  being able to move it
small increments by the keyboard might help, but I've never studied MLCad enough
to know if it already exists.
I only know how to move the rotation point by A) Typing specific coordinates, B)
using the mouse to move it.


  The width and height ratio stuff that LEGO is famous for is also a problem in
technic.  Getting pins and axles precisely in the holes is a tough task,
especially if the axis of the pin is not parallel to X, Y, Z.


  Also the fact that pins are defined to be symmetric around the Y axis, and
axles are symmetric around the X axis is a pain as well.

These get to be a MAJOR pain, especially with LDRaw Data imported into Blender,
some things get wierd beause of their defined orientation.


  What kinds of problems are you experiencing?

Kevin

I would say, if you are wanting to do animations, use MLCad to make the MOC then
use an import script to import it into Blender where you can specify an object
as a parent and then you can specify the Axis of rotation of the
parent object independantly of the world axis.



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: What about a LEGO TECHNIC tutorial
 
(...) Hi Eduardo, All the models I enter are technic. Compared to brick building, technic is much harder. With the standard bricks, everthing is turned multiples of 90 degrees, and studs line up parallel to the x,y, or z axis. Jaco is right, it (...) (19 years ago, 6-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad)

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