SylvainLS

For Dark Brown versus Black, Black has white outlines (That creates another problem with some White parts: you don’t know if it’s a White part with black outline or a Black parts with white outline. Like lattice window panel 38320.)

What are you saying exactly? That the part costs 5¢ (plus almost nothing for the logo) and they are selling it at $5? That they are selling cheap, low quality, things at a high price to make it look like it’s high quality? And therefore that they should lower their prices or up the quality? Or that, as they are making quality products and that costs money, their prices are too high and you’d prefer lower quality?

Oh, you didn’t get the news:

We need a GrokLEGO (not related to that other guy).

Considering how native speakers (mis)use their language, there’s no need for apologies

The analogies were primarily about limitations artists put upon themselves, and they are good analogies for that: artists can choose their own limitations. The artist using only Bic pens is only using Bic pens of the same colour. Their work would be as impressive if they used only Montblanc pens or other colours. I then reused the analogies when going back to the main question because they still work because it’s still lines in the sand. Yes, they also fail if you look deep enough or if you look them another way. That’s what analogies do 🤷‍♂️

Do you understand “seed parts” challenges? It’s the same, but with more parts 😁 Why are people making paintings when they could take a photo? There’s an artist (or several?) who only uses Bic pens to draw on walls. Why? Sometimes the end comes first, sometimes it’s the means, and in any case, the means is always at least interesting. It’s lines in the sand. Every one can have their line where they want it. LEGO only? Only recent? Cloth/paper accepted? Glue? Lights? Train wheels? Tracks? Motors? Cutting parts? Etc. Me: In MOCs published with instructions, I won’t use parts/colours that are not readily available (not in production for 5+ years = it really needs to be easy to find or it’s out). At home, I build with stuff from the 1980s because I have them. When I do render-only stuff, I do only buildable things… unless it’s just for a quick funny/cartoon (shameless plug). See, not only is it a line in the sand but one can have different lines 😁 Back to the subject at hand: I prefer LEGO-only stuff… but if others are interested in other brands, good for them… I just don’t want to be presented with a “painting” that’s actually a photograph (or an “aquarelle” made with oil or crayons).

It can’t work this way. The file 210710.lxf doesn’t contain the 3D model, it just says “eh, I’m using 24300 at this position, oriented this way.” When you open it in Studio, Studio looks in its conversion table for 24300 and finds nothing… so it uses the NullBrick instead. For parts that don’t exist in Studio (yet), you need to import them from LDraw through PartDesigner. See the Parts FAQ on the Studio forum. For wheel2b, you want this LDraw part. Its files are actually already in Studio but the part has not been prepared (no connectivity info, no collision info, no ID match in the database). LDraw doesn’t seem to differentiate wheel2b and wheel2a.

Oh, that’s interesting. That’s simpler than what I envisaged as “possibility 1” (in the sense that I thought it would be more obfuscated than that).

Hi, That doesn’t exist. I see 3 possibilities: Find how the LEGO® Builder app stores the 3D instructions. (Only recent sets have 3D instructions, others only have PDFs.) Not easy. Make a tool that read the PDFs. Not easy. Find the sets already built with the steps in LDraw or Studio and extract that info. The extraction would be rather straightforward (unless the author used L(3D)Pub’s buffer exchange because that allows to remove / add parts during the build). Finding the sets built with steps is not easy.

No problem with the delay: I’m not following all the threads or even checking the forum every day 😅 LDraw is an open format for the 3D models for the parts, and it’s a library of parts. You can learn more on the LDraw website. Studio uses the LDraw format internally… but with some modifications and choices that make it “an application that uses LDraw” and not “an LDraw application.” So there’s sometimes some gymnastics required to make things work in Studio’s ways.

For some unknown reason, some DUPLO parts are already in Studio’s part database. There, there’s an association between a filename and diverse BrickLink and Studio info. Some of these info have values that prevent them from showing in palettes (one example is the categories/shapes numbers that are unset or set to 0). By construction, and for almost every undecorated part, the filename that’s there is the same as the filename used by LDraw. So, when you make a custom part (like Philo did) and export it to Studio with its LDraw filename (like Philo did), Studio will use the matching entry in its database and the part won’t show in the palettes. What that means is that one needs to rename all the files of custom parts to NOT be the same as LDraw filenames (and change all the references to other “custom” filenames inside the files). One simple solution would be to rename all the files by adding “ld_” in front of them. (The pack used to work. It’s changes in 1. Studio’s database, 2. how custom parts are handled in palettes, that are causing this.)

No. It’s all or nothing.

Don’t be confused with Studio’s implementation that only lasts for one step (and automatically adds arrows). Or maybe there’s simplifications in MLCAD that also do that? I don’t know MLCAD well. In any case, Bufex is both very simple, very powerful, and limited: it creates an alternate reality from which you can come back. In other words, it stores the current situation in a “buffer” (memory place) and that situation is restored when you exit bufex. Your instructions go: step 1, 2, 3, <enter bufex> 4, 5, 6, <exit bufex>, 4’, 5’, 6’. Every parts added in steps 4, 5, 6 are “removed”/“forgotten” and the instructions start again with the situation at the end of step 3.

Buffer Exchange. You start it when you add the first submodel… up until the whole model is built. And then you restart the build. Basically bufex is like a parenthesis: 1 2 3 (4 5 6) 4’ 5’ 6’, when you close the parenthesis, it’s like it was never there. That means that if the submodel you want to replace is not the last thing added, you’re rebuilding things you should have to rebuild (= when steps 5=5’ & 6=6’ above). I don’t think there’s other solutions… except making multiple models and patching the instructions (PDF…) afterward.