[Software] Blueprint, a building instruction generator for LDD

[msx80]

Hello msx80 and thanks for wonderful program!

if you need beta tester on MAC (macbook pro retina 13 with yosemite and waiting for el capitan) considering me.. i will do every test you need :D

thanks

regards

Simon

Cool! Do you have some experience with command line and java? Send me a pm!

Well, I finally got round to using the program, and I've got to say, I'm very impressed so far! My only real bugbear with it is that pasting submodels, and undoing creation of submodels seems to be painfully slow (it can take >1 minute to put a submodel somewhere else in the layout) compared to other actions such as moving steps. A function to be able to move whole submodels (not just steps within submodels) like you can normal steps would be welcome (rather than having to cut and paste them, which as I said is very slow and can make the program unresponsive), as everything else I've tried doesn't get submodels to move. Unless there's something obvious that I've completely missed of course

Thanks :)

Actually the slowness depends on the amount of images the program has to regenerate. Moving a single step left or right has to regenerate just two images, while moving a submodel can affect a huge number of images (becouse it affect parent/children submodels too). Actually the code is very unoptimized, it just redraw the whole view (all images) :P I can optimize it to just redraw between the start and end steps, which would be a good improvement.

[jackalope]

Cool! Do you have some experience with command line and java? Send me a pm!

yes i know how to use it

unfortunately i think i don't have so much posts to use PMs... infact i cannot enter in my PM section.

so you can ask me here or try you to send me a PM so maybe it will activate my PM section

[msx80]

no i can't send pm to you either.

no need to clutter this thread with tecnicalities, write me at REDACTED (and you can write in italian if you prefer :))

Edited July 14, 2015 by msx80

[TheOneVeyronian]

I have another suggestion: the ability to delete pages in the "Page Layout" view. When I'm moving things about in the layout, often moving last steps in a model so a whole submodel appears on one page, I'm often left with blank pages that I cannot delete. This isn't such a problem when exporting as PNG's (as I can then go and delete the blank PNG's in File Explorer before stitching it all together in programs such as Microsoft Publisher), but when you intend to export as a PDF, the blank pages are present in the resulting PDF file, which results in it being a bit of a waste and makes the instructions look a bit less professional.

Of course, I personally export as PNG's in 90% of cases and use Publisher to add things, put it all together and export the end result as a PDF, but for those who primarily want to use PDF exports straight from Blueprint, the ability to delete blank pages may be useful.

[Silent Nomad]

I have another suggestion: the ability to delete pages in the "Page Layout" view. When I'm moving things about in the layout, often moving last steps in a model so a whole submodel appears on one page, I'm often left with blank pages that I cannot delete. This isn't such a problem when exporting as PNG's (as I can then go and delete the blank PNG's in File Explorer before stitching it all together in programs such as Microsoft Publisher), but when you intend to export as a PDF, the blank pages are present in the resulting PDF file, which results in it being a bit of a waste and makes the instructions look a bit less professional.

Of course, I personally export as PNG's in 90% of cases and use Publisher to add things, put it all together and export the end result as a PDF, but for those who primarily want to use PDF exports straight from Blueprint, the ability to delete blank pages may be useful.

Depending on the size of the file, you can use a website to remove pages of a pdf, or even recombine them or combine several separate files into one. If the file is too big to use a website, you may have to use a program, but free programs for that purpose do exist.

[L-space]

First thanks for the programm. I think it's great after a five minute try.

Then a bugreport:

I tried updating a design and the outcome was that all the parts were in the first step and all other steps were just the final model. It created as many steps as was in the first design so I now have 24 steps all of the finished model.

[Kalais]

Hello,

great job with the software. I tested it on few different models and automatic steps are far more better then those from LDD. I had 1 model which LDD totally screw up with instructions and your soft did logical and good steps. Grats!

But there is huge problem, every file I tried look like this:

I suppose it is bug and it shouldn't be transparent?

Running win 7 64bit, if you need any more data let me know, but my PC is nothing special, no mods, last patches etc.

[iceleftd]

@msx80 -

I was getting ready to teach a seminar on your tools at the massive BrickFair LEGO convention next weekend when I ran into a problem. I was going to use an older laptop (running Windows 7 64 bit) for demonstrations and it worked fine for Bluerender (although about 1/3 the speed of my nice desktop). But when I went to run Blueprint everything went bad. There are apparently problems with the native code and the hardware?

