supertruper1988

Oh I like that brick built bucket a lot! The styrene work in the original post is wonderful but there is also something about a good brick solution that appeals to me too.

You want "Save target as" and then there are various youtube videos for bringing in parts to Part Designer.

this right here. I dont care as much about batteries if I had a way to charge them easily. The PF LiPo was really rare and expensive. I have 2. One from LEGO and one I paid $100 for after the stopped making them. I have devoloped my own way to do track pickups but I still need to have track from FX Track before I can commit to converting my 11 9V motors and making my power pickups for my steamers.

You will want to look at what FX Track is proposing. You will need a complete package. For anyone still on 9V they likely have motors and backups. Everyone else moved away around 2010 when LEGO stopped metal track production. As Coaster said, there is no real market for it.

I know you have the replacement base but would you also consider offering the earlier style of just the replacement battery cell? I have been integrating Powered Up in to my MOCs by making the top portion of the hub lift off and never using the screws. This allows me to have the base built into the build and then have the top section lift off (with some parts attached) saving me having to rebuild my model to get to the battery. I know you have "solved" this by making the charging port accessible but then there is the issue of how to clear enough space in some very small locomotives to make the charging port accessible. I also cant bury the hub in the frame of a locomotive to save me some vertical space for details.

This is interesting to me for sure! What kind of performance are we talking? mAh and voltage? I would assume you are running a 2S pack to get ~7.4V average to avoid damage to the LEGO components. As a side note, you will need to hotlink your pics from places like Flickr, BrickSafe, or your own website because the space here is only for your avatar and signature.

@LennyRhys can probably answer more clearly but I know as a model maker myself, the tracks are likely used because they match the real thing or as close as LEGO makes. The larger, newer, tracks would look to big on this model IMO.

Congrats @SylvainLS!! Great news!

He made the android app open source I believe.

This would be the go to for me if it was "just" a shelf for display

So creating art for pad printing is best done in a vector program like Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer. The export to PNG can be used with the Studio Part Designer to apply the decal to minifigs for instructions and/or rendering. Creating custom molds is a hole different ballgame and is something that you can do but it takes working with a mold maker to get the perfect and its expensive to make molds so you would also likely need a business to support you and/or build up a following that would be able to support the cost of manufacturing.

So to answer some of your questions here, The technic axles solution isnt ideal because the clutch (grip strength) of the axles in the 1x2 brick with cross hole is pretty low. You have a stop on the one end but the middle has no stop. Here is a quick example of the basic physics. Say this is two track sections and the stops are also the connecting ends represented as vertical lines: |-----------------||-----------------| You will have these forces as you put a train on: THISISATRAIN THISISATRAIN |-----------------||-----------------| || || \/ \/ Weight (mass and gravity) pulls down at the arrows This will caause the force to be transmitted like this THISISATRAIN THISISATRAIN |-----------------||-----------------| <= => <= => All this to say that the technic axles dont have the clutch power you would want for your train bridge. I would recommend looking at some bridge design articles and also picking up a free bridge builder game on your phone to learn about how this works in an interactive way.

It is called the "LDraw Editor" in the view options. @Toastie thanks for the insight!

I dont use BOM's or cover pages so I am not sure about adding it all up front but you definitely could try. The txt file of all the settings was a life save. I even have a couple for doing personal instructions or commission instructions. The positioning of the formatting really helps for me. I was so frustrated every time with having to find where that one setting got added then not removed and is now causing issues 10 pages later. If you arent used to it, I would take sometime to understand the source window. It can tell you tons about what is happening in the file and if for some reason LPub doenst remove a line here or there of formatting then you can manually remove it. Heck I can, for the most part, move parts between steps if I need to for clarity or even add steps as needed.

