BennyT19

Eurobricks Vassals
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About BennyT19

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    Classic Space

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  1. whatever happened to this thread, the CSV import is obviously importing a lot of crap in an unusable format, has anyone chased this in the last 12 months ?
  2. I agree, no way TLG would pull the pin on Stud.io and hopefully TLG will polish up the edges of Stud.io and iron out some of the bugs. Some snap placements and axles are painful but I have got used to most of the quirks and just when I think I can live with it I find another
  3. With the recent acquisition of Bricklink by TLG and a combined project already using AFOL designs on Stud.io and produced by TLG, I think it is clear that TLG are endorsing Stud.io as the way forward. I find it interesting that so many people still cling to LDD with the hope that it will be resurrected, when IMO this will never happen. BL has done a major part of the development for TLG and a lot of people I have talked to who were once LDD users are now all moved across to Stud.io. Is it perfect ? Hell No! Is it an improvement ? IMO most definately ! Is it being updated? Constantly! I can also do all my renders and instructions in one place. Agree wholeheartedly @MatthewRC that the mechanics can be quite frustrating at times but you slowly get used to it! I salute those of you who have your convictions for LDD but hoping that it will be restored to a market leader I think is a total dream (Unless TLD blend the best features of both in the near future!)
  4. Although this is now old, I would like to thank @Oracid for posting the video, I reverse engineered, made the design in Stud.io ordered parts and have finally built! I just need to cut a tabletop to use with it. Our exhibition is in 2 weeks and this will be a central showpiece. Merci Beaucoup Mon Ami!
  5. I agree totally on this, I am a regular designer and run a small business with it. LDD has the MOST awkward parts grouping I have ever seen. At least in Stud.io you can enter 1x2 into the search bar and every 1x2 item turns up - you can even use the word 'jumper' for jumper plate or 1x2 mod for modified parts. LDD is not having any money or time spent on it anytime soon and with the collaboration between Bricklink and TLG for the design competition it seems that LEGO is almost confirming this themselves. Instruction maker for Stud.io just got another update recently too along with more parts being added to the catalogue so it is quickly becoming the go-to tool. Maybe it can't do EVERYTHING yet, but I think it time more people are looking at it and more effort is being made to fix things. As far as MLCAD goes, it is a way steeper learning curve to try than I have time for and I'm in IT, things just don't seem to be intuitive but I have no one to show me and no time for tutorials. One issue I am getting in Stud.io that is almost becoming a deal breaker with my love for it, is that lately the software isn't saving the design after working on it. You hit SAVE or SAVE AS and the new changes are NOT being written to the file. I have lost a couple of hours of design time so far with this and if it continues I am hamstrung from working with it. Gonna report the bug and see how quick it is addressed. Good to see so many opinions and recognise that we all work in different ways with different tools for a similar outcome with LEGO.
  6. By introducing this feature, Bricklink has changed the creative space for LEGO. With LDD not producing reasonable instructions and Stud.io's previous attempt an online only version, even with the third party Blueprint program you needed to import LDD's .LXF file in to produce something in PDF format or DOC. Now Stud.io has negated the need for LDD AND Blueprint in one sweep. If Stud.io has also updated the parts catalogue and fixed a lot of snap and collision issues (which from a quick test are majorly improved), it has just become THE dominant design software for digital LEGO creations. Considering the new Anniversary program and LDD's waning lack of support from TLG, has TLG done a strategic move and outsourced ongoing software designs with Stud.io collaborations? Keen to know the thoughts of the AFOL Community.
  7. I think you also need to consider that LEGO building is also to inspire other people, I like to share techniques and help educate others on becoming better builders. I am not saying that I am perfect or anything, in fact I'd appreciate constructive criticism on my work. If I don't put work out there for others to look at and comment on, my MOC being a picture alone is gonna get a lot of "Oh that's nice" and "Good build bro" but that doesn't help share knowledge and get feedback across. I can understand @anothergol and the the feeling that it is REALLY tedious and the fun might disappear, but I don't do it for EVERYTHING I build, in fact I am currently working on releasing my first instructions with Blueprint, ever. Like @ThinkCleverAndSmart says above, it's also about leading people on an experience about building the model the way you intended and guide them through a process. I can really understand both points of view. I think we all have to take the instruction journey at one point in time to get some real world feedback on what we do to feel 'quantified' in pursuing our hobby of building LEGO and Blueprint is my poison at the moment for fulfilling that task.
  8. ^^ great advice - you will also have to create a wanted list by uploading to Bricklink and then try and check that all your parts can be ordered and if they can't you will need to look for alternate part numbers until you get 100% of what is needed to build.
  9. Interesting debate and I have my own views being an intermediate LEGO builder of many years, member of a local LUG and very IT literate. I agree with a lot of the comments here that LDD is an easy to learn interface, quick to learn and aimed really at a simple market to achieve a buildable online tool that performs for 90% of the market. I am a heavy user of both LDD and Stud.io. I prefer some of stud.io's interface, the ability to search parts by description, more logical (to me) arrangement of parts and key word searching. LDD seems to hold parts in obscure sub lists that are hard to dig through, some parts (like 11477 1x2 slope) ONLY appear in extended building mode (WHY?) - if the parts are available they should be there no matter what! LDD will also seem to use old parts numbers that are hard to find when you want to buy through bricklink and will let you use colours that you can't buy to design with. Stud.io has a fantastic ability to render straight from the program (via Pov-ray) without having to run something like Bluerender and will notify you of an error if that part is not available in that colour. Some background on what I do - I like to design builds virtually first and then render what my builds will look like, if i decide to build them I want to be able to have some sort of easy