Custom LDD bricks and fixes

[PicnicBasketSam]

I just downloaded Stephan's newest update and all the new parts and decorations seem to work but I now have this issue. The parts in question are 9062 Pullback Motor 9 x 4 x 2 1/3 With Studs on Front Top Surface and 9063 Pull Back 4 x 9 x 2.333 Axle Bush, which I believe are parts of an assembly that was added to LDD by LEGO themselves, and that some of the files have been misplaced - how do I fix this?

[SylvainLS]

@PicnicBasketSam Er, there’s no 9062/9063 files in Stephan’s files, at least on GitHub.  Actually, there isn’t any 9062.* or 9063.* in LDD at all.
Anyway, you can just delete the .xml (and the .g in LOD0 if there are any).  You can also open the XML in a text editor to know more about them.

1 hour ago, polymaker said:

Yeah for flat parts it works OK but for more complex shapes it is not as simple . 

For example I'm trying to make the cockpit for 75192-1: Millennium Falcon

Yep, but then you also need to unbend / flatten them and that may be as difficult as making the pattern from scratch.

[PicnicBasketSam]

4 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

@PicnicBasketSam Er, there’s no 9062/9063 files in Stephan’s files, at least on GitHub.  Actually, there isn’t any 9062.* or 9063.* in LDD at all.
Anyway, you can just delete the .xml (and the .g in LOD0 if there are any).  You can also open the XML in a text editor to know more about them.

Yep, but then you also need to unbend / flatten them and that may be as difficult as making the pattern from scratch.

Well I don't know where those unfinished parts came from then (there's a couple of other ones I have since found in their proper folders), but deleting the files works for me. 

[manglegrat]

First, thanks again to everyone for keeping this great effort moving forward - as a big LDD fan, seeing improvements happening all the time is just fantastic.  I'm happy to accept the risk of things going sideways from time to time to be able to keep using this old software.

I got the new pack via the RAR file this morning, unpacked & copied the contents over (I noticed it said it was overwriting 500+ files, does that make sense?) and then I reopened a large LDD file (6400+ parts) with quite a few 36840's where LDD reported collisions, and some of them (or other parts that were previously connected to them) were removed as a result.

That part wasn't listed as updated in this pack, so I was a bit surprised by that. I guess the collision data was updated in an earlier pack and I probably missed it until this pack caught it up? Who knows! 

Anyway, it was easy enough to fix once I figured it out, but I thought I'd mention it just in case someone else experiences the same! I have multiple versions of the design across LDD and Stud.io so it wasn't too long before I tracked it down. Once the panic subsided...  

I have replaced all the affected parts and LDD reports no collisions when it reloads the file, plus I was also able to add my 65617 parts to complete the LDD model so it now has everything I have in my Stud.io version. I'm pretty happy now. 

Also, I noticed the same issue as reported by @PicnicBasketSam above with those two pullback parts. Maybe the RAR file has different contents from just getting the new files separately from GitHub? I'll delete 'em anyway.

Edited August 3, 2020 by manglegrat

[SylvainLS]

36840 was totally updated and its center was changed on July, 16th.  If you had an unconnected one with enough room around it, you’d have seen it go up one plate.  But, of course, you rarely have that in a normal scene….

 

[Stephan]

1 hour ago, SylvainLS said:

there’s no 9062/9063 files in Stephan’s files, at least on GitHub.  Actually, there isn’t any 9062.* or 9063.* in LDD at all.

I thought I deleted all those very early stage files... Those parts are too rough to share. I will check my folder to make sure they don't appear the next time you download the folder.

1 hour ago, PicnicBasketSam said:

Well I don't know where those unfinished parts came from then (there's a couple of other ones I have since found in their proper folders), but deleting the files works for me. 

I will check that. That's strange...

Edited August 3, 2020 by Stephan
Typo.

[manglegrat]

1 hour ago, SylvainLS said:

36840 was totally updated and its center was changed on July, 16th.  If you had an unconnected one with enough room around it, you’d have seen it go up one plate.  But, of course, you rarely have that in a normal scene….

I've been following this thread daily so my bad for missing it, but I'm all caught up now. 

