roland

Groups are handled as merged parts, so imho it should act the way it acts. I do plan to add some low level access to them in a future version though. Building at strange angles should be avoided by using submodels and if needed anyway ti should be done while a relative grid is active. This way everything will be 'rectangular' in relation to the grid again. See also the basic editing tutorial on my site. LDCad's snapping feature is not at the level of LDD as it does single shape matchings (e.g. one stud against one antistud), it relies on the user to use usefull base rotations during placement/relative grids etc. This is because it is mainly a helper tool at the moment, I do plan extend it to multi shape matching at some point though. I'll look into the external file submodel issue it might be a bug, thanks for your thoughts.

Are you sure Leocad is using the 2014-02 LDraw library as that part depends on it.

Replace the last line with 0 !LDCAD SNAP_CYL [pos=0 20 0] [gender=F] [caps=none] [secs=R 8 2 R 6 16 R 8 2] [grid=C 20 C 20 20 20] This will make it a grid of (sunken) technic pin holes.

I did consider adding this as an option (studs or technic holes) but it kinda got side tracked, I'll put it back in the top 10 todo points. In the meantime you could just place a real base plate at 0,0,0. But if you want a less intrusive one and are open to some configuration adventures you can create a custom part faking it. You will need to use 1.5 alpha 4 though, or wait for 1.5 beta (hopeful in a couple of weeks). Next you register a new library (make a folder containing parts and p subfolders by hand). In the new library part folder create a basePlate20x20.dat file and copy the below content into it. 0 Fake 20x20 base plate. 0 Name: fake20x20base.dat 0 Author: Roland Melkert [roland] 0 !LDRAW_ORG Unofficial_Part 0 !LICENSE Redistributable under CCAL version 2.0 : see CAreadme.txt 0 BFC CERTIFY CCW 2 15 -200 0 -200 200 0 -200 2 15 -200 0 -180 200 0 -180 2 15 -200 0 -160 200 0 -160 2 15 -200 0 -140 200 0 -140 2 15 -200 0 -120 200 0 -120 2 15 -200 0 -100 200 0 -100 2 15 -200 0 -80 200 0 -80 2 15 -200 0 -60 200 0 -60 2 15 -200 0 -40 200 0 -40 2 15 -200 0 -20 200 0 -20 2 15 -200 0 0 200 0 0 2 15 -200 0 20 200 0 20 2 15 -200 0 40 200 0 40 2 15 -200 0 60 200 0 60 2 15 -200 0 80 200 0 80 2 15 -200 0 100 200 0 100 2 15 -200 0 120 200 0 120 2 15 -200 0 140 200 0 140 2 15 -200 0 160 200 0 160 2 15 -200 0 180 200 0 180 2 15 -200 0 200 200 0 200 2 15 -200 0 -200 -200 0 200 2 15 -180 0 -200 -180 0 200 2 15 -160 0 -200 -160 0 200 2 15 -140 0 -200 -140 0 200 2 15 -120 0 -200 -120 0 200 2 15 -100 0 -200 -100 0 200 2 15 -80 0 -200 -80 0 200 2 15 -60 0 -200 -60 0 200 2 15 -40 0 -200 -40 0 200 2 15 -20 0 -200 -20 0 200 2 15 0 0 -200 0 0 200 2 15 20 0 -200 20 0 200 2 15 40 0 -200 40 0 200 2 15 60 0 -200 60 0 200 2 15 80 0 -200 80 0 200 2 15 100 0 -200 100 0 200 2 15 120 0 -200 120 0 200 2 15 140 0 -200 140 0 200 2 15 160 0 -200 160 0 200 2 15 180 0 -200 180 0 200 2 15 200 0 -200 200 0 200 0 !LDCAD SNAP_CYL [gender=M] [caps=one] [secs=R 6 4] [grid=C 20 C 20 20 20] After you restart LDCad do a search for 'fake' and it should show up (might be an apparently empty cell). Place the part a 0,0,0 (or anywhere followed by shift+c). It will show a 20x20 grid of invisible studs. And it will not respond to (re)selection as it has only lines. http://www.melkert.n...el/fakeBase.png If you don't want to see the grid lines just remove all the "2 ...." lines from the .dat file. Hope this is somewhat clear, helpful :) edit: You can also just put the .dat into your official library's parts folder.

LDD uses OpenGL so it doesn't matter which DirectX version you are running. You could try cleaning the registry as it might still contain some windows 8 ldd settings. I don't know which keys you have to look trough though.

Glad to hear it's working now. I don't pack the library because it changes now and then, it is also shared between all the LDraw tools you might use on your pc. Currently there is only one main program window, and all the 3D (including the sub windows) must reside in it. You can however resize the program window it self to span multiple monitors but it probably only works if it's a single (dual head) graphics card and not two different ones. I do hope to add multiple main window support at some point though.

