LDD 5, what features do YOU want?

[Calabar]

I'd like some improvement in the custom palette mode:

• If I add to the model parts that are not included in the palette, the new bricks should appear in the palette.
  I think they should be recognizable (for example with a different colour background) and maybe their count should be negative.
  
• A checkbox (or any other "one click" accessible way) to show/hide bricks whose count reached zero.
  This chance could be very useful to detect parts when the model is almost complete and somehow provide a most realistic use of parts when you built a model.
  
• Easily crate a custom palette, for example some menu voices like "create palette from the present scene" or "...from the selected parts" and "add selected parts to existing palette".
  

[Brawl]

Wavefront OBJ exporter. LeoCad doesn't support enough pieces to be useful for exporting models as OBJ.

[Nachapon Lego]

Add group selection sub-tool for one click select pre-group bricks directly in build area.

This function will improve virtual play ability of LDD a lot.

Sample of uses:

Quick select pre-group minifig or sub-module of the model weather it connect to other part or not.

Play lego chess set in LDD.

Play lego board game LDD.

Edited November 5, 2013 by bbqqq

[Dilvish]

A "walk" or "drive" mode so you can explore town models the way they are best experienced.

[Blip]

^ Doubt we'd get that as pat of LDD, but it would make an awesome separate app... A sort of Lego Simulator.....

[Yooha]

My wishlist (if already mentioned, pardon me):

Make a mirrored model of something .

Availability mode: list all the currently available colors of a part.

Position a previously hinged part unchanged, without hinging it back.

Put the **** part ON the model and not under it! No-one wants to put a part somewhere it cannot be seen from that angle!

Edited November 11, 2013 by Yooha

[Lego Otaku]

But the **** part ON the model and not under it! No-one wants to put a part somewhere it cannot be seen from that angle!

Ditto. I've spent a lot of time changing angle and all trying to get one measly part on *top* and not below. LDD should consider line of sight and assume only on top based on current viewing angle and not try to ram it deep inside or on the bottom.

[Aanchir]

I've got several colors I want added to LDD:

??? Flamingo Pink

299 Warm Gold, Drum Lacq.

300 Copper, Drum Lacq.

304 Cool Silver, Diffuse

306 Copper, Diffuse

333 Fluorescent Green Ink

??? Copper Ink

??? Gold Ink

336 Silver Ink

337 Titanium Ink

I know the reason that some of these (specifically 299 and 300) are not available is that they have the same RGB values as existing metallic colors. This is why I feel the next major version update ought to make it so that different metallic colors with the same RGB values can be rendered differently. Currently, "pearl" colors like 296 Cool Silver are rendered with the same level of reflectiveness as "metallic" colors like 298 Cool Silver, Drum Lacq. and "chrome" colors like 309 Metalized Silver. This should be corrected by giving different types of metallic colors different material definitions. And this will hopefully remove the last obstacle stopping the inclusion of these colors, so that builders are no longer forced to make as many substitutions.

The two colors 304 Cool Silver, Diffuse and 306 Copper, Diffuse are what Bricklink calls "speckle" colors. These also will require LDD's color handling to be updated with new definitions for these types of materials.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Aanchir

[Stephan]

I would like to see more of the printed parts added to the regular LDD mode. What I do right now when I need the correct printing is switching to the regular LDD mode and enter the element ID in the search box. This way you don't have to spend time searching for the right printing.

[Dilvish]

^ Doubt we'd get that as pat of LDD, but it would make an awesome separate app... A sort of Lego Simulator.....

Something like Blockland or Minecraft I guess. Maybe in a decade when computers are fast enough.

[Lego Otaku]

One feature I'd love to see implemented somehow: the ability to auto rotate gears and connected axles when you are assembling gear box. I am tired of having to manually rotate every other axles when I add gears and teeth won't mesh. It should be fairly easy if it only checks the last placed axle or pin as it's likely to be unconnected to anything else to rotate when adding a gear to it.

[Yooha]

Oh, and one more thing: The ability to "drop" parts without the need to be attach them to anything. Just put an element ABOVE something, and then drop, allowing it to "fall" until it hits something. Putting a let's say a vase on a tiled surface, or fill a box with apples, making such water etc..

In a more advanced way: those parts could roll after hitting something , to make it more realistic, but that would be more difficult to make I guess.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Yooha

[Gnac]

I've spent a lot of time changing angle and all trying to get one measly part on *top* and not below. LDD should consider line of sight and assume only on top based on current viewing angle and not try to ram it deep inside or on the bottom.

LDD seems to behave in such a way that where a part is clicked will affect how it can be manipulated, and though the behaviour when positing things is often baffling, "holding" a part a different way can make things easier. For example, click a part to be placed on where you expect it to connect to something else.

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I've got several colors I want added to LDD:

??? Flamingo Pink

299 Warm Gold, Drum Lacq.

306 Copper, Diffuse

Someone here created a chart in LDD some time ago (I'm ashamed to admit that I've forgotten who) which shows that there are about a dozen un-named colours "hidden" away in LDD. Could Flamingo Pink be one of the un-named colours in the top row (4, 16, 17)?

I recently updated this chart by doing some cut-and-paste on the .LXFML with values up to 512.

