Is there an easy way to repaint a model in LDD

[legoboy3998]

I have a 1300 piece model of a steam locomotive in LDD (my first attempt at a steam locomotive). I want to order the parts to build it and see if there is anything that needs to be reworked. Is there a way I can repaint the model in LDD easier than going brick by brick? The reason I want to repaint it is so If I need to tweak it I can easily see what parts are new.

If not, the alternative would be to use different colored bricks for the new parts.

Thanks,

Sal

WFB, WI

[DLuders]

@ legoboy3998: Yes, there is a way to quickly recolor your LDD Steam Locomotive. Let's say that your creation is mostly Bright Red, and you want to change it to Bright Orange. Follow these steps:

1) Left-click on the "Paint Tool", then right-click on the color box you then see the "Bright Red" color. Left-click on that Bright Red color box.

2) Left-click on the "Selection Tool" arrow to see the "Color Selection Tool" (found either by clicking the fourth arrow icon, or by using the top menu sequence Tool Box --> Selection Tools --> Color Selection Tool (V)). Left-cliick on that Color Selection Tool and then click on one of the Bright Red parts in your LDD model. All of the Bright Red parts will then be highlighted!

3) Left-click on the Paint Tool, right-click on the color box you then see, and left-click on the new color (Bright Orange). All of the highlighted parts change from Bright Red to Bright Orange! The other colored parts do not change, but you can follow Steps 1-3 again to change Black to Yellow, Bright Green to Dark Green, etc.

Edited December 7, 2012 by DLuders

[Gnac]

@ legoboy3998: Yes, there is a way to quickly recolor your LDD Steam Locomotive. Let's say that your creation is mostly Bright Red, and you want to change it to Bright Orange. Follow these steps:

1) Left-click on the "Paint Tool", then right-click on the color box you then see the "Bright Red" color. Left-click on that Bright Red color box.

2) Left-click on the "Selection Tool" arrow to see the "Color Selection Tool" (found either by clicking the fourth arrow icon, or by using the top menu sequence Tool Box --> Selection Tools --> Color Selection Tool (V)). Left-cliick on that Color Selection Tool and then click on one of the Bright Red parts in your LDD model. All of the Bright Red parts will then be highlighted!

3) Left-click on the Paint Tool, right-click on the color box you then see, and left-click on the new color (Bright Orange). All of the highlighted parts change from Bright Red to Bright Orange! The other colored parts do not change, but you can follow Steps 1-3 again to change Black to Yellow, Bright Green to Dark Green, etc.

*raises hand*

Mister Luders! I'm confused by your steps! They seem to describe the process for LDD 4.2.5 (and possibly prior to that), but some changes were made for 4.3.5.

I notice that step 1 involves choosing a replacement colour BEFORE selecting the parts to be replaced; this is a quirk which has frustrated me many times, and I became so used to it, that I needed time to adapt to the new method.

LDD 4.3.5.'s process for recolouring multiple selected parts is less prone to error:

• In the tool palette, click the "pointer" icon, then choose the "color selection tool", and click on a part with the colour you would like to replace.
  
• Again, in the tool palette, click the "paint bucket" icon, then make sure that the "paint tool" icon is highlighted in orange, and click the icon to the right of it to open the colour palette.
  
• This is the big change: even if the colour you desire is already selected, you must still open the palette and click on it to replace the colour.
  

Apologies if I seem pedantic; some LDD users may still be running an old version of LDD by choice or circumstance. If not, updating to 4.3.5 is worth it. DOOOOO ITTT.

[legoboy3998]

Thank you both for your help.

It took me a minute to realize I needed to be in Extended mode to get it to work, then it worked perfectly. I usually use the regular LDD mode since I buy the parts through PAB, there are already too many bricks that don't exist in PAB in the regular mode so Extended mode isn't much help too me. However, it seems it has some operating features that may be helpfull.

Anyway, thanks again this will be a huge helpl.

Sal

WFB, WI

Edited December 7, 2012 by legoboy3998

[Gnac]

It took me a minute to realize I needed to be in Extended mode

[EXCLAIMATION MARK]

Agh, I can't believe I overlooked that. Still, we learn, and that's what makes skullmeat better than all the other juicy bits inside our macrofig selves.

These quirks and changes have most likely been covered in other threads, but forum search engines are famous for being cack, and I can't remember if my own tinkering - or information from other members - led to the discovery. Although it may seem as though there is a a deluge of information, it really is worth swimming through the indexes for methods 'n' epiphanies.

[Calabar]

I usually use the regular LDD mode since I buy the parts through PAB [...]

Unfortunately TLG dismissed the "Design by Me" function in LDD, so that there is not any correspondence among bricks in Standard Mode and bricks available in Pick a Brick.

Fortunately LDD 4.3.5 introduces a new interesting feature that can help in this situation: the creation of a Custom Palette.

We could create a palette that contains only the bricks available in Pick a Brick and use it to build model that the builder could want to order from LEGO site.

A guide to create custom palette will be available soon (I hope ... we are working on it already!)

[Superkalle]

And to add even further.

In LDD Manager (oh no, not that tool again ), there is a feature to batch replace colors. So you can list as many colors as you want, and it will perform the change on one or multiple files in a batch. I guess it's mostly handy if you have by mistake have used a certain color in all your models (e.g. old grey), and you need to update to new grey in all of them. If you're just going to change a few colors in a single file, doing it in LDD is much faster.

[Calabar]

We could create a palette that contains only the bricks available in Pick a Brick and use it to build model that the builder could want to order from LEGO site.

