LDD 5, what features do YOU want?

[suenkachun]

Auto-save!!!

I was just playing LDD. Not a big model, yet. Only at about 1000 pieces in. Building an UCS Theta Class Shuttle from Star Wars. Wings are similar to 10212. When I used the rotate function, it froze and I lost everything I did. 3 hours gone.

There has to be a way to implement something, so we don't go crazy, yell at our computers and wake the wives and kids?!

Jamie

Thank you for pointing that out! My Laptop is in fact not powerful enough to run LDD properly (due to the Graphics Card), and it would sometimes crash when building large models, occasionally with a pop-up message saying that there is a Graphics Driver Failure. In that case, I would also loose everything unsaved, so I used to hit save every time I added a Brick or changed something! With auto-save, we won't loose everything unsaved so please add it. Just look at the unsent posts in Eurobricks: they are auto-saved! Why can't LDD do the same?!

[Happy SDE]

Auto-save!!!

I think if you will use implicit auto-save of the current file, you will lose "Undo" functional.

Maybe it's better to save the last state of current model in separate LXFML file without touching current LXF?

For example, C:\Users\Happy SDE\Application Data\LEGO Company\LastEdit.lxfml

On crash - open the file.

LXFML is lighter than LXF, because it will not save picture and will not zip the file.

But saving XML every step may cause performance problems and hit your laptop battery.

The better solution is bug-free LDD

BTW, when I notice, that LDD is going to crash, I hit Ctrl+S.

In 80% cases all changes will be saved.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Happy SDE

[Takanuinuva]

I'd like the word search function to be better. Like when I look up crane. I should not include parts with similar words like crank. Also don't make us have to double click the word search to start typing.

That or make the search function like the one Lego Universe had. That one was very good when you wanted to find a certain piece.

[Calabar]

I'd like the word search function to be better. Like when I look up crane. I should not include parts with similar words like crank.

Try adding a space after the word.

[suenkachun]

Here's something I'd love LDD to have in the next update, something which I've wanted for quite a while already. If I use a group of Bricks together frequently, I always place the Bricks as a template so that I can recall the group easily. However, say that I've placed multiple copies of the group in wrong locations: I'd need to manually select the groups of Bricks one by one then delete/move them or use the Delete Tool to delete them one by one. Therefore, I hope that LDD can have a "Group Selection Tool". For example, I have inserted a LEGO Printer as a template. When I've placed one Printer in the wrong place, I insert another Printer from the templates, then I select the newly inserted Printer. The "Group Selection Tool" can help me select the other Printer at the same time. This tool is just like the "Multiple Selection Tool" and the "Colour and Shape Selection Tool" combined together, and can also be useful when you are deleting things. For example, I've previously inserted a row of Window Frames with Glass and now they all need to be deleted. By using the "Group Selection Tool" all of the Window Frames with Glass can be selected at once then deleted. The tool should also have the following feature: when selecting the groups of Bricks, it ignores the same copies of the Bricks outside the identified group. For example, if there is a White 1x1 Brick in the Group, the "Group Selection Tool" will only select those White 1x1 Bricks identified within the groups, but not all of the White 1x1 Bricks (or simply any 1x1 Bricks) in the file. With more complex structures like a piece of furniture, this tool is essential when you just want to select and move/delete a single piece of furniture without having to hide things and/or use a lot of time selecting each and every Brick of that piece of furniture. Thank you for everyone's attention!

To expand on my earlier post, I would now like to clear things up as in fact there are several different tools I am asking for.