What's more odd is that your JAR doesn't even look like it contains an OpenGL DLL, but it contains OpenAL! Very strange. I confess I don't know what is going on here.

I'm wishing this was pure Java like Bluerender.

[msx80]

First thanks for the programm. I think it's great after a five minute try.

Then a bugreport:

I tried updating a design and the outcome was that all the parts were in the first step and all other steps were just the final model. It created as many steps as was in the first design so I now have 24 steps all of the finished model.

Yes i know, model update is broken, some other user reported this. I'll fix it asap (i have to understand why it doens't work first). I should have made more tests :)

Hello,

great job with the software. I tested it on few different models and automatic steps are far more better then those from LDD. I had 1 model which LDD totally screw up with instructions and your soft did logical and good steps. Grats!

But there is huge problem, every file I tried look like this:

I suppose it is bug and it shouldn't be transparent?

Running win 7 64bit, if you need any more data let me know, but my PC is nothing special, no mods, last patches etc.

Uh.. it definitely shouldn't be transparent :) I have a feeling that it's an Opengl incompatibility with your graphic card. I had to use some obscure opengl trick to get the results i wanted and run into some problems with different graphic cards. Perhaps you could try to update your drivers.

@msx80 -

I was getting ready to teach a seminar on your tools at the massive BrickFair LEGO convention next weekend when I ran into a problem. I was going to use an older laptop (running Windows 7 64 bit) for demonstrations and it worked fine for Bluerender (although about 1/3 the speed of my nice desktop). But when I went to run Blueprint everything went bad. There are apparently problems with the native code and the hardware?

What's more odd is that your JAR doesn't even look like it contains an OpenGL DLL, but it contains OpenAL! Very strange. I confess I don't know what is going on here.

I'm wishing this was pure Java like Bluerender.

Could you copy/paste the output on the command window? The native DLLs are in the "native" folder, not inside the jar. Maybe you uncompressed the file wrongly? Or maybe some antivirus kicked the dll out (there's still a problem with false positive in the lwjgl library, hopefully the new version of Blueprint will update to latest LWJGL and have no problems).

Yeah i'd wish it that it was pure Java too, i had a lot of headaches thanks to opengl..

I hope you were still be able to do the seminar! And thanks for it too!

[Kalais]

Uh.. it definitely shouldn't be transparent :) I have a feeling that it's an Opengl incompatibility with your graphic card. I had to use some obscure opengl trick to get the results i wanted and run into some problems with different graphic cards. Perhaps you could try to update your drivers.

Drivers are newest version of Nvidia.

Graphic Card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 so I doubt it has problems with OpenGL ;)

That transparency is not only in program viewport, but also in generated PDF's and PNG etc.looks like this.

Got no problems in any other app/games etc.

[iceleftd]

Could you copy/paste the output on the command window? The native DLLs are in the "native" folder, not inside the jar. Maybe you uncompressed the file wrongly? Or maybe some antivirus kicked the dll out (there's still a problem with false positive in the lwjgl library, hopefully the new version of Blueprint will update to latest LWJGL and have no problems).

Yes, I misspoke - I meant the ZIP file, not the JAR.

The first problem turns out to be that I was running a 32-bit version of the JVM and it failed to load the 64-bit lwjgl library.

After fixing that, I get this error:

C:\Blueprint0016>java -version
java version "1.8.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_51-b16)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.51-b03, mixed mode)

C:\Blueprint0016>blueprint.bat
Operating system detected: Windows
Starting Blueprint v0.0.1.6beta.. Good luck!
Current folder: C:\Blueprint0016
java.lang.IllegalStateException: GLFW error [0x10007]: WGL: Failed to create OpenGL context
at org.lwjgl.glfw.Callbacks$2.invoke(Callbacks.java:160)
at org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFWErrorCallback.callback(GLFWErrorCallback.java:42)
at org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFW.nglfwCreateWindow(Native Method)
at org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFW.glfwCreateWindow(GLFW.java:1022)
at blueprint.f.a.c(Unknown Source)
at blueprint.f.a.<init>(Unknown Source)
at blueprint.f.d.<init>(Unknown Source)
at blueprint.f.b.<init>(Unknown Source)
at blueprint.b.b.a.a(Unknown Source)
at blueprint.Blueprint.b(Unknown Source)
at blueprint.Blueprint.initApp(Unknown Source)
at b.a.start(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.lambda$launchApplication1$159(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$$Lambda$52/835358058.run(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runAndWait$172(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$$Lambda$48/286505802.run(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$null$170(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$$Lambda$50/1107728337.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runLater$171(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$$Lambda$49/1645379807.run(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.glass.ui.InvokeLaterDispatcher$Future.run(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication._runLoop(Native Method)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication.lambda$null$145(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication$$Lambda$38/1119008810.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Jul 27, 2015 9:56:22 PM com.sun.javafx.css.StyleManager getCachedImage
WARNING: Error loading image: rsrc:dialog-error.png

