Custom LDD bricks and fixes

[Eggyslav]

Can we have this old piece? We have the other wing, but not this one... And other UFO pieces from 1997...

[Jason C. Hand]

Update 200516a

My own little contribution to the recent influx of "updates" to LEGO Digital Designer: # 36752 (Utility Wand) and # 43745 (Mini Head, Goblin--aka Dobby!) ZIP file download link below. Hope you guys enjoy

https://www.bricksafe.com/files/Pockyman30/misc./200516a.zip

Edited May 16, 2020 by Jason C. Hand

[SylvainLS]

It seems you didn’t use the LDraw part for the wand (the ring is neat in LDraw (and on the real part), and your part is a bit longer).

Isn’t there a way to have clip connectivity in the other way too?  On the ballish end, so that it can be pointed.

Edited May 16, 2020 by SylvainLS

[SylvainLS]

@Stephan Maybe you can add a comment on how to use git to download the files, something like:

# the first time:
git clone https://github.com/stephan3321/LDD-New-Parts

# then, inside the LDD-New-Parts directory, to update to the lastest version:
git pull

 

[jester94]

Hey guys! unfortunately my account is frozen (because of email verification - i don't receive an email with the link)
So i will give you updates from this account
For now most of the parts (most valuable) are added and i searching for trouble parts ant fix them
Thanks a lot to everybody! 

Edited May 16, 2020 by jester94

[Calabar]

I was wondering... TLG produced a limited number of parts in the past and at some point number of parts increased dramatically. That means that with a "limited" number of parts it is possible to recreate ALL old sets. So some question:
- is there a simple way to seem some statistics about new parts released year-by-year in order to see when the curve rises sharply?
- it is possible to see how many of these parts are missing in LDD and which ones?

All this why? For a sort of request: as old parts are limited in number, it is possible to concentrate the work to recreate all these parts, so that all old sets became fully buildable...

[SylvainLS]

There’s a connectivity problem with tyre 52985: on the pic, one tyre is 180° from the other, the 56908 hubs have both the same orientation, they are misaligned by 5 LDU / 2mm.  IOW, 56908 isn’t centered in the tyre (need to be moved 1mm).

 

  On 5/16/2020 at 10:32 PM, Calabar said:

is there a simple way to seem some statistics about new parts released year-by-year in order to see when the curve rises sharply?

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On the one hand, there were articles / blog posts about “when LEGO was only bricks” (which it wasn’t) with statistics on the number of parts per set and the number of sets per year.  On BrickSet I think.

On the other hand, the best data should be on BrickLink.

But we also know there are errors and uncertainties (variants not recognized, wrongly corrected or not corrected, simply not known, or other human errors and lack of knowledge).

 

  On 5/16/2020 at 10:32 PM, Calabar said:

it is possible to see how many of these parts are missing in LDD and which ones?

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Sure, just one search in ldraw.xml and you know if a part exists in LDD 

[Calabar]

  On 5/16/2020 at 10:33 PM, SylvainLS said:

But we also know there are errors and uncertainties (variants not recognized, wrongly corrected or not corrected, simply not known, or other human errors and lack of knowledge). 

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Not a big problem, the statistic is useful to get an idea of the necessary work and if there is some little error it could be fixed once found building a set.

  On 5/16/2020 at 10:33 PM, SylvainLS said:

Sure, just one search in ldraw.xml and you know if a part exists in LDD 

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Oh, well, I hoped it was possible to have a result with a single query

[jester94]

  On 5/16/2020 at 10:33 PM, SylvainLS said:

There’s a connectivity problem with tyre 52985: on the pic, one tyre is 180° from the other, the 56908 hubs have both the same orientation, they are misaligned by 5 LDU / 2mm.  IOW, 56908 isn’t centered in the tyre (need to be moved 1mm).

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I tried different times but it can't be fixed because it's LDD glitch
If you can see, other tires are a bit wider so we have 1 mm gap
It's a program code, not my mistake 

[SylvainLS]

  On 5/16/2020 at 10:56 PM, Calabar said:

Oh, well, I hoped it was possible to have a result with a single query

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Sure, it’s just a little ‘grep’ away.  (‘grep’ is a Unix command line tool to search patterns in files.)

I did a thorough search to match LDraw parts (and their aliases and variants) to LDD parts, and for those that weren’t in LDraw (around 1000), I searched for matches in BL’s catalogue to have their “AFOL names” so I could search if they were in LDraw under a similar name and so they can be spotted when a new part arrives in LDraw.

Therefore I can say “beware of LDD numbers” (especially on composite parts: LDD often uses the number and name of a subpart for the whole).

But I can also say “search for the LDraw number, it should be there.” 

[jester94]

  On 5/16/2020 at 2:28 PM, Eggyslav said:

Can we have this old piece? We have the other wing, but not this one... And other UFO pieces from 1997...

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Of course
Can you make a list of parts?

Edited May 16, 2020 by jester94

[SylvainLS]

  On 5/16/2020 at 11:08 PM, jester94 said:

I tried different times but it can't be fixed because it's LDD glitch
If you can see, other tires are a bit wider so we have 1 mm gap
It's a program code, not my mistake 

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I don’t really get it but I don’t know how connectivity works so I’ll trust you 

 

  On 5/16/2020 at 11:12 PM, jester94 said:

Can you make a list of parts?

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All the files in LDraw? 