And yeah - all the 36840 parts were connected to other parts on all 3 connections, so the center move made a little bit of a mess.

I have two versions of the design (my B5 MOC), a disassembled one and an assembled one. I was able to easily find & fix the affected parts in the disassembled version. The fallout is a bit more awkward to fix in the assembled one, so I might just reassemble it from the fixed file. Either way, all's well that ends well! 

[Stephan]

1 hour ago, manglegrat said:

That part wasn't listed as updated in this pack, so I was a bit surprised by that. I guess the collision data was updated in an earlier pack and I probably missed it until this pack caught it up? Who knows

I think the origin of the part was corrected when outlines and collision were added. Indeed in a few updates ago. Sorry for the inconvenience!

1 hour ago, manglegrat said:

Also, I noticed the same issue as reported by @PicnicBasketSam above with those two pullback parts. Maybe the RAR file has different contents from just getting the new files separately from GitHub? I'll delete 'em anyway

I will update the rar file so others won't have the same issue.

---

On another note:

We are looking for those that feel comfortable in numeral 3D space. A lot of new parts are in need of collision "cubes". If you are intested, you can find a file HERE. Your help would be very much appreciated!!

Edited August 3, 2020 by Stephan

[SylvainLS]

@manglegrat You can correct it easily in Developer mode where you can toggle the physical tests (before loading): start LDD, open a new file, toggle the tests, open the file you want to edit, find one of the 36840 or add a new one, select by shape, then you can move them all one by one.  Oh, and you can toggle the tests back before editing, it’s just for the loading that they must be off.

[manglegrat]

56 minutes ago, Stephan said:

I think the origin of the part was corrected when outlines and collision were added. Indeed in a few updates ago. Sorry for the inconvenience!

I will update the rar file so others won't have the same issue.

---

On another note:

We are looking for those that feel comfortable in numeral 3D space. A lot of new parts are in need of collision "cubes". If you are intested, you can find a file HERE. Your help would be very much appreciated!!

No worries, and thank you @Stephan! 

As to numerical 3D space, I'm afraid I can't help you there as I don't have the skills! My wife thinks I can barely understand physical 3D space...  Hopefully others following this thread can chip in...

Just now, SylvainLS said:

@manglegrat You can correct it easily in Developer mode where you can toggle the physical tests (before loading): start LDD, open a new file, toggle the tests, open the file you want to edit, find one of the 36840 or add a new one, select by shape, then you can move them all one by one.  Oh, and you can toggle the tests back before editing, it’s just for the loading that they must be off.

Yeah, good call @SylvainLS, I go through that cycle every time LDD surprises me by saying it removed parts. Sometimes it's real tricky to figure out what was impacted, especially on larger models. Today's exercise was a relatively easy & quick fix 'cos I could see what had been removed and figure out the part that was the root cause straight away! 

[SylvainLS]

@Stephan By the way, 9062 and 9063 are in the new GitHub repo (I hadn’t seen you made a new one before ).

[Stephan]

38 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

@Stephan By the way, 9062 and 9063 are in the new GitHub repo (I hadn’t seen you made a new one before ).

Aah, thanks! Somehow I managed to miss them when deleting those parts from my LDD... or they were still in another temporary folder... I'll fix it tomorrow!

[Stephan]

11 hours ago, Stephan said:

I'll fix it tomorrow

Fixed!

[polymaker]

Hello guys,

Someone recently contacted me by email about an "issue" with my software that made me discover something.

Due to a language barrier, it turns out it was not with my software but he was talking about exporting LDD models with custom parts to LDraw.

I then decided to look at the "ldraw.xml" file for the first time and I discovered the file has transforms specified to correctly place parts in LDraw since most part have different origin and orientation in LDD.

So it made me wonder if we should also maintain this file.

[SylvainLS]

1 hour ago, polymaker said:

So it made me wonder if we should also maintain this file.

I already do 

 

 

[SylvainLS]

@Stephan There’s a problem with 4745  Propeller 2 Blade Twisted too: no .g

And for 22569 RIM Ø 62 X 46, the axle connection is turned 45° (or the whole wheel is…).

