hrontos

Easiet way to get to right folder is to type %appdata% in windows explorer addres bar. Look for the LEGO Company folder there. Or type %appdata%\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer.

Ba I think that the background of these images is set as transparent in png, so display color may depend on yor graphic software. Some of the picture editors may loose this transparency information or replace it by some color.

Just take a screenshot using LDD function "Take a screenshot" - CTRL+K.

It is interesting see how the db.lif works like magnet to many people. Are you really interested to add something into LDD? I mean, do you have anything prepared - like decoration, brick geometry or something else? Or are you just curious? How would you then share the model with others, when they do not have your modifications? Or it is enough for you to have it just for your personal use? It quite easy to have custom brick database with custom decorations. But it is probably not the right way. May be we can ask TLG to put something there for us. I mean, if they do not have the time to add new decorations or correct connection points of some bricks or make flex part really flex (these three types are the easiest), we can try prepare it and we will see, if TLG will accept it.

Y Yes, rename or delete should be enough. When new version is installed, LDD generates new db.lif. When trying to return to previous version, if the db.lif is not deleted manually, bricks. look like in new version. So when I needed to return to 4.1.7, I deleted the db.lif file, copied program files from the version 4.1.7 (including the Assets.lif file) and the bricks were the 4.1.7. Without removing the db.lif, it looked like 4.1.8. You said the you copied the 4.1.7 program files so the delete of db.lif file is the only step you missed.

I checked the LDD decorations reference file and I found these new decorations (they are shown on the tiles, some of them applied to bodies and heads). I hope somebody knows where they offically belong and will correct the LXF file. I updated also the funny minifigure bodies from the original posts. In real life we wear relly strange t-shirts, so why should not the minifigures? May be somebody needs hooligans instead of traditional robbers for the police scene and t-shirts with bones, spiders and skulls will be usefull. Pizza boy also can wear pizza t-shirt. Here is the LXF file containing all bricks that can be decorated. So if you know which decoration out of those all bellongs there, please, help. And here are the all decorations available in LDD 4.1.8 on tiles: and the LXF file

I am sorry, I posted it here, since I did not considered them to be good enough for the reference topic. There are few more decorations available (there should be around 350+ in total). I will post them on 2x2 tiles, we can check then easily where they belong. There are far more surfaces that can be decorated available then they are now accessible through LDD decoration tool. Even a battery box can be decorated. I hope that this means that in some near future releases TLG will release apropriate decorations for them.

You have to rename db.lif file stored in AppData folder (the same folder where preferences.ini file is).

Just in case somebody would find usefull minifigure bodies with all available decorations, here is the LXF file.

It is not about compression. Taking into account that each file on disk consumes at least 4KB (or whatever cluster size you have), large file is much better, than having thousands (4500+) of files having 2KB or less each, because each would consume at least 4KB of disk space so it would waste quite a lot. Yes, it could be compressed, but it is actually nice, that it is uncompressed. In Windows there is a possibility to map a memory to a disk file instead of pagefile, so portions of any file can be access just like the portions of memory. For example the XML parser can directly access it. If it would be compressed, it would require reading and decompressing somewhere else into memory. But this is a different discussion since this not a programming forum. We can argue how much lif is closed. It is enough closed for a user and enough open for a programmer. It is not designed to be edited by anybody, stealing TLG intelectual property out of it or making invalid changes and complaining at TLG. But it is enough open to be read and used by somebody, who is really interested in.

On one side I agree, that fixed size of design palette is design flaw. On the other hand, when reading all these and other complains, it looks like we forgot what is the purpose of this software. I am pretty sure, if TLG would like to make a perfect LEGO building software they could do it and sell it. But purpose of LDD is completely different. It is just a tool to support real LEGO play. I have 6 years old son and he can use it. It was designed for kids and it perectly fits for the purpose. We are using it far beyond it's original purpose. I mean, what sense of play it has for kids to build virtual model of several thousands of bricks? Spending hours at computer. It is just as silly as running in front of your TV with xbox and kinect instead of playing real football. I want them to do real builds and to play real football. I appreciate a lot from TLG that they published design of the bricks which cannot be bought and therefore are not making real money for TLG. They invest some extra effort just for the LEGO fan comunity. Yes, the UI can be improved. We can push it to Photoshop style, with many toolbars and buttons. But what would the 8 or 10 years old kid do? Did you noticed how simple the sample models are? This gives you a clear estimation on who is the target audience. TLG is mainly toy supplier, so they have no reason to create profi version of LDD. They want to focus on the toys and not on the software. It looks like we are trying to race cross coutry motocross race on something which designed as perfect bicycle for young kids. I remember the very first versions of the LDD and we have to admit, that if was really pushed a lot towards the wishes of adult LDD users while still keeping it usable also for 6 year old kid. We can discuss also the huge lif files. It saves a disk space comparing to thousands of xml files. It can be mapped to memory, so it is accessed directly without completely being read while still giving the ability to use xml processing tools. I consider it very nice that they keep the brick definition open to average programmer giving some oportunities to push it beyond the original purpose. Binary format would be closed and useless. If the UI will improve, it would be nice. I can live without lassoo and without mirror tools. With real bricks it also doesn't work. But I want them to continue supplying more bricks and improve the building instructions. This not in contradiction with original purpose and helps also kids to build models using wider palete of bricks with better instructions.

