[KEY TOPIC] LDD feature requests

[Brickdoctor]

It would be too complex.

Though so.

[BrickWild]

Maybe in future there could be custom fan-made BrickArms or Brickforge elements which you can use as 'plug-in' data.

But neither BrickArms nor BrickForge would have an affiliation with or take endorsement from TLG.

Edited October 6, 2010 by BrickWild

[Raul]

Hello there Raul and welcome to the LDD forum.

I've got to be honest - I don't understand what you mean with your wish list and "more generic bricks". Do you mean that those brick should be in DesignByMe?

Thank you Superkalle, With "Generic" I'd like to say "for general use", almost like "Basic Bricks". Thouse Bricks should not miss FOR PURCHASE easily in LEGO.com and not in the LU mode. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Zerobricks]

PLEASE add 5x11 and 5x7 technic frames, since you added all other new bricks in LDD 4.0. Thank you!

EDIT also engine block is missing, but there are rods cams and cylinders... WTF?

Edited October 28, 2010 by Zblj

[Daedalus304]

I know as far as hoping for old bricks go, this is probably a useless toss-in to an already large pile; but I'd really like it if we could get some of the pieces from the Rock Raiders and Insectoids themes. I'm not expecting the extra special stuff like the light bricks - but the Chassis/Cockpit/Rollcage and the Insect legs from their respective themes would be very nice to have. The Mud Guard piece from the RR is in there so I'm a bit confused why the rest are absent.

[Randal]

"Build a face"... instead of (or in addition to)standard face selection. I'd love to be able to mix and match eyes and mouths. I realize I might be alone in this, as I use LDD in an extended capacity. I still build mocs, but not as often as I pose characters.

Edited November 6, 2010 by Randal

[pbk420]

"Build a face"... instead of (or in addition to)standard face selection. I'd love to be able to mix and match eyes and mouths. I realize I might be alone in this, as I use LDD in an extended capacity. I still build mocs, but not as often as I pose characters.

Your definatly not alone id love more customizable minifigs. Not just the heads but the torsos hips and legs as well. I seem to spend alot of time making characters as well.

Maybe in future there could be custom fan-made BrickArms or Brickforge elements which you can use as 'plug-in' data.

But neither BrickArms nor BrickForge would have an affiliation with or take endorsement from TLG.

Not sure if that would work for LDD since its an official lego product but maybe it would be possible for the MLCAD/LDRAW program. I have some minifig torsos in that program that someone made and lets just say makes the female minifigs more female looking.

[Shroud]

I would love a Mirror function!

To be able to select a bundle or bricks, hit the button and it creates a copy that's a mirror image. This would be such a great time saver for my big project

[ghyde]

I've got a few feature requests of my own, like the following:

1. Save current window position, palette settings, and default window positions for pull-out sidebars that show on the different themes.

Basically, I need to setup LDD all the time to the way I like it, and the brick count at the bottom doesn't display unless I use the expand window button in the Windows gadgets at the top right corner to properly expand LDD to fill the available screen size.

If LDD could, at the click of a button, remember the default palette and window settings, and only expand the right-side "DesignByMe" sidebar when the content there has been updated to some new content, I would be able to work much faster in LDD. New content could be considered as any content that the user has not seen for a few days to a week, depending on how visible you want new content to be to the user. I'd also like for new content to be loaded into an entirely separate window, as it simply won't fit properly on my screen here and it's rather awkward to have to expand my desktop size large enough to see the new content. I'd much prefer for it to open in a regular browser window, if that can be done!

2. Implement a query tool that looks like a ? mark and when selected, will tell you the name and give usage help (if needed) for gadgets that the LDD designers use for whatever you click on. Works on anything from a gadget or pane in the LDD window to a part in the building area. For a part, it should give the item ID and color in a description box at bottom, and it should be programmed so that it can be toggled to the desired level of detail wanted about parts.

I'd really like to know what LDD's designers call some of these gadgets, please help me use the right terms here! Maybe kids don't want to know the names or functions, and just want to have fun, but some of these names are not immediately obvious in a graphical environment.

It could be all-inclusive and also show us part names and colors as well as names and functions of gadgets on the LDD screen.

3. A much better part alignment helper. Hinges are a pain at the moment, if you want to build something with 1x4 hinge plates, and make an enclosed section of your model, this is almost impossible to align properly.

