Help with LDD: gears, flex tubes, and rotating parts

[dsharlet]

Hi all, I'm having some trouble with LDD. I've built most of my model in LDD, I'm down to adding a few gears and bending a few parts that I can't get to connect.

The problem I'm having with gears is that they collide when I try to insert them meshed together. This is perhaps not surprising, I need to rotate one of the axles to make the gears mesh. However, I simply cannot figure out how to rotate the axles. The hinge tool seems to just refuse to accept any rotation. I've attempted to follow several sets of instructions I found online, but something is different about what I'm doing that I can't figure out, because LDD rejects any changes to the angle that I make. I wish I could be more precise about the problem but I'm not sure what is going on! There are really a bunch of missing gears in the model:

• Both differentials missing the middle 12 tooth bevel gear
• I haven't successfully meshed any 8-24 tooth connections
• I was able to mesh a vertical 16 tooth gear onto the differential 16 tooth gear, but I haven't been able to mesh two 16 tooth gears horizontally. 

Somewhat related, I also need to be able to rotate this part above the knob wheel with the red axle connector:

Interestingly, I was able to rotate a similar part elsewhere in the model. The part I was able to rotate was connected with a axle-peg connector though. It seems like I've been able to rotate whatever I want, as long as the rotation does *not* involve an axle!?

Another problem I'm having is with flex hoses:

I was able to bend the top hose into place, but the bottom one simply will not attach (they're supposed to form a circle). It seems to snap into place every so often, but, it's not highlighted in green, and when I release the hose tool, it jumps back to the way it is in the screenshot.

Finally, probably the trickiest one, is I need to rotate the two 4x4 angle liftarms near the bottom of the model, such that the two green circled holes line up and have a pin connecting them:

I'd appreciate any suggestions/pointers with any of the above issues!

The model I'm trying to build is this (with some differences obviously - I didn't have all the parts I wanted in real life at the time of this video :) 

 

[dsharlet]

I've made some progress... I've found that if I delete the axle I'm trying to rotate, replace it with a pin/axle connector, then I can rotate it. So I rotate it how it needs to go, then I delete the pin, then I can put the axle back in, and it rotates the axle to fit the (now rotated) gear. This seems like an absurd workflow... and it only works for some of my missing gears. There *must* be a way to rotate axles...

[Stephan]

I haven't really looked into your problem, but sometimes turning the axle can be a real pain when the axle is attached on both ends. Simply remove the beam on one end and the rotation can be done.

[dsharlet]

Thanks for the tip. Between that, and my strategy of just deleting the axle, rotating the parts, then putting the axle back, I've managed to get all of the gearing and rotation issues I mentioned resolved. I also found that you cannot rotate black friction pin connected parts. If you replace those with gray frictionless pegs, then you can rotate, then put the black friction pegs back.

The hose issue I also figured out. There's a blue 3L connector going through the two ends of the hose. I simply flipped the connector over, and it was able to connect...?!

The one issue I have now is that the old 14 tooth bevel gear seems to be missing entirely from the parts catalog, including the "LDD extended" theme. But, I doubt it would let me put that gear in anyways, since it doesn't *quite* mesh correctly with the 28 tooth turntable (in the real world, you have to cheat a bit to get it to mesh smoothly).

[Philo]

2 hours ago, dsharlet said:

The one issue I have now is that the old 14 tooth bevel gear seems to be missing entirely from the parts catalog

You then should have a try at LDraw/LDCad... old 14t is there, and it's not mandatory to mesh gears to make assemblies...