The first group of tools involve the "Multiple Selection Tool" and the "Colour/Shape/Colour and Shape Selection Tool(s)". For example, I have included 10 Black Window Frames With Transparent Glass in my model, and I now want to delete them all. Currently, I have to use the "Colour and Shape Selection Tool" to select all of the the Window Frames, press "Delete" on the keyboard then do the same for all of the the Glass; or I could use the "Multiple Selection Tool" to select everything one by one then press "Delete". My proposal is a new tool which combines the "Multiple Selection Tool" and the "Colour and Shape Selection Tool", so that all of the Window Frames and Glass can be selected at once then deleted. This tool can also be very convenient if I want to move several Window Frames With Glass in the same row all at once (instead of deleting them), especially for a few bricks to the right/left, as for example you can't move only a Window Frame one brick to the left wile the Glass is still in situ since they won't fit into each other. To make things consistent, there should also be two other tools which combine the "Multiple Selection Tool" with the "Colour Selection Tool" and the "Shape Selection Tool" respectively.

The second tool involves groups of Bricks. If I use a group of Bricks together frequently, I always place the Bricks as a template so that I can recall the group easily. Examples of this may include a piece of Furniture, a Printer, Bricks forming a specially designed Window or larger items such as a car. However, currently it's really hard to manage these groups of Bricks. For example, if you've placed a Table in the wrong place or you want to only delete the Table, you have to use the "Multiple Selection Tool" to select all the Bricks used to build the Table one by one then move/delete the whole thing, or you could delete all of the Bricks connected to the Table (simply speaking, disconnect the Table from the rest of your model), use the "Connected Selection Tool" to select the entire table, click "Undo" to recover the deleted Bricks then move/delete the Table. The "Colour/Shape/Colour and Shape Selection Tool(s)" can't be used in this case as they can't isolate Bricks used for the Table from copies of the same Bricks used elsewhere in the model. My proposal is a new tool to make things easier. For now, I can't think of what tools to combine to make this tool; but what I have now are the actual functions of the tool. Referring to the Table again, I can simply insert another copy of the Table, then by selecting the extra Table, the original Table is also selected. After this, I can simply click "Undo" to remove the extra table then move/delete the original Table as it will still be selected. To make this tool work, it must have one very important property: when selecting the groups of Bricks, it ignores the same copies of any of the Bricks used in the identified group outside the group. For example, if a White 4x6 Plate is used as one of the Bricks in the Table, other White 4x6 Plates used elsewhere in the model will not be selected. To talk about this tool in a simple way, the tool turns the group of Bricks selected into "One whole Brick", then the tool can work like the "Colour/Shape/Colour and Shape Selection Tool(s)" to select all copies of the group of Bricks selected in the model. I think that the tool should therefore be called "Group Selection Tool".

I hope that my new post has made everything clearer compared to my previous post. Thank you for everyone's attention!

Edited May 2, 2015 by suenkachun

[suenkachun]

I posted this as a bug of LDD 4, but perhaps I can post it here as well as it might be useful.

Currently, Bricks which have decos can be found in the Regular Mode of LDD, but some of them have more designs in LDD extended (such as the Mini Upper Part and Mini Lower Half). Issues which I found include certain Bricks "Missing Printing" in the Regular Mode of LDD (such as the animals), Bricks still missing certain printing even if you are able to decorate them in LDD Extended, such as the Cats (Part 13786, missing side stripes and patch beneath head), Bricks which lack printing in the Regular Mode and can't be decorated in LDD extended, plus Bricks with both a plain and printed version (most of them do not have a plain version in reality).

As mentioned in some of the posts here, it can be quite troublesome for someone to go through all of the decos in LDD Extended. Therefore, I came up with the following point: All parts with printing in reality should look exactly the same in the Regular Mode of LDD and no plain version of these parts should exist unless they have one in reality. If a part has more than one design (with printing included) in reality, LEGO should simply inset one copy of each design in the Regular Mode of LDD. To make this work, multicoloured parts need to be introduced to LDD.

After this process, we do not have to decorate any Bricks in LDD Extended as all of their printing are now included by default, and Bricks with decos can look better. More variations of the printed Bricks can also exist.

Thank you for everyone's attention!

Edited May 16, 2015 by suenkachun

[kangmingjie]

The ability to stack pieces on a minifig's neck. Like this:

It would also be nice to have capes become flexible.