[Stephan]

23 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

There’s a problem with 4745  Propeller 2 Blade Twisted too: no .g

That one also shouldn't be there anymore.... Something really went wrong in copying my files...

23 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

And for 22569 RIM Ø 62 X 46, the axle connection is turned 45° (or the whole wheel is…).

Yes, the boundaries of the axle hole have to be rotated 45°.

[SylvainLS]

Also

• 35442 / 35442.dat  Plate Gear  6 Tooth  2 x  2
• 377203 / 37720c.dat  Animal Bat Emblem 1 x 2

have been modified.

I don’t know if I missed the modification earlier but their position and orientation have changed.  I saw that while I updated ldraw.xml

[SylvainLS]

Also, there are decorations referenced in DecorationMapping.xml that are not in the git repo.  Seems to be ElementIDs associated with standard parts but without the images.  Some incomplete tests?

[Stephan]

26 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

I don’t know if I missed the modification earlier but their position and orientation have changed.  I saw that while I updated ldraw.xm

No, the only difference is that they received outlines. The boundary box for 377203 was incorrectly rotated 90°. But I think that should have already been released in the update before the last one...

6 minutes ago, SylvainLS said:

Also, there are decorations referenced in DecorationMapping.xml that are not in the git repo.  Seems to be ElementIDs associated with standard parts but without the images.  Some incomplete tests?

Decoration files have been removed on request of Scrubs from Mecabricks. Decorations appeared to be copied from Mecabricks. When someone is able to draw them on their own, they can easily be added again.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Stephan

[Equilibrium]

I had some free time so here's small and fast update. Outlines, collisions and connections as always:

Download links:

• All my updates combined
• Update 3 ONLY

[SylvainLS]

6 minutes ago, Stephan said:

No, the only difference is that they received outlines. The boundary box for 377203 was incorrectly rotated 90°. But I think that should have already been released in the update before the last one...

Well, then it seems the bounding box is what defines the center of a part for the conversion because I had to remove a 90° rotation for 377203 (plus a translation).

And for 35442, there was a 0.8 cm move on Z (a 0.4cm translation had to be changed to a 1.2cm one).  And it appears it’s the difference with the older version: the bounding boxes (Bounding and GeometryBounding) both being moved 0.8cm for minZ.

Interesting.  Though, I’m not sure it would be really useful to automatize the transformations.

 

6 minutes ago, Stephan said:

Decoration files have been removed on request of Scrubs from Mecabricks. Decorations appeared to be copied from Mecabricks. When someone is able to draw them on their own, they can easily be added again.

Oh yes, I read that but didn’t connect the two  

[zweifuss]

6 hours ago, Stephan said:

That one also shouldn't be there anymore.... Something really went wrong in copying my files...

Yes, the boundaries of the axle hole have to be rotated 45°.

Oh thanks for pointing that out, here are the corrected files. https://bricksafe.com/files/zweifuss/ldd-new-and-modified-parts/22969_v2.rar (XML and .G). It was actually a 30 degree turn, should be fixed now.

[Stephan]

A new New Parts version is available for download: 20200805.

This update includes 6 new parts and 2 updated parts

To get all the new parts, the easiest thing is to download to .rar file. This includes all new parts and all updated parts.

[zweifuss]

On 8/3/2020 at 10:53 AM, polymaker said:

Yeah for flat parts it works OK but for more complex shapes it is not as simple . 

For example I'm trying to make the cockpit for 75192-1: Millennium Falcon

Hey, I think I found the solution to this. Using blender, I was able to select all materials that are the print, and separate them into a new mesh. Then, I was able to UV Unwrap and do a bake of the textures. It's not perfect yet, I have to play around with the lighting, but I think that's a way we can get textures from LDRAW files and turn them into PNG files. See here my setup and the resulting baked .PNG texture, as well as the part (BTW I'm working on these UFO parts someone asked for them a few pages back). Thanks to @jester for his youtube video on how to separate the meshes and apply textures so I can do the decorations, helped a lot! This was about a 10 minute procedure, very quick, as you can see it's not perfect, but I think this is on the right track.