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This manual does not cover all official LDraw specifications which were ratified by the LDraw Standards Commitee. If you want to start from the beginning, you should probably read the specifications first and gather some experience from the community forums to get started.
Becoming famliar with "part authoring", the creation of parts, is just like playing an instrument: it is a matter of talent, time and effort.
If you want to drop me a note, please create an issue here.
Make sure that you choose the right architecture for your OS and JVM (64bit or 32bit). Does my JVM support 64-bit?
- Download the zip-Archive from here. I recommend to use the 64-bit version, if possible.
- Extract the archive content to the location of your choice
- On windows, double-click "run.bat" to start LPE.
- On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "run.sh" to start LPE.
Please note that this software is in the beta stage. Although, LPE 0.8.0 was carefully tested and developed, there are already known issues for this release. There is a potential risk of data loss.
When you start LDPartEditor for the first time (or you had reset the configuration), you will see the "Welcome Dialog". In this dialog you can specify the path of your LDraw Library, your LDraw Parts Tracker Username and your Real Name.
Note: If you want to contribute to the official LDraw library as a part author you have to agree to release the Work under the Creative Commons Attribution License version 2.0 ("the CCAL"). More info here.
Additionally, you can set your part authoring folder and the folder for the unofficial parts library. The benefits of using a seperate library for unofficial parts are quite self-explanatory: You can't mess up the official library content with LDPartEditor.
Note: In the next release 0.8.1, the LDraw path and the unofficial path folder will be automagically filled if you had set the environment variable %LDRAWDIR% (Windows only)
When all paths are specified, you can hit the OK button. The program will load the primitives first and then it will parse the first line of each official library part. This will take some time and it is slower than parsing the parts.lst file, but it guarantees that you will the see the actual library content.
Pro Tip: The application folder will contain a file named config.gz which stores your personal configuration. You can delete this file if you want to reset your settings. This may be neccessary if the 3D view is broken.
The text editor let you edit the content of a *.dat file.
Pro Tip: You can drag and drop the tabs on other text editor windows and rearrange their order.
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| Alt+Shift+R |
 Edit vertex coordinates ("SyncEdit") |
| Esc | Cancel "SyncEdit" |
| Alt+F | Quick fix all issues in the selection |
| Ctrl+A | Select all |
| Alt+I | Inline selection |
| Alt+C | Round selection |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| Ctrl+Y | Redo |
| Ctrl+S | Save |
A double click on an item in the error list will highlight the line in the text editor.
With a right click, you can open the context menu and trigger a quick fix.
Note: Not all errors and warnings can be fixed automatically. Some of them require human brainpower.
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
 |
Creates a new *.dat file |
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Opens an existing *.dat file |
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Undo (max. 100 steps) |
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Redo |
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Cut |
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Copy |
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Paste |
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Delete |
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Toggles the part error list visibility. |
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Opens a standard search and replace dialog. The dialog uses the text editor tab which was last selected. |
 |
Sorts the text editor content by a custom criteria. You can set the scope to file or selection and you can sort by... 1. ...colour, ascending. 2. ...colour, descending. 3. ...type, ascending. 4. ...type, descending. 5. ...type and then colour, ascending. 6. ...type and then colour, descending. Pro Tip: The sorting process will not change the BFC winding or !TEXMAP definitions. |
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Splits selected quad lines (type 4) into triangles (type 3) |
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Splits all quad lines (type 4) into triangles (type 3) and inlines all rect primitives |
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Removes all duplicates and all invisible optional lines |
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Inlines the selection with partial BFC conformity |
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Inlines the selection recursively with partial BFC conformity and no comments and whitespace ("Deep Inline") |
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Inlines the selection "linked" so that the inlined file can be automatically exported with the Subfile Compiler (see Features for the advanced user) |
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Parses the file for !LPE INLINE meta commands and builds the subfiles automatically (see Features for the advanced user) |
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Rounds the selection.  You can customise the rounding settings by pressing Ctrl and clicking on this button |
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Toggles texmap geometry data meta command for the selected text !: |
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Toggles the comment mask for the selected text |
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Opens a dialog for choosing a colour for the selected text. Pro Tip: You can customise the colour palette by pressing Ctrl and clicking on a colour button |