Hinge align tool is great but would be even better if multiple sequential part green arrow positioning indicators could be specified, and impossible selections should be auto-detected and prevented from becoming a problem in the first place.

4. The flex tool is great, but can this be expanded to include a tread/chain building ability that works for chain links, tread links, and any combination of the above? Perhaps it could include a way of dragging an extendable loop around some aligned sprocket or gear parts, and tell the user how many of this would be needed to complete a loop with a particular element combination that is selected beforehand?

5. How about the ability to drag a string of connected parts - especially tread links or hinge bricks/plates - around, and have them connect to one another if drawn close enough, and within connection tolerances?

Edited December 8, 2010 by ghyde

[pacc]

a) Placing parts is a bit of magic and works great!

But moving a small step can make the part jump large steps or move to the horizon:

Suggestion: Pressing shift while placing a part will only allow it to move in small increments or by studs surrounding it.

b) Option to continue to place the last part while in clone mode.

[Superkalle]

a) Placing parts is a bit of magic and works great!

But moving a small step can make the part jump large steps or move to the horizon:

Suggestion: Pressing shift while placing a part will only allow it to move in small increments or by studs surrounding it.

b) Option to continue to place the last part while in clone mode.

Can you explain b) at bit more - how do you mean?

[legolijntje]

Can you explain b) at bit more - how do you mean?

I think he means that if you use the clone tool, you don't have to press on the brick that you want to copy everytime, but that ldd is doing it automatically.

[Brickdoctor]

I think he means that if you use the clone tool, you don't have to press on the brick that you want to copy everytime, but that ldd is doing it automatically.

But then clicking again would place the same piece instead of cloning a new piece. That could get annoying.

[Taseden]

1) Be able to toggle the build grid on/off so you can view the under side of your model easier.

2) LDD compiles an easy to get and read list of the parts it removes due to it being illegal when you re-open a model. And possibly highlight the intersecting parts in red that made the part illegal so it is easy to fix the problem area. I know there is a psuedo way to do this, but it requires you to do all this other stuff not built into the actual interface of LDD.

3) Also since we can now enter in actual degree values, being able to rotate a part freely would be awesome. Like a 360 circular motion too kind of like the viewer mouse control but for parts.

Edited December 13, 2010 by Taseden

[captain jari]

I've noticed that LDD will render all the bricks in the brick palet and stor then in the ram, as you continue to expand the brick categories this can easily exceed my ram. After your ram is filled up LDD will start using swap on my hard drive wich is much slower, this quickly crashes LDD. I thing they should have better garbage collection to clean LDD's memory usage.

When I tried this on my other much slower computer but with a solid state drive it didn't crash even will all of the bricks in posible stored so it's definitely a memory management bug and not a cpu power issue.

(the two computers where a 2.93GHz i7, 4GB ram, ATI 5750, 1TB HDD vs 1.83GHz Core 2 duo, 2GB ram, NIVIDIA 9400M, 128GB SSD)

I would also like for there to be a way to change the center of the modle, because right now it is really hard to make large designs.

Edited December 13, 2010 by captain jari

[prateek]

I would also like for there to be a way to change the center of the modle, because right now it is really hard to make large designs.

Shift + Right Click

[Brickdoctor]

Shift + Right Click

Doesn't just plain right-click do that? Or is there a difference between centering the model and the view?

[prateek]

Doesn't just plain right-click do that? Or is there a difference between centering the model and the view?

If you hold Shift and Right click and drag your mouse around, you can pan around the model on one axis, but if you just right click, the screen will centre on the piece you clicked. Try it out.

[Bojan Pavsic]

- Show bricks (as opposite of the Hide bricks function)

It's really annoying if you hide some of the groups then you want to make a tiny little group visible again... Right now you have to Show all and then go hide everything else again. To a degree the Invert Selection function in LDD 4.0 helps here.

- Min / Max distance camera clipping / culling mode

Make everything visible, that's between the min and the max distance from the camera. Why? You have a LARGE project going on, with max distance, you could hide the bricks that are too far thus useless (but you don't want to go hiding that all the time - after every save).

Min distance is very usefull if a brick is too close to the camera, it blocks your vision. For instance, you're making a house, you build the walls, roof, then you go do the insides. Right now you need to hide a wall or something, to be able to put bricks inside. With Min distance, you could come close to the wall (but the camera still outside of the house - thus at a usefull distance) but the walls would dissapear, because they're out of range (to close).

