Tips for General Usage.

The obvious!

Remember to save often and take breaks.

Generally for MLCAD a large high resolution display is recommended - it can be frustrating to work in anything less then 1280x1024 when designing.

If you can, use a trackball over a mouse, and you will find your wrists thank you for it. Three buttons are also useful - the scroll wheel can be used in the canvas windows to zoom, and pushing the middle button allows you to pan.

Use the keyboard!

Using the keys allows for finer movements - but I always use the mouse for larger movements. You can become very fast by being familiar with the key combinations and shortcuts.

Remember to check and set the step size first. Beware of fine grid movements when you don't expect them - they may subtly put a piece out of line - which will spoil renderings of your design.

Cursor Keys with piece (or group of) selected will translate (that is move) the pieces in the XY axis. Home and End keys give you Z axis movement. These keys make up the movement keys.

Control+ Movement Keys will rotate the piece.

Page Up/Down will focus the previous/next line in the list display.

Ctrl + S - Save.

You will learn the rest from other tutorials or as you use them.

Copy Paste Construction

This means dragging initial pieces onto the canvas, then I copy them and paste them down, then use keys external link to move them to the desired location. This means that the pieces will probably already be lined up in at least one dimension. This can be done with whole groups of pieces if need be, but if this group is more than about 5-10 pieces you should probably follow the Modular building tip below.

Enter the Matrix

When even fine grid rotation or position is not enough, use the position+rotation matrix dialog. This may be a little daunting for those not familiar with matrix transforms, and can even be abused (as it is commonly for part creation) to give you a scaling factor. Please make sure you Save before you do this! You may even want to create a new Version here.

LSynth Generator

You are going to need this feature for pneumatic tubes, or electric cables to motors and the Lego RCX. It is frustrating sometimes, but the results are worth the effort.

Remember that the generator guides work in one direction. Before you generate, check they are all going in the correct direction. Their orientation also matters, otherwise you may get twists in cables like the Electric ones.

If you are using the build in LSynth generator link, ensure that you save a version with just the pre-generation information, and save a different version to generate on. It is easier to modify and view a file that has not had the generator run on it, and sometimes things go wrong and you loose the initial set-up info. This is probably a good place to use a branch as described in Versions.

Versions

When you are building a large build, or updating an older model, keep versions.

This means you can revert if something goes horribly wrong, or simply view a history of the model. You may even "branch" it - creating two new different models based on the same earlier version. Use CVS? or similar for this - it is a good habit to get into.

Modular Building

Also try to build in modules - if two sections of the model are essentially the same, create them in subparts, and then attach the subparts to a larger assembly. Some of my creations have a number of tiers of sub-parts. These can be done in two ways - either as Multi-part LDraw System Dat files (MPD's) which may not be readable by all LDraw System apps, or as a number of separate DATs. By using the models directory of your LDraw System parts library- you will see these in your parts tree. Failing that - you can right click in the list window and click "add part".

Steps

Try to build things in a logical physical way when possible, and add steps in while you go. This means that you and others may be able to rebuild the model when necessary. MLCad has an option to sort pieces by their height - this may help with simple models - but is not a great deal of use with complex mechanisms. If you have neglected to do this when inputting the whole model, then ensure you create a new version before adding the steps in later.