Then a dialog pops up with the message "Something unexpected and ugly happened :(" followed by "GLFW error [0x10007]: WGL: Failed to create OpenGL context"

Update: Installing the latest video drivers did not help :(

Edited July 28, 2015 by iceleftd

[msx80]

this is probably due to the video card not supporting enought opengl. Minimal version is 3.2.0

[iceleftd]

this is probably due to the video card not supporting enought opengl. Minimal version is 3.2.0

Agreed (sadly). My solution was to do a video of me demonstrating Blueprint. I will play the video and narrate it live.

[msx80]

Agreed (sadly). My solution was to do a video of me demonstrating Blueprint. I will play the video and narrate it live.

I hope it worked decently enought! how did people reacted to the demonstration?

So i finally was able to track down that fracking bug when opening older lxf file, that resulted in NullPointerException and interrupted model loading. The workaround was to open the file in LDD and resaving it, which magically corrected the problem. I had the impression it was about some database update between the version, but i was never able to understand exacly what was added. Now i noticed that a part has been *removed* from the newest version. 94148 is not there anymore, but instead it's an alias of 3022, which is correct of course. So hopefully any lxf will be openable in next version.

[msx80]

As i wrote in Bluerender topic, there is now an issue tracker for both programs, you can find it here: https://bitbucket.org/msx80/blueprint/

Please report any issue you find there, thanks :)

[iceleftd]

I hope it worked decently enought! how did people reacted to the demonstration?

I give the seminar on Thursday afternoon. I will let you know how it goes.

[syclone]

Do I need to downnload Opengl to my computer for run the Blueprint or something?Because it gives me an error:

GLFW error[0x10007]:WGL:A forward compatible OpenGL

context requested but WGL_ARB_create_context is unavaible

[msx80]

Do I need to downnload Opengl to my computer for run the Blueprint or something?Because it gives me an error:

GLFW error[0x10007]:WGL:A forward compatible OpenGL

context requested but WGL_ARB_create_context is unavaible

Yes, blueprint require opengl version 3.2 or better. It looks like your hardware is not enought, but you can try updating the drivers and see if it works.

[syclone]

Yes, blueprint require opengl version 3.2 or better. It looks like your hardware is not enought, but you can try updating the drivers and see if it works.

Tried , Intel driver update utility says after scaning:"No drivers were detected for your product"

Sadly I can't find any download link for the openGL in Internet

Acer Aspire 5810t running Windows 7

Edited August 3, 2015 by LXF

[Calabar]

The Intel 4500MHD (that I suppose is the video card of your notebook) only supports OpenGL 2.0.

Maybe with some (extremely slow) software emulation layer...

[JopieK]

Drivers are newest version of Nvidia.

Graphic Card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 so I doubt it has problems with OpenGL ;)

That transparency is not only in program viewport, but also in generated PDF's and PNG etc.looks like this.

Got no problems in any other app/games etc.

For my 640M (iMac 2012) it fixed the issue. Using Windows 7.1.

[Kalais]

For my 640M (iMac 2012) it fixed the issue. Using Windows 7.1.

I am sorry but what fixed the issue? :)

[JopieK]

I am sorry but what fixed the issue? :)

Sorry about that, I was talking about your wireframe issue. Updating using the nvidia drivers did the job.

[deeps831]

hi,

Is there any way i can create a custom base plate in 3ds max or any other software and import it into LDD as LXF or LDR files.

[kanan]

Let me know if you need help with a OS X tester.

Unfortunately PM does not work for me at this site but you can reach me at akananov at yahoo dot com.