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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 LD Part Editor for the first time (or you 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 LD Part Editor.
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.
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 |
 |
Opens an existing DAT file |
 |
Undo (max. 100 steps) |
 |
Redo |
 |
Cut |
 |
Copy |
 |
Paste |
 |
Delete |
 |
Toggles Part Error List |
