The BriCad Menu

GUI Reference Cards

The leftmost entry "BriCad" in BriCad's menu bar gives you access to the following system functions:

New	Discards the current model and starts over with an empty model, keeping the current world size.
New Dims	Discards the current model, and asks for the maximum world coordinates for the new (empty) model. In the LEGO® domain, world coordinates are measured in multiples of 1x1 plates.
Load	Loads a new model, discarding the current one.
Save	Saves the current model to the last file name entered. If no file name has been entered yet, BriCad uses a default name (usually "unnamed.mdl").
Save As	Lets you pick a new file name before saving the current model.
Write image	Writes an image (typically .gif) of the current model to your harddisk. This is no replacement for saving the model using the regular "Save" option! See also Note 1).

View Story	Shows an accompanying text to the current model, if its author bothered to enter one. Story texts can currently only be entered by editing the .mdl file directly using an text editor.
Parts List	on screen	Show the model's piece count in the BriCad window.
	on console	Print the model's piece count to stdout.
	to file	Write the model's piece count into a (text) file.

Editing mode	Insert	Lets you change BriCad's editing modes. The currently active mode is check marked.
	Delete
	Paint
Display	Grid	if check marked, the model is underlaid with a grid
	Info	if check marked, shows the grey bar containing the color palette. See Note 2).
	Page numbers	if check marked, building step numbers are shown.
	Delayed Refresh	The screen does only redraw when a certain user idle time has elapsed. See Note 3).
	Immediate Refresh	The screen redraws immediately after the insertion of a new brick.

Redraw	Erases and redraws the screen.
About	Shows the BriCad copyright message and copying license.
Quit	Umm, do you really want to leave so soon ? ;-)

Go back to the GUI Reference section

Note 1 (Write image):

The "Write image" function lets you choose a range of building steps to work on. If you call "Write image" while displaying building step 1, it assumes that you want to create images for a series of all building steps. Otherwise, it will only create an image of the current building step.
In both cases, the building step range can be edited before performing the actual image generation.
Try making the BriCad window large enough to display the whole model before calling "Write image". Otherwise, each image will be generated using several passes, which will result in a significant slow down.
Do not change BriCad's window size or cover parts of BriCad's window while "Write image" is in progress - you might snapshot something else otherwise ;-)
Also, take caution that no parts of the window lie outside the screen to prevent "Write image" from backing out with an XGetImage() failure.

Note 2 (Info Field):

The info field can be disabled to save screen space. To access the color palette, move the mouse cursor to the right out of the BriCad window. This will make the info field reappear and lets you select colors (after reentering the info field) until you leave the info field to the left.

Note 3 (Delayed Refresh):

In the default immediate refresh mode, BriCad redraws the screen after each brick insertion to make sure that the user is always seeing a model with all hidden surfaces correctly removed.

However, when editing large models, repeated screen updates may degrade the system's responsiveness and slow the user down. In such cases, select the "Delayed Refresh" option to suppress immediate screen updates. In this mode, a screen refresh will only occur if

the user doesn't move the mouse for 3 seconds
(search for "RedrawDelay" in the .bricad file to change the idle time).
a brick gets deleted
a new brick is selected
the [r] key or the menu function "Redraw" is selected

Inserting a row from several bricks of the same kind is reasonably faster in this mode, however at the expense of temporary showing a model with messed up graphics due to ignored hidden surfaces.

Go back to the GUI Reference section

This site is not sponsored, authorized or endorsed by the LEGO group of companies.
Copyright 1996 Carsten Gnörlich.	Last change: 23.07.96