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Showing results for tags 'ldcad'.
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[Software] LDCad - LDraw cad
legolijntje posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
As suggested by papacharly, here's a topic about LDcad to discuss and help each other. What is LDcad? LDcad is an LDraw cad program being developed by Roland Melkert. The current version is 1.4, which can be downloaded here. For more information about LDCad, visit the website (and make sure to read the quick manual!). The features are (copy/pasted from the website): Windows and Linux support. Multi-threaded (background) loading of parts. Fast detailed real-time 3D rendering. Basic part snapping on growing collection of (official) parts. Integrated portable flexible parts support (springs, hoses, bands). Script based animation. Full MPD Support. Part grouping. Part ghosting. Nested editing. Relative grids. Multiple file editing (open as many files you like). Instruction stepping support. Full undo/redo. Copy/paste from to other LDraw software. Highly customizable part and color bins. Growing collection of example models. From my own experience, LDcad is quite difficult for beginners and can be quite unintuituve. This may sounds harsh, but it is (from my experience at least). But, if you get through the difficult part, a wonderdful piece of software is available to you and when you know to do, it's actually quite easy. Almost as easy as LDD (if we use that as a benchmark for easiness). It feels a bit like SR3D builder, but it doesn't have the user-friendly way of animation. It doesn have other nice features. It's really worth to take a look at! Roland is most active on the LDraw forums, so if you want to directly talk with him, I recommend going here. Of course, you can post all comments, questions and disscustions regarding LDcad in this topic too. So, this is the topic on EB to talk about LDCad [continuation from the LDraw sets topic] LDcad is quite nice. I've been using it for the past few weeks and I'm quite happy with it. Btw, make sure to turn on part-snapping if you haven't already, in my experience it makes building a lot easier. I just tried to find this setting, but I can't find it anymore. Maybe it's turned on by default nowadays, I can remember I had to set it on... Oh, and if you set Anti Aliassing on the edges on (AA), it makes the view a lot better -
Shackleton's Endurance in Minifig Scale In August 1914, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton started an incredible expedition to the Antarctic.This voyage is also known as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Endurance was the name of the ship in which Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed for the Antarctic. On board were 28 men and 69 dogs. Shackleton planned to cross the Antarctic on foot. But shortly before its arrival in the Antarctic the Endurance became locked in ice and was finally crushed. Thus the legendary survival of Shackleton and his crew began. Length 166 studs (131 cm) / Width 50 studs (39 cm) / Height 103 studs (81 cm) Built with LDCad 1.6 alpha 4 / Rendered with POV-Ray Shackleton's Endurance by Papacharly by Papacharly
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Hi, folks. During last SHIPtember, Ryan Olsen created a SHIP based on Babylon 5 - the EAS Agamemnon. I stumbled across it at the time thanks to some Lego blogs, and at the end of the year decided to build one for myself. Credit for the original Lego design goes to Ryan, of course! I took his WIP pics (here) and final pics (here - awesome photography & Photoshopping!) and reverse-engineered it in LDD to understand how it all held together and what parts were required. Then I used Rebrickable to figure out what parts I needed. To build it, I used the "hide" tool in LDD - hide bricks in reverse order, then undo to play back the build as you follow along. Much more helpful than the absurd LDD-generated instructions... Here's the end result (Flickr album here) - my pics & lighting are not studio-quality, unlike Ryan's! The middle section rotates (manually) and stays put at any angle, so it's well balanced and the turntables provide enough friction to keep it stable. Stats-wise, it's about 95cm (~117 studs) long, 35cm tall and 15cm wide, using ~4700 bricks, weighing-in at just over 3.7kg (8.2lb). I made some guesses as to internal structure (e.g. the turntable connections in the rotating section) and the greebles on top & bottom are my own, but it's very close to Ryan's original design and some reference images of the original. Ryan was kind enough to share the image files he used for the stickers, so I was able to complete the model. I couldn't connect the front & rear side plating in LDD - as I learned here, the connections are just illegal as