One thing you may consider is defining all of your formatting in the front of the file. This is a sample of my settings that I put before the first step that will tell everything about the file and then as I find more settings I need to change, I add them to appropriate section here. I have this saved as a text file so that I can paste it into new or updating my instructions. It also helps solve issues where formatting in the steps will cause issues in later steps. 0 //---------------Main Assembly Params-------------- 0 !LPUB RESOLUTION 300 DPI 0 !LPUB ASSEM MODEL_SCALE 1 0 !LPUB ASSEM MARGINS 0.05 0.05 0 !LPUB CONTINUOUS_STEP_NUMBERS GLOBAL FALSE 0 //---------------Callout Params-------------------- 0 !LPUB CALLOUT BORDER ROUND 1 Black 0.03125 15 MARGINS 0.05 0.05 0 !LPUB CALLOUT STEP_NUMBER FONT "Arial,44,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0,BOLD" 0 !LPUB CALLOUT INSTANCE_COUNT MARGINS 0.0750 0.0750 0 !LPUB CALLOUT INSTANCE_COUNT FONT "Arial,60,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0,BOLD" 0 !LPUB CALLOUT STEP_NUMBER MARGINS 0.0750 0.0750 0 !LPUB CALLOUT SUBMODEL_BACKGROUND_COLOR "#FFFFFF" "#bead93" "#c8a19e" "#a99eb2" 0 !LPUB CALLOUT PLI PER_STEP FALSE 0 //---------------Multi Step Params----------------- 0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP PLI MARGINS GLOBAL 0.05 0.05 0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP ASSEM MARGINS GLOBAL 2.0 0.5 0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER FONT "Arial,96,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0,BOLD" 0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP STEP_NUMBER MARGINS 0.05 0.125 0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP PLACEMENT TOP_LEFT PAGE INSIDE 0 0 0 !LPUB MULTI_STEP SEPARATOR 0.03125 black 0.125 0.05 0 //---------------Page Params----------------------- 0 !LPUB PAGE PAGE_FOOTER SIZE 11.0000 0.2500 0 !LPUB PAGE PAGE_HEADER SIZE 11.0000 0.2500 0 !LPUB PAGE MARGINS 0.25 0.25 0 !LPUB PAGE DISPLAY_PAGE_NUMBER FALSE 0 !LPUB PAGE SIZE 11 8.5 0 !LPUB PAGE SUBMODEL_BACKGROUND_COLOR "#cccccc" "#bead93" "#c8a19e" "#a99eb2" 0 //!LPUB PAGE BACKGROUND GLOBAL TRANSPARENT 0 //---------------Parts List Params----------------- 0 !LPUB PLI BORDER ROUND Black 0.03125 15 MARGINS 0.15 0.15 0 !LPUB PLI PLACEMENT RIGHT TOP STEP_NUMBER OUTSIDE 0 !LPUB PLI MARGINS 0.05 0.05 0 !LPUB PLI INSTANCE_COUNT FONT "Arial,36,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0" 0 !LPUB PLI BACKGROUND COLOR "#efefef" 0 !LPUB PLI MODEL_SCALE 0.65 0 !LPUB PLI SQUARE_STYLE BACKGROUND TRANSPARENT 0 !LPUB PLI SQUARE_STYLE FONT "Arial,26,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0,Regular" 0 !LPUB PLI SQUARE_STYLE BORDER SQUARE 3 #3a3938 0.015625 MARGINS 0 0 0 !LPUB PLI SQUARE_STYLE FONT_COLOR "#000000" 0 !LPUB PLI ANNOTATION DISPLAY TRUE 0 !LPUB PLI ANNOTATION USE_TITLE FALSE 0 //---------------Step Number Params-------------- 0 !LPUB STEP_NUMBER PLACEMENT TOP_LEFT PAGE INSIDE 0 !LPUB STEP_NUMBER FONT "Arial,96,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0,BOLD" 0 // 0 // INSTRUCTION START 0 //

Ok back again. I have found that the image size is being determined by the page size. (we knew this just reiterating for clarity) The only workaround that doesn't involve a lot of BufExchange headache is to set your page size large enough to capture the whole model. Once you have that, you will need to use finder on mac or windows explorer on PC to navigate to where your file is saved. There you will see that LPub3D has created a folder, In there you will find a folder called "assem". In the assem folder you will see a bunch of images that will follow the filename and step number and so forth. Copy the step images that are needed to be larger into a different folder. Once you have them copied, change your page size back. You can then move the "wrong" image off the screen and used the image placement tool to place the step image that is full size and can be positioned how you want. Hope this makes sense!

This will likely fail the next time it does a refresh (ie where the image cache is reset). Then you will have to go through this process again. I think that there is something to be found in the LDview Configuration.ini file. There has to be something there that can be used to force a larger image to be created.

I actually went ahead and posted over there. I am curious about how this works as well. https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-24200.html

I played with it some in the LDview Config ini file accessible from the parameters menu. I cant seem to get it to render a size that is different from the page size. One other thing you might try is posting over at the LDraw forums to see if the creator of LDView might be able to offer some insight on how the interface between LPub and LDview is working. There may be a setting or line of code that can be added to the LDview config that will force LDview to render and return the entire model instead of just the page size. If you find out, please update us here!

Oh sorry I missed the OP. I believe that the "trick" is to use a larger page size for the one page and cropping it later in a program like photoshop. another work around is to use buff exchange to add a part way off in the distance that will shift the center of focus on the model. Also I know that trevor hasnt been the most active but if you are feeling up to the challenge, I am sure that there is an interface between LPub3D and the Ldview renderer. it might be possible to change the call to tell ldraw to render the whole model regardless of page size. Let me see If I can find something in the LDView call list.

Are you saying that it cuts off and you cannot more to a specific place on the assembly?

BlueBrick has a robust custom part implementation. There are track packs available for TrixBrix and from L-gauge.org

As the webmaster over at Brick Train Depot, we may do something like this on occasion. Thanks for the suggestion!

There is an upper limit in Java especially the older Java that this requires. You likely have too large of a model for the renderer to handle. The only solution to not use another render is to add more ram to your computer.

I know in the past that the old mindstorms system that were used to control various LEGO robotics and automate trains, the voltage was controlled using PWM and it put a lot of stress on the train motors and would wreck them. Just a warning about LEGO motors and PWM.