[suenkachun]

New proposal: why not include a "Brick Type Selection Tool" where all of the same type of Bricks can be selected, such as selecting all Bricks, Plates, Flat Tiles, Minifigure Accessories and so on in one go? This can be extremely useful in the following situation: if you've started to build the first floor of your model and now you want to hide the entire floor to look back into the ground floor, you can now avoid using the "Colour/Shape/Colour and Shape Selection Tool(s)" multiple times, but use the "Brick Type Selection Tool" to select all of the Plates you used for your floor at once then hide them using the "Hide Tool". This tool should also have an alternate version: the "Brick Type With Colour Selection Tool", where all of the same type of Bricks in a certain colour can be selected at once, such as all White Plates. For the category of Bricks used in the tools, the different sections of the Brick Palette in LDD can be a starting point, then the Bricks can be sub-divided into even smaller categories, such as separating the "Profile Bricks" from ordinary Bricks.

Edited May 4, 2015 by suenkachun

[S_Bartfast]

Wow, this has been a fairly long read. But now that I have finally reached the end I thought I'd add a couple of humble suggestions.

My first suggestion is subtle and relates to zooming. While on the whole LDD's zoom is fine I think it would be nicer if the zoom location were to follow the mouse pointer. By this I mean rather than just zooming in and out on the center of the screen like it does now it would be better if LDD were to zoom such that the mouse remained over the same point. It's a subtle distinction but is how most reputable CAD packages work these days. If you are unsure of what I mean open Google Maps and try scrolling the mouse wheel a little. You'll see that rather than the map zooming in and out on the center of the screen (which is what most people would think it does) you'll notice that it actually zooms on the mouse pointer such that the pointer remains over the same location. A side effect of this is that whatever was in the center of the screen ends up moving but this isn't actually a problem as you are always more focused on whatever it is that the mouse is over than what is in the actual centre of the screen. It really is quite intuitive, in fact it's so intuitive you probably haven't even noticed it but once you become accustomed to it it's surprisingly jarring to go back to the 'zoom on the center' paradigm. Another subtle thing that should be improved is that it appears that each click of the zoom wheel moves your point of view by a set distance. This means that if you are close to your target piece it moves a lot (getting say 15% bigger in one click) whereas if you are a long way away the same movement makes less difference (getting say less than 1% smaller). Most reputable packages (including Google Maps) adjust the zoom by a fixed proportion, say 5% with each click, rather than move a fixed distance. This means that all zooms appear to make the model grow and shrink by the same amount regardless of your distance from the model, which is much nicer.

Another thing that is a little odd is that when you right-drag with the mouse the camera orbits about a point that is in someway related to the last piece you right-clicked on. This is fine if the point about which it orbits is near the center of the screen but is somewhat disorientating if you have panned and zoomed your way round the scene such that the orbit location is no longer near the centre and downright perplexing if it is no longer on the screen at all! It would be far better if the camera were to rotate about the point the mouse was over, which again is how most CAD packages do it.

The above navigation ideas can still have some odd hiccups on occasion. As in sometimes it can happen that you expect to zoom or rotate your main model but without realising it you have your pointer over a piece a long way in the distant background and rather than rotating about your main model you end up rotating about (or zooming in relation to) this distant piece. It's a little odd when it happens but when it does it's usually fairly intuitive as to what happened (partly because you mouse pointer is still over the 'distant piece') and it's easy enough to reset your view back to what it was. In any event it's no more disorientating than the 'hiccups' that happen on occasion with the current navigation mode and in general it is much nicer if the focus point follows the mouse.

Another nicety relates to dragging a selection box. It would be good to be able to set the 'selection box' to either only select bricks that are completely contained in the region (which is what it does currently) or to have it not only select those that are completely contained but also select those bricks that are partially contained by the region. Again this is a common CAD feature. Some packages have a "partial selection" button to implement this whereas AutoCAD and SketchUp both use an idea such that if, when creating your selection box you drag your box from left to right it only selects completely contained items, whereas if you drag the box from right to left it also selects the partially contained items. It seems a little odd at first but once you get the hang of it it is really nice.