there's not enough clearance between the side plates and overhanging top & bottom plates in software - however, it obviously works in the brick. I converted the LDD to an LDraw file (using SylvainLS's updated parts mapper here) and used LDCad (which can ignore collisions) to place the plates in order to use POV-Ray to make the renders you can see in my album. I learned a lot doing that! Note that I made some tweaks in-the-brick but haven't re-done the LDraw file or any renders to reconcile the minor differences. It was a fun, frustrating at times, but very rewarding journey, and I'm really happy how it turned out. The SHIP looks awesome on display in my living room. Thanks for the inspiration, Ryan, and thanks to those on this site who helped with the digital stuff! Here's a 360 degree render: https://photos.app.goo.gl/caouE0BlHzarD6C42
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I finally completed my most complicated LDCad animation to date It is a fully animated 8860 LEGO technic 'super car' set. You can watch it here (2:15 long). https://youtu.be/Ea1iHCSPbqo (Some how youtube messed with the quality though, the original x264 mkv is much sharper) It is an OpenGL export, I was originally planning to do a POV-Ray rendering (I've got the POV file) but it would take over 200 hours to render as it would need very high radiosity settings to prevent background flickering. This would result in 3750 frames of this quality: Fullsize img: http://www.melkert.net/img/mel/8860.png If anyone know of a way to reduce that flickering without having to crank the radiosity settings to 11 please let me know.
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Introduction to Digital LEGO Interview with Pennyforge
Matt Elder posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
G'day Everyone, long time lurker, first time poster. Recently sat down with @pennyforge for an interview following a presentation he did on digital LEGO at London AFOLs. He goes through an introduction to digital modelling, rendering and instruction creation, comparing the pros and cons of popular digital tools like LDD, LDCad and Stud.io. I learnt a lot from the presentation so thought it had to be captured so others could also see it. We cover his letters to LEGO script We also cover his Voxel script Would love to hear anyones thoughts. Anything you learned from it? -
Does anyone know what is the function of "selection insert" in LDCad stepping menu? I played with it for a bit, but couldn't figure it out. Thanks.
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Using LDCad flexible parts with Studio
Philo posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
I have started a quick tutorial showing how to use LDCad to generate flexible parts compatible with Studio. See it on LDraw forum. -
creating and editing themes for LDCad
nitrofurano posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
i started this one, i really wonder why status bar text is still huge even defining its size as 14, and all those "XXXXX" (@Roland, there you can see how i chosen the typeface) https://pastebin.com/raw/n5U1nEDE -
I am trying my hands on LDCad animation for quite some time, finally made something worth sharing. Here is one simple example. This software really has lot of potential, thank @roland.
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LDCad 1.6 Beta 2a not starting corectly
mocbuild101 posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
I have just installed LDCad 1.6 Beta 2a but it is not starting correctly. It gets to LDCad license agreement (V3), and when I cross it out, everything disappears. I don't see any OK or Accept button, so all I can do is cross it out. Please help! It is very confusing . -
Truss design - are these ones OK?
Captainowie posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
Hi folks. I need some advice from people who have experience building large structures. I'm looking at building a GBC module that takes balls across a gap between two tables, that's high enough to walk under. I need a vertical lift of about 1.3m, and a horizontal travel of about 1m. Now, this would be by far the largest model I've ever undertaken, so my intention is to design the thing in LDraw before I buy anything. This means I can't see how sturdy the structure actually is, so I'm asking you all whether what I've designed so far is sensible. I've got two slightly different truss designs. One that I think would go better for the vertical parts, and one for the horizontal. Each is a single unit 16 studs in length, with the idea that you join as many units together as you need to get the length/height required. First, the vertical segment: And what three of them together look like: I feel that this truss is going to be strong in compression/tension, but all that space in the middle makes me