4958: Monster Dino- Theme: Creator - LXF file Errors: - 1x Electric, Sound Brick 2 x 4 x 2 with Light Bluish Gray Top and Roaring Animal Sound (Set 4958) - replaced with sound brick with motorcycle sound Extra: This LXF contains original building instructions (step numbers does not match, since LDD supports only 3 levels of BI steps and original uses more). Just switch to building instructions view and you will see. This is a nice one, I wish there were more such sets.

The file really contains red bricks (if you open it outside LDD, material is 21, which is red color, others have 24 which is yellow color), but when you open it in LDD, LDD treats it as any other file - it means, it displays warning and red bricks are removed and therefore not seen. This means, that if the LDD Manager can be used to modify the UnplaceableBrick file, it is usefull to remove yellow bricks to see the red ones when the modified UnplaceableBrick file will be opened. If the red bricks conflict with each other, the whole process has to be repeated after LDD creates new UnplaceableBrick file.

I am happy to see things in "True color". But sometimes, it would be nice to move things just by power of thought.

Luckily, the absence of retracted LAs was not a problem of how LAs are modelled in LDD, it was only problem of missing functionality in LDD user interface (there is nothing similar like hinge button that could be used to retract LAs or compress shock absorbers). So I modified the LXF file and changed position of LA "piston" to make it look retracted. May be TLG will add function to do such operations directly in LDD without editing the LXF file.

Yes, I will share it. But most of the work will be still on model designer, because he has to create proper groups and subgroups just like I did it. It is much more simple when just copying instructions - mainly because LDD only adds groups and subgroups to the end of list and you cannot insert into middle, so if you forget a step to insert it means move all groups that should be after the forgotten step. But I will support also this operation outside LDD, because it is faster. I do not expect TLG will extend the grouping functionality, since they probably treat groups as unordered sets. Concerning the 3 levels: during my testing it looked like BIs can have only main steps, each main step can have substeps and each this substep can have substeps. These second substeps cannot have another third level of substeps. LDD either crashed or regenerated instruction with more levels.

Yes, the instructions were generated outside LDD. I have a very simple tool that uses groups and subgroups supported by by LDD to create instruction steps and substeps. Take a look and see the groups and subgroups in this file. As you see these instructions have all steps using the same view. Next step is to add automatic proper view determining algorithm with possibility to edit the view manually. If we do not want to cheat and use the brick geometry provided by TLG in LDD, each brick is represnted by only one point in 3D space, it is sometimes tricky and calculated view is completely wrong. And another unpleasant feature of LDD is that BI are deleted when model changes.

8265: Front Loader- Theme: Technic - LXF file Errors: none known - except for missing stickers. Extra: This LXF contains original building instructions (step numbers does not match, since LDD supports only 3 levels of BI steps and original uses more). Just switch to building instructions view and you will see. Building this model in LDD was more tricky than expected, because it contains lot of parts sliding freely on axles, so proper alignment is more dificult than in case of build using pins (the middle and the rear part I had to rebuild twice to get proper alignment). I recomend to anybody doing studless builds in LDD to build some main frame of the model using pins (because they snap and do not slide) and only after that fill it with other parts, otherwise it may happen, that it will not be possible to add some parts that require precise alignment. My second recomendation is: do not use hinge align tool on technic models. At least not when parts are attached main body of model. LDD during the hinge align operation tries to move and rotate more parts then you expect and as a result some micro moves occurr (like in my case, some angles were not 90 degrees but 89.93 or 90.07 degrees and this small difference accumulated and resulted in missalignment which prevented attachment parts connected by pins). Similar error as in this post. And the third recomendation: if the bricks just do not want to snap in and connect, connect them in diferent order if possible or connect smaller or larger structures. LDD is doing some floating point math to determine position and connection points. Since floating point operations are not accurate, it makes some difference when they are done in different order, so reordering of parts sometimes helps.