About this point, does anyone knows how to easily gather the "Pick a Brick" available bricks list?

[legoboy3998]

About this point, does anyone knows how to easily gather the "Pick a Brick" available bricks list?

What I do is have PAB open while building. Than I can bounce back and fourth to see if parts I want to use are in PAB. After a while you start to "know" what parts are there and aren't.

The custom palette idea is good, but timeconsuming and requires updating by the user. One nice feature is the BOM built into KDD. IIRC one of the older versions, had a button to "check avaliability", and if parts were in the model that could not be purchased they would be highlighted. One would think this feature would be possible to keep even with the extended palette. Since LDD connects to the internet on start up, could there not be a way for the program, upon request by the user, to check the PAB database? Perhaps I should post that in the wanted features thread.

Sal

WFB, WI

[Superkalle]

Back in the day when DbM as active, the Pick-a-brick assortment is usually only changed once a year, in April. Don't know how often they do it now.

Anyone know how to extract the list of bricks from the web-site? DesignID and Color is what's needed.

[Gnac]

Back in the day when DbM as active, the Pick-a-brick assortment is usually only changed once a year, in April. Don't know how often they do it now.

Anyone know how to extract the list of bricks from the web-site? DesignID and Color is what's needed.

I just ripped the list now, and I was about to convert it to XML until I noticed that the list only contains the 7-digit Part IDs. I could get the Design and Colour IDs, but that would involve sending over 1,600 automated requests to Brickset just to get the info, and I don't think they'll appreciate that.

[Calabar]

I made a script to get the list of ElementIDs too, now we need to find a fast way to use it to make a custom palette.

Does Brickset has a list of correspondence?

If we could get the whole list using BrickSet's API, we could convert the data in locale.

There are some other chances:

- use LDD Manager, but it seems many ElementIDs don't match to the LDD ones (he is investigating about that).

- use LDD Part Finder, that should provide a wide database of ElementIDs.

[Superkalle]

I just ripped the list now, and I was about to convert it to XML until I noticed that the list only contains the 7-digit Part IDs. I could get the Design and Colour IDs, but that would involve sending over 1,600 automated requests to Brickset just to get the info, and I don't think they'll appreciate that.

I don't think Huw would mind. If I understand correctly, he is trying to establish Brickset as a general information source, and encourages people to use the API. But you could drop him a mail just in case.

[legoboy3998]

Back in the day when DbM as active, the Pick-a-brick assortment is usually only changed once a year, in April. Don't know how often they do it now.

Anyone know how to extract the list of bricks from the web-site? DesignID and Color is what's needed.

Back in DBM days, how did LDD know what bricks were buyable? I know it had the button to check, LDD must have somehow checked the PAB database right? Could LEGO put this feature back in? Not being a programer, it wouldn't seem that difficult.

If someone could create and maintain such a file would be great.

Sal

WFB, WI

[AndyC]

I seem to recall it being mentioned that the LDD team had to essentially build that list manually, because there wasn't an easy way to translate between what PAB used and what LDD required. Although that might just as well have been because the team also had to model parts in the list if they didn't already have them.

[legoboy3998]

I seem to recall it being mentioned that the LDD team had to essentially build that list manually, because there wasn't an easy way to translate between what PAB used and what LDD required. Although that might just as well have been because the team also had to model parts in the list if they didn't already have them.

I was unaware of that. I just assumed since they created the program (LDD) and probably the PAB database as well, that they would have made them somehow compatable. I also assumed when you clicked the "check avaliability" button it connected to the internet and checked the online database each time, as apposed to checking an internal database within LDD.

Sal

WFB, WI

[Superkalle]

Yes, legoboy3998, the list of PaB bricks where indeed in LDD at that time since they were presented in the LDD DbM brick palette. And as I was told, yes, they got the list from the PaB team and it wasn't really hard to either get the list, or convert it into LDD format. The problem was the work of keeping everything synced and updated. Whenever PaB changed the brick content, this had to be reflected in LDD. So problematically it's a piece of cake, but business setup-wize, internal communication, sync-wise etc etc, it's a lot of work.

Having said that, the LDD Team did listen to us fans, because in the latest LDD version, there is an undocumented feature to create your own custom palette. There is info about it in the "release posts" here at EB (can't remember exactly where). Anyway, Calabar and I'm working on a tutorial. More info soon. But the feature to have a live connection LDD towards PaB order system, will not happen.

[Gnac]

Back in the day when DbM as active, the Pick-a-brick assortment is usually only changed once a year, in April. Don't know how often they do it now.

Anyone know how to extract the list of bricks from the web-site? DesignID and Color is what's needed.

So I did this thing, I dunno if it's useful.

[Daedalus304]

Unfortunately TLG dismissed the "Design by Me" function in LDD, so that there is not any correspondence among bricks in Standard Mode and bricks available in Pick a Brick.

Fortunately LDD 4.3.5 introduces a new interesting feature that can help in this situation: the creation of a Custom Palette.

We could create a palette that contains only the bricks available in Pick a Brick and use it to build model that the builder could want to order from LEGO site.

A guide to create custom palette will be available soon (I hope ... we are working on it already!)

I am sorry for being off topic, but I have been dreaming of the ability to create my own custom LDD Palette for a while (And even posted such)! I took a quick look through some other threads and can't find anything, can please you tell me how this is done? (A PM works fine, to avoid highjacking this thread further).

[Calabar]

@Daedalus304

Superkalle touched on this feature here.

For further informations, you should wait the guide that is already in preparation.