LDD is an Underdeveloped Abomination - Why Do So Many Still Use it?

[LDD is an Underdeveloped Abomination - Why Do So Many Still Use it?]

1 hour ago, Lyichir said:

I've definitely grown more used to using alternative software like Stud.io, Bricksmith, and Mecabricks since LDD stopped updating regularly. Doesn't mean doing so has ever become less of a chore. I have yet to find a digital building software that is as user-friendly and captures the fun of real-life building quite as well as LDD. So while I definitely have alternative options if I want to put together a functional file using newer parts (and some of the others have additional benefits like Stud.io's direct integration with Bricklink), they're still pale substitutes.

Out of curiosity, what's the feature you miss the most from LDD that doesn't exist in other applications?

 

[LDD is an Underdeveloped Abomination - Why Do So Many Still Use it?]

8 hours ago, MatthewRC said:

Alright, every other time I start up LeoCAD, it tends to not respond as in the "program is not responding" error.

Are you using your own LDraw library or LeoCAD's internal one? It can be slow to start if it has to scan the folders for parts, I'll look into that.

As for LDD, my completely uninformed guess is that TLG may be trying to cut costs, I read that their profits have gone down and they were planning layoffs a few months ago.

[LDD is an Underdeveloped Abomination - Why Do So Many Still Use it?]

Can you give me more information about what you are doing when it freezes? This is the first I've heard of it.

[Missing LDD decals in LeoCAD]

If you download the ldraw.xml from the other thread in this forum and copy it to where your LeoCAD library is (c:\Program Files\LeoCAD by default, or something like c:\Ldraw if you have a custom library) then it will use the more up to date version and convert more patterns than the default installation does. 

 

 

[[Software] 3DXML to OBJ - Converts LDD model captures to OBJ]

On 8/4/2017 at 0:10 PM, Renderbricks said:

It would make sense to use Collada with instances. But due to missing intormations for each brick this might not work to create instances. The actual LeoCAD can import LDD information. From here you can use LDR to import with Blender with this great and fast addon what also supports good looking plastic shaders and very. very important: instances.

LeoCAD exports Collada with instances directly.

 

[script for automatically creating a .ldr ftemplate based on peeron.com parts inventory]

3 hours ago, legolijntje said:

A conversion table? Rebrickable already has an extensive (although probably not 100% complete) mapping between Rebrickable, Bricklink and LDraw numbers. If you use the API you can get LDraw part numbers for a specific part.

That statement is true but the API for this is not usable in its current form to convert an entire model. To get the LDraw ID from a Rebrickable ID you need to do 1 API query per part, so we'd need to send a few hundred queries for some models, at a max rate of 2 queries per second I believe.

Unless I'm missing something, the only way I found to convert a part is to use http://rebrickable.com/api/v3/lego/parts/3005/

 

[script for automatically creating a .ldr ftemplate based on peeron.com parts inventory]

I've added something like that (using Rebrickable instead of Peeron), just go to File->Import->Set Inventory. A few parts aren't imported correctly since their IDs don't match, I've contacted Rebrickable and they told me they will provide a conversion table in the future.

 

[ldr to lxf convert - question]

I've been meaning to write an LDD importer for a while but I couldn't find any official docs about the file format, is there anything besides your explanation of parts.xml?

Am open source example would be great.

 

[LDraw parts - some of them have problems]

It draws correctly for me on Linux, I'm thinking this could be a filename case problem.