Thank you to all of you, I finally managed to find the reason of the problem. I noticed that db.lif file has 0 bytes. LDD could not create it during first startup, because it is created in the user profile directory and file was too big. Actually LDD did not provided any usefull information, only messagebox with message as I have written: An error has occurred while launching LDD. See the read me file for help, or go to http://ldd.lego.com/support/ And then it ended. But after fixing profile space problem, it works without problems.

It does not start on Windows XP SP3. It logs following error: ThreadID: 1432 Fac: 39196574788 Value: 8 Severity: errSeverityError Type: errTypeApplication Ident: 541869124 Handled: false Description: An error has occurred while launching LDD. See the read me file for help, or go to http://ldd.lego.com/support/ The version 3.1.3 was working, the 4.1.7 was never installed on that computer. It works without problems on Windows 7 64bit. Do you have any experience with 4.1.8 on Windows XP?

Actually I am working on an XSLT transformation, that will transform the groups and subgroups into steps and substeps, since I do not expect to have solution for manual instruction from the TLG very soon and this one is really simple, however it has several drawbacks: 1. the view point. XSLT cannot determine proper camera view. Thats why I would be happy, if LDD could save also the modified view into BIs. 2. Modification of model results in deleted BIs. They can be regenerated by the XLST again, but if the LDD will save those BI camera views, these will not be preserved. The only solution would be to backup the model with proper views. And use the backup version of BIs during the XSLT processing. I have read your BI recomendations with Word document and they are really nice instructions. The Ctrl+K solution works nicely also with the original instructions, simply replace the LDD BIs image with your screenshot and the better view will appear in the HTML. Since LDD names BIs files by step numbers, and also screenshots are numbered it should be quite easy to just go through instructions, generate proper sceenshot for each step and then use some multirename tool to rename files with screenshots according to BI conventions. But all these approaches require a distribution of huge set of files, unlike the possibility to Save the modified BI view in LDD reduces the distibution to LXF file itself. That's why I consider this simple feature as important one. I am not asking the TLG for animations or other nice, but dificult to implement solutions with very limited target audience. I will share "the groups to BIs transformation" solution with step by step how to use it as soon as it will be ready. I have build the 8265 set in LDD exactly according to original BIs and groupped it and subgroupped so that "the groups to BIs transformation" should produce almost the same steps. HTML instructions can be also processed by XSLT to get them to some other, more paginated or differently navigated format. But this transformation will come later.

Yes, it would be a bit redundant, on the other hand, almost every function you can control only by mouse (without keyboard), only for panning the Shift is needed. But since the scroll wheel can be used for zooming, when rotated, may be panning could assigned to clicking the scroll wheel, since it can be clicked. May be this will be considered more as a bug report and not as a feature request. LDD support different views of model in building instruction. This means, that for every BI step, LDD generates also camera position and stores this info in the LXF file. So every step can use different view of the model. Problem is, that the change of camera view (in design and also in BI view mode) is not treated as model change, and Save function is not accessible. What I would like to have in next LDD patch is that change of view (at least in the BI view mode) would be treated as change and LDD will modify the original camera view asociated with the BI step. The key point is to be able to review the BIs and improve the bad camera views before generating the BIs for the model. I think this feature is not so dificult to implement, because the file format already supports it and it could help also the original targer audience of LDD - kids using it in DesignByMe mode.

8258 Crane Truck- Theme: Technic - LXF file Errors: •1x Light Bluish Gray Electric, Pole Reverser / Polarity Switch missing •1x Black String, Cord Medium Thickness 200cm missing •1x Black Technic Hook Large Metal missing (axle for attaching the string attached directly to arm) •3x Technic, Gear 24 Tooth Clutch replaced by Technic, Gear 24 Tooth (New Style with Single Axle Hole) in white color •2x Red Hose, Soft Axle 12 do not bend in LDD. Replaced by Red Hose, Soft Axle 11 •No stickers.

Compressed shock absorbers (various types): ShockAbsorbers.lxf Retracted linear actuators: LAs.lxf

Thank you, I am sorry, I updated the file in the mean time, to include more shock absorber types (I am not sure about the colors, but anybody can color it).