to follow instructions - LDD is crap - no argument there. Unfortunately, one program cannot do EVERYTHING, Stud.io can render, but I can't send instructions to a friend as they are online for my account, unless I upload to the BUILD portal and I don't want to release EVERYTHING publicly. So I like to do a PDF. LDD can interface with Blueprint to do some nice instructions and is a very powerful 'add-on' program but can't render - catch 22. I have tried LDraw but don't have the time and effort atm to learn this thoroughly and it does not seem intuitive to play around in, the other two you can adapt to quite quickly. Therefore the process that I currently use is - Design in LDD, export to Stud.io to do a render, then go back to LDD and export to Blueprint as Blueprint takes an LXF file to get instructions together for it. I have to generate an LXF for blueprint but it would be great if it took an IO file. You can load an LXF into Stud.io and it will open but you can't load an IO back into LDD - I'd almost pay to see that happen as it would smooth my process immensely. I am currently stuck with having to use a combination of two or more tools to get a process done that I would hope one day could be converted into one program to rule them all, until then.......
  10. I love this for making instructions but one comment I have, if you place say 2 plates that are 1x4 of a DIFFERENT colour on the model in the same step - it highlights both of them as PINK for current parts. But you dont seem to be able to determine which one was black and which one was white for example. There are some minor layout issues for larger steps and not being able to push the next number instruction over 1 page and a large gap when you add a submodel as it automatically goes to the next page but these are minor flaws with what it actually achieves overall. A great effort and highly recommend this program.
  11. I get this quite often. My lad builds in LDD with the wrong colour and then Bricklink rejects it. I now use BOTH LDD and STUD.iO and once the LDD file is finished I import into STUD.iO to check it for errors as it has a direct backend to Bricklink. When I get error codes come up I then replace the colours or parts as required. Then I use the feature to UPLOAD TO MY BASEPLATE and that then lets you create a Wanted List directly. It's a bit of mucking around and I still can't find a good solution to manage the the whole building process from design right through to order reconciliation.
  12. Wow I can't believe you guys sorting out the MAC thing after SOOOOOOO long, have got it running now. I downloaded the package to the desktop, jumped in terminal and did the - cd desktop/Blueprint0022 and the cut and pasted the command from the last page java -Djava.library.path=native -jar ./bin/blueprint.jar
  13. Hi Guys I have been using stud.io for a couple of weeks and noted a couple of points: Firstly, someone above mentioned about repeating a piece - you can hit the 'C' key for CLONE and the part you already have selected will reappear on the screen. Secondly, this has inbuilt rendering - so no more Bluerender importing files etc - you can do it WITHIN the program, hence the POVRAY files in the install pack. For all those who are experiencing crashes this seems very erratic, it happened early on in the BETA release but seems to have settled quite a bit in recent weeks. REMEMBER this is a BETA release still. For anyone else that is continuing to use it, I am looking at the STEPS for building. Why would you include this if it can't do BUILD INSTRUCTIONS? I can't seem to find anything that suggests it will, but if LDD has it and we can do it with BLUEPRINT, surely BL can get stud.io to do it also. This is one feature I am really keen on seeing included. @Citizen if you are speaking to your friend on the dev team can you ask about build steps and instructions? Best part compared to LDD this actually alerts you if you have built using a colour not available as a BL piece and gives you a cost of the whole model via BL interface - awesome. If this is only Beta, there is very promising times ahead. Ben
  14. Hi All, Manage to use this fine on my windows PC, but have since swapped to MAC (OSX Sierra 10.12). I managed to get Bluerender working fine following the thread topic for Mac but cannot get Blueprint to run. I am trying to script it like I did with Blurender and am using : cd ~/Desktop/Blueprint0019 java -Djava.library.path=native -jar ./bin/blueprint.jar ERROR IS AS BELOW Operating system detected: MacOS Starting Blueprint v0.0.1.9beta.. Good luck! Current folder: /Users/Ben-Admin/Desktop/Blueprint0019 Exception in Application start method java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498) at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplicationWithArgs(LauncherImpl.java:389) at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication(LauncherImpl.java:328) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498) at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper$FXHelper.main(LauncherHelper.java:767) Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception in Application start method at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication1(LauncherImpl.java:917) at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.lambda$launchApplication$155(LauncherImpl.java:182) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/itextpdf/text/Element at blueprint.Blueprint.b(Unknown Source) at blueprint.Blueprint.initApp(Unknown Source) at c.a.start(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.lambda$launchApplication1$162(LauncherImpl.java:863) at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runAndWait$175(PlatformImpl.java:326) at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$null$173(PlatformImpl.java:295) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runLater$174(PlatformImpl.java:294) at com.sun.glass.ui.InvokeLaterDispatcher$Future.run(InvokeLaterDispatcher.java:95) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.itextpdf.text.Element at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:381) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:331) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357) ... 9 more Exception running application blueprint.Blueprint logout Saving session... ...copying shared history... ...saving history...truncating history files... ...completed. Deleting expired sessions...none found. [Process completed] Any ideas on how I can get around this ??
  15. BennyT19

    A Guide to building a Medieval Village

    Just got linked into your tutorial and I am blown away at (a) the amount of detailed shots you have provided and (b) the detailed explanations of how you put things together. Looking at people's creations, without an explanation of building methods you miss the interesting part. I am very appreciative of the time you took to put this together. Although I am a big Classic Space fan, it makes me want to attempt another genre. Hoarding of extra bulk bricks starts now ;) Thanks again from Oz. B