Building Instruction Programs

[Smitty500]

Anyone know of any good programs that can create digital instructions for LEGO's. I've tried LDD and its OK, but they tend to throw stuff out of order or make some of the connections impossible when in real life they are possible.

[Rishab N]

Theres always LDRAW but its tougher than LDD

[jamie75]

In Ldraw you can make your own and you can include your own steps. In other words. You can add a few pieces, add a step, add pieces, add step, add pieces, add step. You can do this all as you wish.

In LDD you can't add your own steps. They do it all, which is why we have problems with it.

It's been ages since I used Ldraw, I like LDD more now and this something I overcame, but, it is one thing I wish LDD had.

Hope this helps and if you have anymore questions ask!

Jamie

[ScottishDave]

I used LDD and LDraw to produce instructions for Pellaeon's midi-scale Executor.

Here are a few pointers:

I built the model first in LDD: it was a lot easier to use than Ldraw. I scaffolded bricks into place where they had illegal connections, and left them floating at as close to the correct spot as possible

To set up LDraw: I found my way to Ldraw's beginner's guide. I ended up using two programs: MLCad (Windows) and LPub (OSX or Windows).

MLCad is fiddly and looks dated, but it is very powerful. I used it to do the bulk of the work of sorting the parts into the steps I wanted. I also used it to move the floating parts around and get them into the "correct" spots.

LPub then let me add all the rest of the stuff - part lists, step numbers, page layout and formatting. There is a complete guide to working with LPub here.

There is a special file, "ldraw.xml", bundled with Lego Digital Designer, which theoretically fixes LDD parts so that they export correctly to LDraw. The built-in Lego one does not fix many parts. I found and downloaded a much better third party ldraw.xml from Gallagher's Art. This gave me a perfect LDraw file.

For this two-foot-long 761 brick model, it took five months to make the instructions, from start to finish, on a steep learning curve, with a self-imposed deadline of Christmas 2013. Never again!

Good luck with your project, Smitty500, and I hope this has helped.

Edited October 18, 2014 by ScottishDave

[Smitty500]

Thank you, this helped a lot. I have never really seen anyone talk about doing instructions, I always see digital models, but never knew if they were much better than LDD, especially when it comes to building.

Thanks again, the rest of the research upon me now.

and 5 months? holy cow, I don't think I would want to spend more than a month on it.

[ScottishDave]

Thank you, this helped a lot.

No problem. If I'd had a post like this for reference, it'd have saved me a lot of hassle.

BTW, you may also want to check out the LDD and LDraw forum here on Eurobricks. They have a lot of useful info indexed, especially the LPub guide

One thing I ought to mention: In the end, I found it easiest to export the Groups from LDD as seperate files, then work on them in MLCad individually. It made it quicker to sort the parts into the desired steps.

Then I imported all the seperate files into one LDraw file and shuffled them into the correct physical position.

and 5 months? holy cow, I don't think I would want to spend more than a month on it.

I started on 15 August and finished right before Christmas, I can see that much from the file dates.

... but looking in more detail at all the working files, I may, just possibly, have goofed off for three months then gotten serious about mid-November.

-- David.

[Smitty500]

I'll have to check out that forum, and brush up a bit on what you are talking about with exporting groups and separate file mumbo jumbo

I started on 15 August and finished right before Christmas, I can see that much from the file dates.

... but looking in more detail at all the working files, I may, just possibly, have goofed off for three months then gotten serious about mid-November.

-- David.

Ah, gotcha! I tend to goof off too..