LDCad vs Stud.io

[knotian]

Any one out there that has used these two products please add your comments.

By the way the linking to Bricklink is not a feature I am concerned with.

Thanx,Ed

[Philo]

Here is a quick review I made of Studio 2.0: https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-22940.html. Beeing a long time LDCad user, it's clear that the review is biased... The things I miss in Studio compared to LDCad are

- the flexible parts generator (but Studio should have one in the future, hopefully soon),

- some way to access parts coordinates and orientation (it helps to check if snapping went right)

- LDCad triangle closure calculator

...but I love Studio photorealistic renderer and instructions generator!

[legolijntje]

5 hours ago, Philo said:

Here is a quick review I made of Studio 2.0: https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-22940.html. Beeing a long time LDCad user, it's clear that the review is biased... The things I miss in Studio compared to LDCad are

- the flexible parts generator (but Studio should have one in the future, hopefully soon),

- some way to access parts coordinates and orientation (it helps to check if snapping went right)

- LDCad triangle closure calculator

...but I love Studio photorealistic renderer and instructions generator!

I want to add a disadvantage (for me personally): the file format of stud.io is 'closed'. Yes, in reality it's an LDraw file with some added stuff, but I just don't like the idea/attitude of taking an open-source file-format, adding a bit to it and then hiding it behind passwords. If it was a completely custom format; sure do whatever you like, but this is just a bit childish (in my personal opinion).

Other than that, it is a nice piece of software.

[SylvainLS]

31 minutes ago, legolijntje said:

this is just a bit childish (in my personal opinion).

Not only yours 

[Shroud]

You can open the .io file with total commander. I haven’t tried extracting it so haven’t come across any passwords as such.

[SylvainLS]

The issue isn’t whether you can.  Passwords can be bruteforced or more smarly extracted.  The problem is BL are unnecessarily hiding things, especially as they are expanding on an already open file format (well, two actually as Zip is open too, which is why you can see what are the files that are stored inside an io file with about any extractor or file manager (but can’t read or extract their contents if you don’t have the password)).

[Shroud]

I like having everything as one file tbh but I see what you are saying ?

[SylvainLS]

22 minutes ago, Shroud said:

I like having everything as one file tbh but I see what you are saying ?

I’m not sure you actually understand because packing everything in a Zip file to have only one file isn’t a problem at all, it’s indeed very practical.  It’s using a password that’s a problem, and not giving the specifications of their modifications/enhancements to the LDraw format.

LXF also is a Zip file, with a semi-open format inside (it’s XML and there’s an older version of the specs for LXFML available).  We can read the data inside and rebuild the model easily because it’s almost self-explanatory.

In 20 or 40 years from now, your grand children will have your AFOL career’s chef d’œuvre and its instructions in a .io file, but they won’t have your old computer, or a copy of Studio, and won’t be able to find one, and they won’t know the password, and they won’t know how to access your model and its instructions, and your work will be lost to them.

Or maybe in 5 years, there will be a brand new application you’ll want to use, but it won’t be able to import your .io files, or only the model but not the instructions, or with multiple errors….

Or right now, we can’t make simple tools to manipulate/create Studio models (e.g. generate models, mirroring builds, changing all occurences of one part to another, etc.).  We can do that with LDraw.  Okay, we could export to LDraw, transform, then reimport in Studio but it’s not direct, and there are conversion problems (for some unknown reason, for some parts, Studio doesn’t use the Official LDraw part but their own, and there are position and orientation problems), and we need Studio.

Those are the kinds of problems caused by closed / proprietary / locked-in formats.

[Philo]

I couldn't say it better...