Quick question about LDConfig.ldr and MLCad 3.5

[Toastie]

Dear All,

I have a quick question about the handling of LDConfig.ldr in MLCad3.5.

After major issue with my laptop (someone stole it in a hot summer night, no kidding) and installing the All-in-one LDraw package on my new machine, MLCad does not know much about colors anymore. When renaming LDConfig to something else (so MLCad won't find it), exactly the same limited colors showed up in the color box dialog. Loading explicitly a fresh version of LDConfig into MLCad results in an error message pointing to line 333 in LDConfig:

0 !COLOUR Rubber_Green                                          CODE 10002 VALUE #257A3E   EDGE #333333                               RUBBER

It appears as if this is a line with a CODE exceeding some limits for MLCad (???), as all other CODE numbers with only three digits don't result in an error. I found an LDConfig file dated 2017-12-15, which doers not contain any 5 digit CODEs. Using that file works fine with MLCad.

Am I doing something wrong? It may very well be that I missed some of the discussions regarding LDConfig.

(I am running all that on rather recent build of WIN10/64 bit with the latest LDraw AIOI)

Thanks a lot!

Thorsten         

[Lasse D]

Those 10000+ colors do not work with MLCad and it was a deliberate decision. See this thread: https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-23434-page-7.html

I am also still using MLCad, but we are encouraged to switch.

[Toastie]

Okay. Nice discussion. All the big shots are in the loop.

But there is one thing that I find sort of discouraging: There is an AIOI with all the bells and whistles. MLCad is part of that very package. MLCad is working perfectly well on up-to-date Win10. Plus: It does allow you to do things I find really really hard to do with all the so hyped not-out-of-date software: You can do what you want, not restricted to what a super smart program is allowing you what to do - or not. Snapping here and there and what not.

The link you provided was very helpful, @Lasse D! Thank you very much. The discussion though was a bit from the top. Cool, that all the smart guys provide all their input, all their work and efforts! I do really appreciate that. Without, I would not be able to do CAD models at all. For sure.

But: Please put one single line in the AIOI that tells people that MLCad is not known anymore to @Philo (funny or not) and that the new color scheme present in LDConfig is per their definition f*ed up in MLCad. It would make life so much easier. Well at least my life that is.

Man. This sucked. 

Thanks,
Thorsten   

[Lasse D]

I don't think the use case you mention is acceptable and I can understand the frustration, so I have raised the concern in the thread.

 

While I was the one to initially mention the incompatibility with MLCad, I chose to stay out of the discussion and simply updated all of my own software which also broke due to this change. In fact, I used 10000+ to indicate 'edge colors', so this was a particularly annoying change

[Orion P]

LDraw admin here and probably the main opponent to catering our definitions to appease the quirkiness of one program. 

That said, we have contacted Michael and he said he'd look into the issue so this may be a moot point. 

[Lasse D]

And that is really the best outcome we could hope for: ldconfig.ldr will not be restricted by legacy software and all programs (at least in the AIOI) will work as expected.

[Holly-Wood]

MLCad 3.51 contained in the latest LDraw All-In-One-Installer 2019-01 v2 (AIOI) fixes the above problem. It will load the new colors, but no show them in the color dialog. The AIOI can be found here.

Willy Tschager
(LDraw Content Manager)

 

 

[Toastie]

This is very, very nice.

Thanks to all of you(!!!) - including Michael - for doing this.

What a wonderful community this is.

All the very best,
Thorsten