Save a minifig torso (or other assembly of parts) as unofficial part

[seejay]

I've been using LDCad for several months after switching from Studio, and I love it! So much power there. Thanks @roland!

I'm trying to find a way to save an assembly of parts, for example all of the components of a minifig torso or a chain curving just the right way, as a .dat file so I can use it as a single part. I've played around with detaching content and renaming an LDR as .dat (the syntax looks very similar), but I haven't quite got it working. 

Before diving into the deep end of the pool with LDPE, I'm wondering if there's some trick to doing this in LDCad.

Thanks,

cj

[roland]

You can save the assembly as a loose ldr or mpd and when needed in another model just drag and drop it from the file explorer into LDCad.

It will then ask if you want to edit it or use it in the current model.

 

Alternatively you could make it a template (whom show up in the part bin), by putting the .ldr in the

%appdata%/ldcad/templates/shortcut

folder. Just be sure the ldr has logical description and preferably an

0 !KEYWORDS shortcut

line. The keyword is needed for it to show up in the 'Misc shortcuts' template part bin group.

 

Or if you really adventures you could add a custom bin group specially for your own templates by editing a pbg file.

[seejay]

Thanks Roland. Both of those options (I'd been using the drag and drop one for a while and I'm happy to learn how to add templates) solve the convenience problem, but I'm also trying to get the part to show as only one part in the part count of the LDR. Do you have any suggestions for that use case?  

Thanks as usual for your responsiveness!

[roland]

You can make any ldraw (sub)file a 'part' by adding (at least)

0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CCW

before the first '1 ....' line

This can be done with the header editing dialog, but is usually easier with e.g. notepad.

LDCad doesn't really care about the extension but some programs will only accept parts when called .dat

You might need to close and reopen the model for LDCad to start treating it as a part though.

If you want to use the new part from multiple models you can move it to an library folder (a parts an p folder, and put the new part in the parts one).

When registered in LDCad the contents will be mixed with the other library parts, so be sure to add a decent description and or category.

Or just add it to the existing official library's parts folder if you don't want a second library.

[seejay]

That did it! Thanks very much. That will be a useful technique for me going forward. 

For the chain example, I found that I also had to copy the constituent parts (the official chain link and chain end parts) into the unofficial parts folder as well, which surprised me. From my other reading on the topic, I thought LDCad would find the needed (sub) parts if they were in any library folder. Maybe I'm still doing something a bit wrong? Here's the folder structure I have:

• LDraw
  • Parts
    • chain end
    • chain link
  • Unofficial
    • Custom
      • Parts
        • my new custom chain part
        • chain end
        • chain link

But the main thing is that it's working as I need it to. Thanks again for your help.

 

[roland]

On 8/16/2020 at 7:13 AM, seejay said:

I thought LDCad would find the needed (sub) parts if they were in any library folder

It should, but it might get confused by the two 'nested' libraries, that's a known issue.

It's designed to use parallel libraries, like e.g.

My Documents
  LDraw
    Offical
      Parts  
      P
    Custom
      Parts
      P
    

Then in the Prefs/LDraw/Search paths dialog register

My Documents/LDraw/Official

My Documents/LDraw/Custom

 

 

 

[seejay]

I did a reinstall and reorganization of the library recently and ended up with that nested structure based on my (probably flawed) reading on different forums. It seemed counter-intuitive at the time, so I'm happy to have it on good authority that I can fix that.  Thanks Roland.