[Eggyslav]

The ability to stack pieces on a minifig's neck. Like this:

It would also be nice to have capes become flexible.

I second this. Although I think making capes flexible would be too difficult to implement and handle...

Edited May 14, 2015 by Eggyslav

[Umbra-Manis]

This is possible. This LDD minifig of mine is wearing armor and a bracket.

[telaruhn]

This is possible. This LDD minifig of mine is wearing armor and a bracket.

I can't seem to replicate this on my version of LDD... I'm only able to attach one element to a minifigure neck, regardless of what it is.

Your example may be an exception, since the parts themselves don't physically overlap in the program's rendering of the elements. This would obviously not be the case with other neck elements like beards, capes, and larger armors. It would stand to reason that the epaulette and backpack combo in kangmingjie's post would behave the same way in LDD as it does with your shoulder armor and neck bracket, but unfortunately it does not.

In any case, I would also like to see a "stacking" feature with certain minifigure elements that attach at the neck, as well as a feature that would "condense" parts attached at the waist and neck so that there aren't any gaps.

The textile elements in general aren't exactly friendly since it's hard to emulate them like you would the ABS or soft plastic/rubber elements. Increasing their malleability on LDD would be nice, but I wonder how hard it would be to implement. To that end, would it be worth implementing such malleability since the only textile elements I can find on LDD are for minifigures?

[Umbra-Manis]

You have to work around it like you do with fixing a head that has a gap. I'll post a tutorial on it tomorrow. With that specific knapsack and epaulets pair.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Umbra-Manis

[Calabar]

An easy feature to add: downsampled thumbnails inside the .lxf file instead than the present small/real-size/aliased one, in order to increase quality.

In other words LDD, instead than take a screenshot at 128x128px size during the "save" process, should take the screenshot at a larger size (for example at 512x512px) and then downscale it. The result would be much better!

[Happy SDE]

Improving startup time.

It seems LDD on each start parses last 6 opened files to show images of the files in the thumbnail window.

The time, LDD spending on this operation is big.

I think it is because instead of just taking images from LXF(zip) files, it completely parses LXFML.

I suggest:

1. Just take PNG images from LXFs and render them without complete parsing LXFMLs.

2. Use all cores for this operation (a CPU core per file). It should reduce startup time.

[Lego Fett]

More, and i mean a lot more decals! Spring loaded shooters and flick fires that actually work, a physics option that makes that part fall, useful when filling chests. Also, better graphics and you can move the camera flat by hold click 3.

[BasOne]

Fun too see a topic i started 4 years ago is still alive.

Not so nice that after 4 years still no LDD 5....

[Nachapon Lego]

Add the 7th selection tool: "drag to select only visible bricks" (same as some 3D software)

It will be very useful to simplify the model (minimal brick count). Good for huge MOC (prevent LDD crash) and speed up rendering.

Just group all visible(external, shell) bricks together -> invert selection -> Delete all hidden(structure, core) bricks at once.

The smaller modules lxf files keep full version, the bigger all modules assembly file use "shell" version to prevent LDD crash.

Edited May 31, 2015 by bbqqq

[Eggyslav]

I think it would be nice if the tiles could finally be able to be held in clips and minifig hands...... And the ability to hinge open and close books, suitcases, laptops and those big Adventurers backpacks.....

Edited June 1, 2015 by Eggyslav

[jester]

I want to see double coloured legs and arms

[suenkachun]

I think it would be nice if the tiles could finally be able to be held in clips and minifig hands...... And the ability to hinge open and close books, suitcases, laptops and those big Adventurers backpacks.....

Me too! I also reported all of these as errors of LDD 4, so hopefully they will be possible very soon!