I don't pack the library with the LDCad setup, it must always be installed separately (unless you used the LDraw AIOI?)

The font messages are normal but it seems it can only load a handfull of files from the LDraw library. I think you might have a old/wrong library installed maybe even just a patch as all part that do load seem to be of 2005. You can check by looking at the amount of files in the parts folder, there should be about 11.000 of them. The correct library zip is here: http://www.ldraw.org/download/get/complete/88.html

If the folder pointer to contains the parts and p and folders which in turn hold 1000's of .dat's all should indeed be ok, unless there are some weird user read rights active. Have you tried putting the complete.zip contents in e.g. my documents instead? Could you send me the contents of the "%appdata%\LDCad\logs" folder as those files should shine some light on what's going on during loading. An alternative could be using the new 1.5 alpha version so you could try using complete.zip without having to unpacking it.

Depending on what kind of baseplate you need creating one for LDraw might be very easy as the format works with subparts and primitives. If you want some odd shaped thing you might need to use something like blender first and convert it to LDraw as a subpart and then combine it with the more normal LEGO shapes into a new part later. Or you might try the specific LDraw part editor (findable here: http://forums.ldraw.org/list.php?24) but it isn't beginners stuff though :)

You could also open the top level file, put it in nested mode then select all and copy it to the clipboard (if asked don't let it move the main line or compensate for positional/rotational data etc). After that you can paste it in e.g. notepad and it will be all flat resulting in a single ldr no matter how many files / levels the original uses. You need to do this in LDCad 1.4b though as it's kinda broken in the 1.5 alpha's.

There is also the somewhat similar VEX system (http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexiq) Actually when you think about it the modern technic Lego is somewhat like plastic Meccano .

It is probably futile to get a very expensive graphics card just for using LDD. This because the 'extra' hardware you pay for on those cards is not or hardly used by LDD as it uses (compared to modern games) very basic features. So you'll be ok with a low mid range card, or if you also want to use it with causal games for about 5 years or so consider a high mid range one. I also disagree on the AMD driver thing, I've been using all AMD pc's for over 15 years now and never had any real problems.

I've uploaded 1.5 Alpha 4 it introduces external file monitoring and a boatload of bugfixes. I've also added a setup script to the Linux version, which tries to integrate the program with your desktop. This script is somewhat experimental so use it with care. Any suggestions / feedback on it from the Linux community will be highly appreciated The new version is here: http://www.melkert.net/LDCad/nextVer

Sounds like you are selecting / duplicating the rubber band 'skin' itself instead of the control point. Are you sure you selected the center cross (turns light blue/purple) and not the band which goes around it. If the cross isn't visible (in nested mode) hide the wheel partlike the advanced editing tutorial describes.

I too would like to see a proper big experimental car (chassis) with an on scale engine using ether normal bricks or new piston parts.

Are you sure the gears aren't stuck or something.

Maybe a nice 4000 pcs Porsche, so I can buy it for my own midlife crisis (I'm from 1977 too )

It just started crashing when closing LDView 4.1 for me too (after reapplying default settings I think), but it still doesn't crash in 4.2 beta 1 so it's probably a known/fixed bug.

Placing just a 58120.dat in a ldr seems to work just fine for me in LDView 4.1 and 4.2 beta 1, I didn't place it with mlcad though but that shouldn't matter. Are you sure the test file only has a "1 71 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 58120.dat" line in it and not additional invisible metas etc?

I've extend the advanced editing page with text about using rubber bands and (pneumatic) hoses. Please let me know if this iis somewhat understandable or needs more details etc.

I've added documentation on nested editing in the advanced editing page hope that clears things up for you.

Glad you liking it and more features are comming in 1.5 and 1.6 :) I think you got them switched name based (SPN is the limited one) as the displayed name is the one currently active. The 90deg limitation I copied from LDD as the spin mode is intended for people comfortable with the LDD camera control. the ins key thing is probably the result of me being left handed so I never considered your issue. The spacebar is currently assigned to mul/single view (if splits are active) switch. I've got hotkey reassignment planned for 1.6 though as part of my macro/scripting extension plans. Do'n worry about it, I welcome all ideas/suggestions depending on the feature it could take awhile to appear in a version though. Thanks.

Bit offtopic but there are some (compiler) tricks to get it up to 3GiB.Ontopic To see if the cpu is the bottle neck you could try opening the taskmanager (right click on startmenu bar) and see if the cpu graph of (one of the) core(s) is at 100% or not during rotating/part adding etc. Graphics wise 512MB should be more then enough as LDD models don't use many textures etc.

If you have 4GB getting more ram just for LDD won't do anything as LDD is a 32 bit program (can't use more then ~3GB)