[jester94]

  On 5/16/2020 at 11:18 PM, SylvainLS said:

All the files in LDraw? 

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I mean UFOs

[Jason C. Hand]

  On 5/16/2020 at 8:25 PM, SylvainLS said:

It seems you didn’t use the LDraw part for the wand (the ring is neat in LDraw (and on the real part), and your part is a bit longer).

Isn’t there a way to have clip connectivity in the other way too?  On the ballish end, so that it can be pointed.

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I'm not too sure, friend. These pieces were imports from a similar project I undertook a while back.

[Jason C. Hand]

Got another problem: the decorations tool is not coming up in LDD. Any suggestions?

If this question is posted in the wrong forum, please feel free to move it to the correct one.

 

NOTE: Found issue preventing it: please delete this post.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Jason C. Hand

[M2m]

Any tutorials on how to create parts ?

[Calabar]

  On 5/16/2020 at 11:11 PM, SylvainLS said:

Therefore I can say “beware of LDD numbers” (especially on composite parts: LDD often uses the number and name of a subpart for the whole).
But I can also say “search for the LDraw number, it should be there.” 

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Sure. the search have to be done using a coherent numbering.
My idea was something like: get a list of parts released until a certain year (before TLG started to release huge amount of new parts), compare it with a list of parts available in LDD and obtain a list of parts that still need to be created to complete the list. A subtraction, in short.
It should be easy programmatically (inserting data in a DBMS it would be super easy with a simple query), the problem is to produce the two lists!

[SylvainLS]

  On 5/17/2020 at 10:49 AM, Calabar said:

inserting data in a DBMS it would be super easy with a simple query

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Er, well, I’d rather use simple text tools, especially as it’s not something that will be done regularly.

 

  On 5/17/2020 at 10:49 AM, Calabar said:

the problem is to produce the two lists!

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Not really.

The first one (dating parts) isn’t straightforward as BL doesn’t include the dates in its catalogue downloads.  That means scraping/parsing all the parts pages of BL.  But that can be done easily.

The second one (LDD) is easier: ldraw.xml.

But then, on one side you’ll have BL ids and on the other LDraw ids and LEGO ids.  That’s another source of errors (besides errors in BL’s catalogue).

But if that’s “good enough,” it’s easy.

I can have a dated / sorted list tomorrow (there are many parts in BL’s catalogue, we don’t want to burden BL’s servers too much, they are always sluggish).

[Calabar]

oh, right. I made a little confusion among BL ids and LDRAW IDs, considering them the same thing. Maybe we could obtain a better ID conversion using stud.io? I suppose it uses BL IDs, but starting from LDRAW IDs.
Note that the only interesting IDs are design IDs, variants for colour or decorations have to be removed from the lists.

PS: I usually use text tools too, especially RE, anyway in this case a basic query seemed to me the more suitable tool. Nothing to be worried for, the important thing is to achieve the goal.

[SylvainLS]

  On 5/17/2020 at 2:06 PM, Calabar said:

oh, right. I made a little confusion among BL ids and LDRAW IDs, considering them the same thing. Maybe we could obtain a better ID conversion using stud.io? I suppose it uses BL IDs, but starting from LDRAW IDs.

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Yes, I thought about Studio too: they match BL ids to LDraw ids.  They also have LDD’s ids (for LXF import).

  On 5/17/2020 at 2:06 PM, Calabar said:

Note that the only interesting IDs are design IDs, variants for colour or decorations have to be removed from the lists.

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Of course, and stickers too.  It still leaves 11169 parts (just filtering on the ids, there might be special ids with a “p” or “stk” in them I won’t catch).

  On 5/17/2020 at 2:06 PM, Calabar said:

PS: I usually use text tools too, especially RE, anyway in this case a basic query seemed to me the more suitable tool. Nothing to be worried for, the important thing is to achieve the goal.

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It seems to me making the scripts to correctly fill a DB that will serve once or twice is as long (or even longer) than just making the scripts to arrange and query the data.

I’m waiting for the data to be slowly and gently downloaded now….

[M2m]

Question:

How is the new added part 40811 different from 4081 (which is already existing in LDD).

[SylvainLS]

4081a / 40811 is thinner.  The ring is half a plate.  So one tile on each side = 1 stud wide.

4081’s ring is a full plate.  So one tile on each side = 1 brick wide, too large for some old builds (there’s a Classic Space ship that uses that).

[Kuramapika1]

I find this PDF file from brickarchitect.com.

Here in the community, is a topic out of date.

Hope that is useful.

[M2m]

  On 5/17/2020 at 3:14 PM, SylvainLS said:

4081a / 40811 is thinner.  The ring is half a plate.  So one tile on each side = 1 stud wide.

4081’s ring is a full plate.  So one tile on each side = 1 brick wide, too large for some old builds (there’s a Classic Space ship that uses that).

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Oh ok. Didn't know that. Thanks !

Seems the new parts are missing bricks outline information. I don't thinks its a big issue, just to let you guys know.

You can see in the picture (left part is original from LDD, right is new ones)

[Calabar]

The 4081 matter made me think one thing: it is possible that in LDD a part with variants such that one is stored with an incorrect ID? For example a 4081c could be stored as 4081 (a generic ID for that parts) because in TLG decided to use only the more recent 4081c to avoid parts duplicates because very similar. I remember there were some cases like this one.
How to manage this situation if it should happened?
 

@SylvainLS

Sounds promising. I look forward to the result.