nervous - is the 5x7 frame box going to be solid enough to make it strong in torsion as well? Next, the horizontal segment: And three of them together: This one I think would be quite resistant to bending in the up/down direction (exactly what you want for a horizontal beam supported at its ends), less so in the side/side direction, but also strong in compression/tension. This one would be somewhat heavier than the other - overkill? or is the extra strength warranted? I'd appreciate your thoughts on these two truss designs. If you want to see the .ldr file that these images came from, it's here. Regards Owen. P.S. If anybody wants to take these and make them into a tower crane for [TC8], go right ahead. EDIT: Yes, I know there are no triangles. I am relying on the rigidity provided by the 5x7 frames in place of diagonal bracing. -
[Software] LUA - Animation for LDcad
kaanguyr posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
Hi there. I'm a one-year LDcad user and now a newbie with LUA and animation. I use LDcad v1.5 on Ubuntu 16.4 LTS. I have reproduced the example in the Roland Merkel Youtube, simplified it and, after some time to struggle, I have an error "Active refline link needed" in the line reading ax1:setOri(ori). I consulted the Message error script console ldcad1.5 topic in the LDraw forum, but this is not the case, and there is no information about LUA in the Internet. I send the animation2.mpd and the .lua files for examination. All seems to be in order, but nothing happens. Any suggestion? Thanks in advance for your help. =========== animation2.mpd =========================== 0 FILE main.ldr 0 Author: Conrad G.-Anleo 0 !LDCAD SCRIPT [source=animation2.lua] 1 16 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 axel1.ldr 0 FILE axel1.ldr 0 Author: Conrad G.-Anleo 1 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 -1 -1 0 0 32073.dat 1 14 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 32072.dat ========== animation2.lua ================= --[[ animation2.lua (c) Conrad G.-Anleo ]] function register() local ani=ldc.animation('demo') ani:setLength(20) ani:setEvent('frame', 'onFrame') end function onFrame() local ani=ldc.animation('demo') local mainSf=ldc.subfile() local ori=ldc.matrix() local angle=-4*360*ani:getFrameTime()/ani:getLength() local ax1=mainSf:getRef('axle1') ori:setRotate(angle, 1, 0, 0) ax1:setOri(ori) end register() ============= END ============================== -
In the occasion of the new Imperial Shuttle 75094 I virtually rebuilt two movie scenes from Star Wars Episode VI - Return of the Jedi - showing the iimperial Shuttle Tydirium approaching Endor. The model was built with LDCad and rendered with Pov-Ray. Imperial Shuttle Tydirium by papacharly24 Imperial Shuttle Tydirium approaches Endor by papacharly24 Hope you enjoy it!
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ldCad->ldView->povray - Colour mismatch
chorlton posted a topic in Digital LEGO: Tools, Techniques, and Projects
Hi, I'm having a problem where "special" colours used in ldCad are not displaying correctly in ldView and povray. As it's going wrong in ldView, I suspect something wrong with my LGEO setup in ldView but can't quite follow how the mapping is all set up. Perhaps someone here (Philo?) can help. I'm using ldCad 1.1b, ldView 4.1 and povray 3.7 running on Linux Mint 13. I'm using the wheels (part 32077) from set 8428 which peeron describes as "Metallic Silver" and so have selected this in ldCad. This is described as (80,M) in the ldCad colour selection. My MPD file contains the following lines for the part in the model. 0 FILE wheel-and-tyre.ldr 0 NAME wheel-and-tyre 0 AUTHOR chorlton 1 80 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 32077.dat I open my MPD file in ldView and Export to povray. The resulting povray file contains #declare LDX_wheel_dash_and_dash_tyre_dot_ldr = union { // NAME wheel-and-tyre // AUTHOR chorlton object { LDX_32077_dot_dat LDXSeamMatrix(149.999939, 149.999969, 71.093002, 0, 0.000015, 0.046499) matrix <1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0> #if (version >= 3.1) material #else texture #end { LDXColor80 } } and #ifndef (LDXColor80) // Black #declare LDXColor80 = LDXOpaqueColor(0.2,0.2,0.2) #end So, it appears that ldCad thinks colour 80 is metallic silver, but ldView thinks it is black, or at least very dark grey. When I set things up, the instructions for ldView and the LGEO part library spoke about colours but I think I've followed all the steps correctly. Does anyone with experience know where I might have gone wrong? I didn't want to include all my config so please ask for anything relevant. Thanks chorlton edit: There are other colour mismatches, for example the smoked glass of the PF receiver, but the silver wheels give a good example. Hopefully one setup fix will correct everything.
