Lego Digital Designer

[Zidonaro]

So... When will they update LDD? I mean, I think the last update was last year, and we're done with 2015 and they still haven't any bionicle pieces from 2015! Does someone know when LDD is normally updated?

[Naota Takizawa]

No one is getting paid to update LDD, so anyone who was working on it has no incentive to work on it anymore & it won't be updated for the rest of our lives.

[Spiffy247]

No one is getting paid to update LDD, so anyone who was working on it has no incentive to work on it anymore & it won't be updated for the rest of our lives.

You make me sad. We need to pay them in waffles.

[Lyichir]

All we've heard is that LDD is not a "top priority" anymore. Whether we'll ever get more updates at this point is unknown, since things like Lego Worlds seem to be what the LDD team has been reassigned to.

It stinks, because LDD used to be pretty much the best Lego CAD program for Bionicle and Hero Factory, since parts were generally added promptly and the hinge mechanics, while not perfect, allowed for easy and intuitive posing. But it's been more than a year since LDD updated, and I'm tired of holding out hope for an update that might never come.

 

By the way, this should probably go in Lego Discussion, not Bionicle Discussion.

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

hm, idk, we got an update for all the 2014 Chima and HF parts p proper, and, unliek retro bonkles, these are current and up-to-date parts, so, i expect, in good time, we will get the 2015 parts added to the LDDatabase. o:

 

(shush, i'm an optimist.)

[believe victims]

No one is getting paid to update LDD, so anyone who was working on it has no incentive to work on it anymore & it won't be updated for the rest of our lives.

 

I'm not sure if it's accurate to say nobody was getting paid to do it; if all the progress since Factory was discontinued have been by the good graces of programmers working for free, I'm surprised we got as many updates as we did! Programming is not easy, and I know few who would do so much for free.

 

Now, what is true is that LEGO, as a company, was not making money from it anymore. That makes sense as a reason for them to shove it down the priority list; why put resources (like money for programmers) into something that isn't pulling any kind of profit? Obviously, they saw a benefit to it for this long, but now they have other things to put that time and money into that probably have more of a benefit to them as a company.

 

I agree with Lyichir that that's a right shame. I use LDD to build sets I'm interested in sometimes, get an idea of how they're made. Other times, I use it to get an idea of how something I want to try building could work, and sometimes I just use it to build a mock-up, of MOCs or of possible improvements to sets. It's a shame there are no updates on the horizon to aid in that.

[Dallior]

What really stinks is that there's no W10 patch yet, so all of us with a W10 computer are greeted to the LDD with a glitchy screen and a crashing computer.

[believe victims]

What really stinks is that there's no W10 patch yet, so all of us with a W10 computer are greeted to the LDD with a glitchy screen and a crashing computer.

 

Really? My computer runs Windows 10 (I'm assuming that's what W10 means), and it runs just fine for me.

[Dallior]

Huh. It must be something I did with it earlier (accidentally downgraded from DirectX 12 to DirectX 10 for all you computer nerds out there).

[Spiffy247]

We need to build OUR OWN LDD! With Blackjack! And Waffles! 

 

Nah, forget the LDD and the Blackjack!

Edited December 26, 2015 by Spiffy247

[Zidonaro]

I didn't know TT games was the one who handled the program. I've heard there's a fanmade program which is similiar to LDD, but I don't know its name....

[evil_jaga_genius]

I didn't know TT games was the one who handled the program. I've heard there's a fanmade program which is similiar to LDD, but I don't know its name....

That's probably LDraw, it's a free/open-source library of bricks.  LeoCAD is an extension of that, and that's what I use a lot of the time.  Here it is: http://leocad.org/trac

 

Be warned, it doesn't have CCBS parts and is seriously lacking in Bionicle (G1) parts.  It did have enough for me to make a decent mockup of a Matoran, but that's about it.  However it does have the cool feature of being able to export to 3D model formats (.obj and .3ds, I think), something LDD lacks.

 

Speaking of which, I think Maphrox said he had written some code to extract 3D models from LDD, any idea where that might have gone?

[Lyichir]

I didn't know TT games was the one who handled the program. I've heard there's a fanmade program which is similiar to LDD, but I don't know its name....

TT Games is not responsible for LDD. However, Lego Worlds is developed by both TT Games and Lego's own internal staff.