This revealed that 299 and 306 appear to be in LDD's DB, but have that same strange bug as 301 Silver, where no "base" colour is defined. 132 Black Glitter is also there. These are represented by 3062s in the chart.

[Aanchir]

Someone here created a chart in LDD some time ago (I'm ashamed to admit that I've forgotten who) which shows that there are about a dozen un-named colours "hidden" away in LDD. Could Flamingo Pink be one of the un-named colours in the top row (4, 16, 17)?

No, I don't think so. Those are fairly old colors (pre-2000s), whereas Flamingo Pink is very recent (I've never found evidence that it was used in any theme other than Clikits).

The original chart was mine, by the way.

I recently updated this chart by doing some cut-and-paste on the .LXFML with values up to 512.

This revealed that 299 and 306 appear to be in LDD's DB, but have that same strange bug as 301 Silver, where no "base" colour is defined. 132 Black Glitter is also there. These are represented by 3062s in the chart.

Cool beans. I only included colors on mine that were already in the database in some form or another (whether it be names, RGBA values, etc.) Thank you for sharing this version of the chart; it will be useful for keeping track of any added colors in future updates.

[Lego Otaku]

I want this one feature implemented somehow. I was building a moc to test and to get estimated part count and BOM and I found it annoying that if I needed to make multiple copies of something I'd have to click the group, click copy, place, click group, click copy, etc. I could use copy and paste but the clipboard is limited to one.

I would like a feature similar to "Repeat inserting selecting brick" with grouped bricks, or a clipboard that can hold more than one copied group of bricks.

[Classicsmiley]

If you make a quick template with your group, when you add new instances of the template, they will all be grouped. If you just copy/paste a group, it pastes the pieces, but doesn't keep them grouped.

[Malidctus]

After having freyed my nerves to the bone, my wish list comes down to hinge/flex tools that actually work. To wit:

An Inverse Kinematic way to drag hinged assemblies similar to the ability to drag flexible tubes.

A Hinge Align tool which can actually align hinges instead of failing and forcing me to align hinges by myself.

A smarter hinge system which allows for some give and part bending, and which doesn't lock up if a piece is held by two coaxial hinges (say, the drawbridge in Black Falcon's Fortress).

A saner, less random means of controlling flexible elements. Preferably with the ability to control the absolute position of one end of the thing in three dimensions. As it is right now, I have two-dimensional control relative to my camera and no control over depth relative to it.

More flexible flexible elements. As it stands, affixing the flexible tubes in my Galactic Enforcer is impossible because the pieces can't bend as much as my manual says they should.

The ability to place bricks "in the air" with absolute 3D positioning without the need for them to snap onto something. Lacking this ability makes placing the control levers element in my Millennium Falcon impossible because it doesn't snap onto anything. It's just held in place loosely by other elements.

An auto-save feature.

[BEAVeR]

As for making the flex tool easier to use, wouldn't it be nice if you could position certain points of it and define tangent lines, just like when making bezier curves?

The ability to semi-hide sections (just making them a bit transparent, but not so that you can see the inside of the bricks, and making them unselectable, accept perhaps with a special tool), could come in handy. It's especcialy hard to work on internals once you've already built pieces around it in thight structures, and that tool could help. It would also be nice for instructions.

[Gnac]

As for making the flex tool easier to use, wouldn't it be nice if you could position certain points of it and define tangent lines, just like when making bezier curves?

I approve of this message.

However, I don't envy the folk who would have to implement this. Spline manipulation is an "intermediate skill" when working in two dimensions (in such as a vector drawing application), but adding the third dimension may bring an exponential amount of challenges for programmers, UI designers, and end-users alike.

I'm too tired to elucidate on this right now, but I'll smash out some bullet points after a nap.

[JM1971]

Sometimes parts dont fit like they would for real, a way around this would be nice, like switching off collision detection temporary for those hard to fit pieces, plus also stop LDD from deleting bricks when loading if they dont fit exactly right.

[obsidianheart]

If bricks are placed incorrectly, instead of just deleting them and leaving me to figure out what's gone, I'd like the error message to tell me what's been removed, or maybe a thumbnail of the part or something. You guys told me how to figure out what was missing once a while back and it was super helpful until I forgot how to do it and now I'm like .

[mzoli]

For me one feature would be very helpful. I need the option to fix a custom camera angle (with Ctrl+3 for example). A button in the menu, or mouse wheel button or a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+4) should position the camera to the previously fixed angle. I don't think this feature would need so many programming hours.

[Renderbricks]

A classic quad view (top, front, side, perspective) and switching them to full-screen and most important: higher poly models and textures and an option to turn on 3D LEGO logos on studs.

[Andrew31kbrick193]

I would like to first off, see a feature that allows Phosphorescent/Glow in the Dark colors to...well...glow in the dark. I would also like to see some special light up bricks and the parts from every Bionicle set known to man.

[Takanuinuva]

An option in tools called (Scan for Update) It would check for and update. But would require your internet to be connected.

For those who have trouble getting updates.

A better search function. (Something similar to the one Lego Universe had)

The ability to create custom brick groups. (Let you add parts to a custom group so you can access them easier)

Not a feature but they should remove the Mindstorms build mode (Does anyone even use it anymore?)

Edited May 12, 2014 by Takanuinuva