User Interface

Getting Started

Creating a New Model. Click on “Start a new model” in the “Getting started” menu. Type in a name, and click “Ok”. (First time setup): After you create a new model, click on “View”, “Editing views”, and click on “Rotation control (Trackball)”. It should say “Rotation control (Spin)” after you click it. Click on the blue X to close the menu. This makes the view controls easier.

Opening a Model Click on “Open a new model from disk”, and find the model, then double click the file. You should see the model loading in.

Saving Changes to a Model Press CTRL + S (Or CMD + S), or click on “File” then “Save”. LDCad will also ask if you want to save, when closing it.

Basic Controls

Selecting Parts To select a part, simply click on the part. To select multiple parts, hold CTRL and click on the parts you want to select. To select every part in the model, press CTRL + A.

Deselecting Parts To deselect a part, click on the selected part. If you selected multiple parts, and want to deselect individually, you can hold CTRL, and click on the part you want to deselect. To deselect every part, click “Select”, then “None”. You can also press CTRL + SHIFT + A.

Part Manipulation

To place a part, go to the parts menu, click on the first square (Library sorted by function), then click on the category the part you want is in. Click and drag out the part you want. Click on the arrow in the first square if you want to switch categories. If you want to switch colors, select one of the colors at the top before dragging out the part.

• To rotate a part, select it, and click and drag on the wheel to rotate it in 15 degree increments.

• To move a part, select it, and drag it to where you want to place it.

To manually move a part, for when it doesn’t snap to where you want, select the part, click on the 2nd cube on the little rectangle near the blue circle (See Image 1). This puts you into move selection mode. To go back to rotate selection mode, click on the 1st cube on the rectangle (See Image 2).

To delete a part, select it and press X, or right click the part, and click “Delete”.

View Controls

To look around a point, hold right click and move your mouse.

To move your view, hold shift, then hold right click and move your mouse

To center your view on a part, select a part and press C. This is very useful for moving your view easily.

To zoom in or out, use your scroll wheel. (Your view may go off center, but re-center it using the methods above.)

More Part Manipulation

To place a flexible part (chain, ropes, smart cables), place it as usual but a menu will show up. Make sure to “create a new MPD submodel with this template” is selected, then click on “Select”. Another menu will show up, just click “Ok”.

Your flexible part will now show up. You can move it like a normal part, but you can also move its path points. To do this, hover over the text box in the top right corner, then click on “Nested” (See Image 4). Some circles and lines will show up, these are the path points. Click on the red, green, and blue lines to select it like a part (See Image 5). You can now move and rotate the path point like a part.

Now you can change the flexible part to however you want. (If you are manipulating chain, click and drag on the yellow dots to change the radius of the path point) To go back to normal mode, hover over the text box and click on "Normal".

To hide a part, select the part, then click on the hide icon (the first red icon) at the top (See Image 1). To unhide all hidden parts, click the show all hidden parts icon (the third red icon)(See Image 1).