What's new in BlockCAD?

Version 1.8 - 1999-08-11

• New pieces: castle wall combos, a lot of other pieces (go take a look)

• Piece editor: studs follow the top/bottom polygon, face sorting is much better (but not perfect) , mirroring, rotation.
• Minor adjustments on shading
• 'Delete'-key deletes all selected pieces
• Introduced the 'step' facility. You can associate all the blocks with a 'step number', and the cycle through the steps, and only see the blocks with the current, or lower, step number. This can be used for building instructions. It is still in early beta, so expect some problems J
• Changed the directory structure: all .dat files containing part data now resides in the PARTS directory (so they are not confused with Ldraw .dat files!)
• Distribute as self-extracting .exe file, to make it easier to get the directory structure correct.

Version 1.7 - 1999-04-10

• New pieces: tail fin, grille.
• Shading - Now you can get a much more realistic look!
• Possibility to move the 'light source' for shading
• Background pictures - any .BMP can be used as background

Version 1.6 - 1999-02-20

• New pieces: small wings, some panels, minifigs.
• Possibility to select subassemblies visually ('Combos').
• Selected pieces can be saved as a Subassembly.
• More pieces are exported correctly to LDRAW, POV
• The Advanced Toolbox gives some control over the LDRAW export. You can set the identity of an individual piece, thereby LDRAW-ing pieces which are not available in BlockCAD. Just choose a BlockCAD piece with the correct size, and set the identity.
• Experimental version (in the Advanced Toolbox) of adjusting the conversion values for LDRAW export.
• Minor changes in the visual presentation - pieces which do not have a corresponding LDRAW piece are shown with red text, the others with black.
• New choice under Options (the Gear): Hints, which turns on small descriptions which will be shown when You hold the mouse cursor steady over a button.

Version 1.5 - 1998-10-03

• Left Click does not remove pieces any more, it just selects them (the border color changes to indicate a selected piece).
• Many pieces can be Left Clicked, and made into a group, by choosing 'Make group' on the Settings menu (The 'gear' symbol). This group will persist, even after saving and loading, until You select the group and choose 'Break group' in the Settings menu. When any piece in a group is Left Clicked, the whole group is selected/unselected.
• Ctrl Left Click Selects/unselects exactly the piece pointed at, regardless of groupings. By selecting a group, and then Ctrl Left Click some of the pieces, and then 'Make group' again, You can remove pieces from a group.
• Shift Left Click picks up the block pointed to from the model (regardless if any pieces are selected or not).
• Ctrl-Shift Left Click picks up all the selected pieces, making it possible to move many pieces at once. Note that when You are placing a collection of blocks, it is the smallest bounding box, containing all of them, that determines the automatic z-level.
• Alt-Shift Left Click picks up a copy of all the selected blocks, making it possible to quickly produce larger structures. The copy of the blocks is also made into a Group, and can later be picked up and moved as a whole.
• Quick launch of POV-Ray through L2P or L3P implemented under Settings. To facilitate this you must have Ldraw, L2P and/or L3P and POV-Ray installed and working, and then edit the files L2PGO.BAT and L3PGO.BAT to suit Your system, and copy those two files to Your Ldraw directory.
• Added a listbox for selecting the current 'block selection list'.
• Added some new parts
• New choice in the Advanced toolbox: 'Use this color' to use the color of the selected block when creating new blocks - useful when You have used the rainbow, and want to get exactly the same color again.

Version 1.4 - 1998-08-22

• You can use any model as a sub-assembly, ie. insert into the current model just like any other piece. Right click works for turning the complete sub-assembly (before it is placed). The Load button has a menu with the choices Complete Model and SubAssembly. When a sub-assembly is placed, it's pieces become ordinary pieces (left click chooses just the piece clicked on).
• The Piece Editor is much more stable now (but keep a backup copy of parts.dat, and any other piece file you have created), and have much more functionality. The document Technical.htm will contain a description (sooner or later).
• Warning before load or clear if current model has not been saved (and possibility to save!).
• 'Save as Ldraw' has been implemented (thanks to Tore Eriksson) - Example in the middle of the Gallery page. There are of course some limitations, and BlockCAD has some pieces that does not exist in Ldraw, but if your Ldraw project consists mostly of basic blocks (plates, tiles) in basic orientations you can rapidly build a large part of it with BlockCAD (unless you want to build with Technic pieces - no luck there!).
• Quick launch of Ldraw implemented under Settings. To facilitate this you must edit blockcad.ini to include the Ldraw path, and the model name to be used when quick launching. Ldraw is set up to draw the same view as you are seeing in BlockCAD.
• Right click on the color boxes changes the background color (right click between the color boxes resets the background color to the default value).
• Right click on the empty background does not change the color anymore.
• Added the Rainbow button for choosing any color the computer can display. Note that on conversion to Ldraw, the 'nearest' Ldraw color is chosen.
• You can now select one or more pieces with Shift-Left click (the selected pieces changes color), another Shift-Left deselects the piece. The selected pieces can then be modified all at once with the Advanced toolbox - a redesign of Advanced options.
• Ctrl-Shift-Left Click cuts the selected pieces, and you can then move them all in a bunch, and place somewhere else.
• Alt-Shift-Left Click copies the selected pieces, and lets You place as many copies as you like.
• ESC deselects all selected pieces.
• The Advanced Options window has been redesigned, and renamed to Advanced Toolbox, and now works on the currently selected pieces. It still shows (x,y,z) when placing new pieces. The 'Advanced right click' has been removed.
• Removed the little black triangle on the Settings button (it still has a menu), and made all the buttons the same size.
• Cosmetic changes in the Settings menu - reordered the alternatives and inserted dividing lines.
• My e-mail and homepage are clickable in the About box (if your computer is correctly setup for this - with Internet Explorer it should be, other browsers and e-mail programs I don't know).
• The Recent list keeps the last used color of the pieces also.
• A Credits screen was added to the About box.
• A beta version of 'Stickers'. There is a standard block with a picture on one side on the 7:th page of pieces (You can change the picture by saving whatever You like in the file 'BitMap1.bmp'). A sticker makes the rendering real, real slow. This feature will be reworked in the future, this is just an experiment yet.

Version 1.3 - 1998-07-30

• New Settings for stud rendering - fast, better, best. Note that the better the studs look, the slower the program is!
• The piece selection pages are now defined in BlockCAD.INI, and you can add or remove pieces by right clicking on the selection page
• New button for a selection page containing the most recently used pieces
• There is a (rudimentary) editor for User Defined Blocks - keep your fingers crossed, and make a backup of parts.dat

Version 1.1 - 1998-07-16

• Added the Camera button - save the current view as .BMP (small view = small BMP).
• Added About-button (that's where You can find my address)
• The print-out has been revised, much better results now (uses printer resolution)
• The name of the program is changed to BlockCAD.exe
• First (beta) version of User Defined Blocks (no instructions for this yet - use Your imagination, and the examples)
• Added Advanced Right Click in the options menu. With this option on, You can adjust all parameters of a piece: color, direction, position (even in Z, without touching the Safe option!), just by (guess what?) right-clicking it.

Version 1.0 - 1998-06-27

The first published version.