LDraw.org opens to LEGO clone bricks
The the LDraw.org Steering Committee has sent us an exciting press release concerning some important developments in the LDraw system of tools. HispaBrick Magazine 022, which will be published on May 1st will contain additional information on this subject, but we wanted to let you know as soon as possible:
LDraw.org is going to allow digital replicas of LEGO clone and custom bricks in its official parts library. This decision has been taken by the LDraw.org Steering Committee yesterday.
In the past LDraw.org had a policy which allowed only representations of parts manufactured by the LEGO group in its official library. This forced part authors to offer their own creations on personal websites and prevented the addition of bricks developed by competitors such as Mega Bloks or Enlighten Brick to the LDraw library.
“We have dropped the restrictions in favour of a wider LDraw experience and believe that clone bricks will affect the building style of our users in a positive way“, said Willy Tschager, member of the LDraw.org Steering Committee. “With LDraw you might use bricks in colours LEGO never moulded and the results are stunning. I guess this will be much true also for some awesome windscreens one can for example find in Mega Bloks 6859 - Call of Duty Hovercraft“, Tschager adds.
In a first round LDraw part authors will submit custom bricks they have designed over the years, such as “Plate 2x2 with studs underneath” or female torsi. Later mainly 3D-counterparts of Mega Bloks, Best-Lock Construction Toys and Kre-O by Hasbro, which have been prepared in the foresight of this allowance. “But it's not limited to those…there are also great pieces in military sets from Kazi or Sluban”, the Steering Committee welcomes the new entries.
The LDraw Parts Tracker, an online system used by the community to review and certify unofficial parts, has been adapted and will offer the possibility to brand the uploaded files according to the manufacturer. Nonetheless the different libraries will be joined, once the users have become familiar with the additions and start mixing LEGO bricks with the clones. By then parts will be distinguishable only by the new !SYSTEM meta-statement in the part-code. Also more general construction toy parts (that don't connect with LEGO) are planned for inclusion in the library in the future: Lincoln Logs, GeoMag (for which a new magnetic connector primitive is in development) and Meccano.
There are also talks with the LDD—LEGO Digital Designer development team at LEGO. “We hope LEGO will joins us in our attempt to add value to the overall building experience, as they did back in 2007 with the development of the so called Lego Universe Mode in their LDD software: In addition to some 1400+ bricks you could suddenly build in any colour, even in colours that haven’t been produced—like transparent tires. Something LDraw could do right from the start in 1995. Nowadays the LDD Extended Mode is normal business and not a hack for LEGO Universe designers. We bet the same will happen to clone bricks in LDD“, Tschager said. There hasn’t been a breakthrough in the negotiation so far, but at least signals of cautious opening.
The LDraw System of Tools is a popular system of free software tools for modeling LEGO creations in 3D on a computer. The parts library that is central to the programs is under continuous maintenance and extension by the LDraw community since 1997. LDD as a virtual building experience attracts several million people each year to build a huge range of amazing creations.
LDraw Content Management
On behalf of the LDraw.org Steering Committee
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