On the other hand, I have another suggestion. Currently, when you open your LDD models, some Bricks placed illegally the last time you were building may be removed, and you get a pop-up message to remind you how many have been removed. However, it may take ages for us to locate the exact location of these Bricks, therefore can something be added to help us pinpoint the exact locations of these removed Bricks one after the other so that we can modify/fix the original design(s)?

[1963maniac]

I would like to see more parts added, such as Znap. I would also like to see better building instructions, especially for Technic creations.

[suenkachun]

You can build Sliding Doors (Image for Sliding Plate Version) with LEGO in reality, but not in LDD for now. In the image, two glass in the corresponding frames are fixed between two groups of Plate with Gliding Groove (Part 30586) and two others are simply placed between them one brick forward (Here's a

showing such door being built). Another version involves placing two pieces of glass in between two groups of Plate with Rail (Part 4510) (Here's another

showing such door being built). The problem with these two builds is in both cases, either the glass with frames or the glass are not attached to any bricks, therefore they are not considered as legal builds in LDD. In fact, the Sliding Plate Version was used in Set 7937 Train Stations City Trains (Link to Building Instructions). For now, the second version can't be built in LDD at all, but you can build the Sliding Plate Version in LDD by cheating: insert a Plate(s) and arrange the doors into the correct position above it(them), then delete the Plate(s) and place a Plate(s) with Gliding Groove(s) in the original position. My conclusion is that these two builds should become legal builds in LDD, but I still don't know how to make that happen.

[Lyichir]

You can build Sliding Doors (Image for Sliding Plate Version) with LEGO in reality, but not in LDD for now. In the image, two glass in the corresponding frames are fixed between two groups of Plate with Gliding Groove (Part 30586) and two others are simply placed between them one brick forward (Here's a

showing such door being built). Another version involves placing two pieces of glass in between two groups of Plate with Rail (Part 4510) (Here's another

showing such door being built). The problem with these two builds is in both cases, either the glass with frames or the glass are not attached to any bricks, therefore they are not considered as legal builds in LDD. In fact, the Sliding Plate Version was used in Set 7937 Train Stations City Trains (Link to Building Instructions). For now, the second version can't be built in LDD at all, but you can build the Sliding Plate Version in LDD by cheating: insert a Plate(s) and arrange the doors into the correct position above it(them), then delete the Plate(s) and place a Plate(s) with Gliding Groove(s) in the original position. My conclusion is that these two builds should become legal builds in LDD, but I still don't know how to make that happen.

Just because two parts aren't technically attached to one another in LDD doesn't make it an "illegal" build. ANY construction made of parts sliding across tiled parts will generally need to be scaffolded into place on LDD, simply by virtue of it not technically being "attached" to other parts of the model. I don't see how this could be fixed on LDD without making a mess of things (with parts trying to "attach" to tiles in various positions even if you're trying to attach them to nearby studs), or why it needs to be fixed (since temporarily replacing one of the tiles with a plate is generally a simple and effective solution, and in cases where that wouldn't work neither would any automatic attachment methods).

[suenkachun]

Just because two parts aren't technically attached to one another in LDD doesn't make it an "illegal" build. ANY construction made of parts sliding across tiled parts will generally need to be scaffolded into place on LDD, simply by virtue of it not technically being "attached" to other parts of the model. I don't see how this could be fixed on LDD without making a mess of things (with parts trying to "attach" to tiles in various positions even if you're trying to attach them to nearby studs), or why it needs to be fixed (since temporarily replacing one of the tiles with a plate is generally a simple and effective solution, and in cases where that wouldn't work neither would any automatic attachment methods).

I totally agree with you, but for the second Sliding Door build it's a bit too hard to build by cheating as it's harder to place a piece of glass in the most accurate position, compared to a frame with glass. Therefore executing these types of builds automatically should make things easier. Also, if these changes are made, why not add a sliding function for the corresponding frames with glass/glass directly?