- Multiple instance allowed

Just the possibility (.ini file parameter or something) to disable the 1 running copy only allowed.

- Toogle grid

Nothing more to say here.

- Lockable groups

Groups that could be locked - If you click on any part of the group, the whole group gets selected. You can't work with separate parts of that group unless you unlock it - Making parts that are not in LDD from other bricks and using them as 1 item.

That's all for now...

[Brickdoctor]

If you hold Shift and Right click and drag your mouse around, you can pan around the model on one axis, but if you just right click, the screen will centre on the piece you clicked. Try it out.

But when I just click and drag a plain right-click, that's what happens. Let me check...

Nevermind, plain drag right-click rotates, and drag-shift-right-click pans. But I still see no difference between the two without dragging.

[prateek]

But when I just click and drag a plain right-click, that's what happens. Let me check...

Nevermind, plain drag right-click rotates, and drag-shift-right-click pans. But I still see no difference between the two without dragging.

That's what I meant. Sorry for the confusion

[Superkalle]

- Show bricks (as opposite of the Hide bricks function)

It's really annoying if you hide some of the groups then you want to make a tiny little group visible again... Right now you have to Show all and then go hide everything else again. To a degree the Invert Selection function in LDD 4.0 helps here.

I agree completely. The way it works now is completely un-intuitive. Like when you hit ctrl-z to undo that you hid one brick to many, but then it undoes not the hiding, but the last brick placement. And also the problem that if you save the file while in "hide" mode, it unhides all bricks.

- Toogle grid

Yes, yes. Or at least make the grid less dominant (back to the 2.x version).

- Lockable groups

Groups that could be locked - If you click on any part of the group, the whole group gets selected. You can't work with separate parts of that group unless you unlock it - Making parts that are not in LDD from other bricks and using them as 1 item.

I guess the current group function was really easy to implement, that's why they did it like it is. Also, with lockable groups you have this issue of handling what to do if you want to add more bricks to the group. It can quickly become complicated. I'm not saying it's unsolveable, just that it requires some more thinking.

[Bojan Pavsic]

I guess the current group function was really easy to implement, that's why they did it like it is. Also, with lockable groups you have this issue of handling what to do if you want to add more bricks to the group. It can quickly become complicated. I'm not saying it's unsolveable, just that it requires some more thinking.

Well, that isn't really an issue. You can still select the new bricks that you want to add and press the "add to the group" button on the group toolbar. But the idea behind lockable groups would be to use the groups as "new bricks" - Like the bug with the new M motor - you can just make a replica with normal parts and lock it, so everytime you move one part from the group, the whole "motor" moves i.e. the group acts as a single part.

[Calabar]

A pair of feature from my "wishlist":

- Tabbed wiewport

In order to work easily with more than one model. The difficulty in this situation could be implement this feature but not slow down LDD viewport.

- Better selection tools

Selection tools are limited and limiting! I'd like to combine tools (using checkbox in the tool list for example) and use intuitive ctrl/alt keys to add/subtract parts selected with those tools and selection rectangle (now ctrl works with single bricks only).

- Better group functions, and particularly a "work with this group" function: all pieces added will be added to the selected group automatically, without the need to select and add in a second moment.

A "group bar" placed under the viewport would be a useful add too, and will allow an easy management of groups during the building stage.

Naming groups could be useful too.

Finally, an easy way to create a "parent group" from a set selected groups.

Edited December 14, 2010 by Calabar

[BasOne]

What i would realy, realy like is a 'mirror tool', i like building spacehips/planes and sometimes make very complicated wing designs, mirroring the wing can be a pain in the buttocks.

As for the rest i think anyone that's ever used a 3D drawing/animation package wants the same, locked groups, named groups, hide/unhide by group name etc etc.

But for younger users it might get very complicated very fast.

I'd like to see LDD do a 'beginners' mode, pretty much as LDD is now, easy to use and accesible, but an option in the preferences to switch to 'expert' mode for more experienced and older users, with more advanced building tools and options.

The fully animated 3d bricks in the brick selection window might be fun, but it takes up computing power that could be used to create bigger moddels, and is imho an uneccesary addition.

So an option to turn that off to save processor power would be nice too.