BlockCAD

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:11

Well, I've been playing with this mostly on my laptop, whose charger is missing right now (And it's a newer Toshiba, which has a large barrel jack and uses a 5 amp AC adapter anyway, I only had the one of those), but this is a nice game/program for building with those familiar toys that just about everyone knows or has grown up with (Including me!)

Find it here:

http://curlysworldoffreeware.com/game_i ... gameid=204

Official homepage:

http://web.telia.com/~u16122508/proglego.htm

I'll get it on my desktop, and post a couple screenies in the next couple of days. I was building a couple houses on it on my laptop, if I find the AC Adapter for it, I'll post pics of that.

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:41

OK. I just did a new house on my PC- here it is. This will give you an idea what you can do quickly with the program:

Post by **Chroelle** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 17:45

Legos... Nice. I remember playing alot with legos. Mostly to supply a town for some game, or at least work it in to some other game. I dont recall ever playing with JUST legos... Weird how memories work...

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 18:09

The opposite here: I had thousands of Legos when I was a kid. But I can't remember that I really played with them. Most time I was only interested in buiding things (houses, cars, train etc.).

Hmm, have to check where all my Legos are now...

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 18:17

Pater, you sound like me, when I was a kid, I had a ton of legos, and I would build towns at either end of my basement playroom, and connect them with a lego railroad. Man, I'd have factories, houses, scenery, everything!

I'd usually spend a school summer break building this, and play with it till about Christmas, then dismantle it little by little.

eMTe · Post by **eMTe** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 18:32

Btw, is there any site listing all lego sets ever made? Id love to find my old sets and at least look at them.

Or recreate them with this fine program. ^^

Post by **Chroelle** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 18:55

Well here isa place to start off:
http://www.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx

eMTe · Post by **eMTe** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 19:32

No no. Lego official site shows only sets still being sold. I was thinking of some kind of archive. And found one. And found two of sets.

http://www.brickset.com/detail.aspx?Set=6376-1
http://www.brickset.com/detail.aspx?Set=8020-1

Sorry for offtop btw.

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 23:09

My parents still have my thousands upon thousands of Lego blocks stashed... I used to build towns in the hallway, so nobody could get in or out of the house.

Later, I used them for building dungeons in D&D.

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 23:06

"BlockCAD" is not really a game (in a way that I would define it), but definitely a nice time pass that brings back memories of the childhood.

It's not bug-free anyway. Sometimes blocks simply vanished and there were some graphical glitches while turning the building. Also I missed lots of blocks I remember from my childhood, mostly the train stuff but also stuff for building cars (I couldn't even find the block needed to fasten the wheels) and buildings.

And here's a picture of the first house I build. Nothing special, I know...

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 0:59

@Pater,

what bugs with the graphics did you see? I've played with this a lot and never seen any?

What kind of video card ya got? Microsoft drivers or card builder drivers?

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:21

I made another screenshot for you to know what I am talking about. While turning the building some parts of it just disappear for some moments (like the upper part of the door in the screenshot).

I have a NVDIA GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE and if I remember right I use the card builder drivers (but I'm not sure).

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:10

I use a GeForce 4 MX4000 in my desktop SFF machine, mine is AGP. Is yours AGP or PCI Express, Pater? My thought is, that the program is fairly old, so it may not like newer video cards or something.

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:19

It's PCI. Might be possible that the game doesn't like it.

If the game is rather old, do you think we still can expect some updates (regarding the blocks) in the future?

eMTe · Post by **eMTe** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 14:47

In front view, without any camera angles, I cant add blocks properly. Example. I have one line of blocks on the floor, I switch camera to frontview, and i can still build blocks only on the floor, i.e. they are being added to the floor, but behind the existing line. When I move pointer over the bottom line, picture of block that always moves with the pointer disappears.

Post by **Chroelle** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 22:26

I think this was an entertaining thing to play with. However I didn't feel like I had lots of options (except in shapes of bricks). I needed some more control over the interface...
But I did have a good time with this, and at some point where I have more time to kill I might return to build something proper. You cannot see my monstrous abomination from my first try.

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 19:30

BlockCAD is available at CWF now. You can find the download at our game info page:

http://curlysworldoffreeware.com/game_i ... gameid=204

Railwaymodeler · Post by **Railwaymodeler** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 21:46

Cool. I guess you got my PM then. And from the message I got from the game developer, we may have a new member soon (I hope)

AndersI · Post by **AndersI** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 0:47

OK...

Hi, I'm the BlockCAD author, quite a nice site you have here. Thanks for listing my program! It will take me a while to look around everywhere.

If you haven't looked at it yet, take a glance at the BlockCAD Gallery where I'm showcasing models built by people all around the world - there are some amazing models there, especially in the Buildings and Ships sections.

Some collected answers and musings:

- Graphical glitches

Yes, they're there. Intentionally. They are not a result of your graphics card, as BC is only using plain Windows GDI drawing, no acceleration at all. Try clicking the brush button for a (re-sort and) repaint.

BC started as a Windows 3.1 program in 1996 (or -7, I don't remember any more), and to get my, at the time, frontline 486 DX 50 to be able to rotate anything at all in 'real time' there are lots of cheats and shortcuts in the program (the Pascal source is available for anyone brave enough...).

I have no plans to change this, as there are now many other free Lego CAD programs, much more advanced than BC (MLCad, Bricksmith, Lego Digital Designer, LeoCAD, and so on).

The main thing with BC is that it's easy to use, even for small children.

- Too few parts

The part editor is included, just right click in the part selection window on something that's more or less like the part you need and select Add... and start experimenting. No additional documentation available, you're on your own

- No Technic parts, no ... parts, etc

The shortcuts/limitations of BlockCAD makes it impossible for the program to draw a part that is completely or partly inside another part. This excludes almost all Technic parts, and a lot of other things. This is a design decision.

@Chroelle: What more control of the interface do you need? I'm open to suggestions (although the update rate has gone down a lot in later years).

@eMTe: Adding parts is not supposed to work at all in plain Front View, as there is too little information for the program to add parts at the right place. So, this is probably a bug.

www.peeron.com is also a good place to search for sets and pieces.

@Pater Alf: The wheels can be put anywhere, you don't need the special pieces (that's called 'artistic freedom').

Sorry for the long post, but I always get a bit carried away when talking about Lego and BlockCAD...

AndersI

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 0:54

Welcome to our forum and thank you for answering our questions! It's always nice to see some of the developers in here.