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thinking about the ‘where did that just get placed???’ problem… I took a look at stud.io, and you have to click on an element, and then you have to click where you want it placed. Do we want that same experience? We have to click on a baseplate/moc to select it, and then wherever we click is where it goes?
Personally, I’d prefer click what you want and then click where you want it.
The new pictures on the track pieces are great! But hilariously, they only display when the Baseplates layer has “LUG” selected and the basic color blocks are shown if “Members” or “Standard baseplates” is selected, and switching to another layer like Tables leaves them displaying however they were while on the Baseplates layer.
The new pictures on the track pieces are great! But hilariously, they only display when the Baseplates layer has “LUG” selected and the basic color blocks are shown if “Members” or “Standard baseplates” is selected, and switching to another layer like Tables leaves them displaying however they were while on the Baseplates layer.
That might be a caching issue? I don’t think I can recreate that…clicking on all the layers, i see all the track overlays fine…is that what you’re doing?
It’s specifically when picking what kind of baseplate to place (LUG, member, generic). When “LUG” is selected, everything looks great, but when either of the other options are selected, the issue shows up, and switching back to “LUG” fixes it.
And while trying to repro, I force-refreshed the page and got the old set of new-table options? O_o
nevermind, i understand. computers are stupid.
Additional quirk of just-in-time loading of content: only a MOC’s shortcode is visible in the legend until you’ve loaded that user’s inventory during that page session.
Weird thing is, that isn’t happening in test. I thought i Just happened to solve it with updating code, but I just pushed to prod and that is still there, so I’ll have to dig deeper into why that’s happening.
Nothing much in this latest release. Some performance updates and the custom canvas icon has a much richer set of drawing tools – think the ability to draw a pond, or roads, or other things that make just a basic rectangle ‘pop’.
Additional quirk of just-in-time loading of content: only a MOC’s shortcode is visible in the legend until you’ve loaded that user’s inventory during that page session.
oh, that’s actually because once it’s added to the layout, it’s hardcoded to the json. I didn’t write the ‘refresh everything’ part. You have to delete and readd it if you change it…
my comment about only in test was about the lug drop down being the on/off switch for overlays.
huh, well the legend will load the actual MOC name, but only as long as you’re looking at that person’s inventory.
fixed the legend bug and the icon overlay bug when toggling between lug/member.
also added personalized/custom tables, just like MILS and MOCs so people can add their own catering tables and such. They will not show on the person’s public page. I also plan on adding those new pedestals we got for PDP window display.
enhanced the custom icon editor and used bluebrick pictures of track. I was trying to build out the ‘smart connect’ feature like bluebrick where track will snap together in alignment, but i abandoned that for now. It’s functional enough. If I end up getting some other LUGs interested in using it, I’ll invest more time and effort.
there – may – be a bug where old custom icons don’t render well and then the object gets deleted….so….let me know if you encounter anthing like that. Should just be resolved by adding the object back in. hard to recreate that one in test when it deleted the problem-causing object…I think that’s somehow tied into the switching from lug to member drop down…not sure. I think the ‘fix’ is just to delete whatever is ‘flipping’ and add it back in fresh.
fixed the read only view stuck on panning when viewed in browser.
….at this point…what else are we missing? Anything necessary? seems pretty full featured, yeah? I’ll sideline dev for a bit if we got everything we need for now.
…now i see MOC canvas icons are broken…i swear they were working in prod…ok, i won’t give up yet, but not doing any more tonight.
and if you decide to play around with the canvas icons editor (or go back and update the existing ones with actual track) sometimes you’ll get an error on saving…just move the track to not extend past the boundary of the editor window and you should be good..maybe even make less overlap. that’s worked for me.
Feature request: “print table layout” button, as it’s easier than deselecting all the non-table layers, printing the layout, and reselecting the layers again.
Well, I got all excited at 8p friday night to sit down and let claude fable 5 go to town on layout designer. Claude had never seen layout designer, so I was eager for it to do some design passes…and then I saw the gov’t shut down fable 5 around 5p. That’s gotta be more serious than a PR campaign, right?? AI is scary.
Tail slightly between my legs, I went ahead and let the opus model do some review passes and suggestions.
I think we’ve implemented all feature requests (print table button, custom/unlimited layers, etc) and fixed a lot of bugs and added a bunch of features, like enhanced exporting, light/dark mode, and split apart the toolbar header design to portable docks for layers and objects.
I still need to go through lug inventory and add more things like stanchions, tables, table cloths, etc, but we’ve got some good progress, I think.
I have to say, with codex having the ability to log into the website and move things around (it does its own QA now) it’s kind of wild to ALSO be in the session and watch it work. it was pretty funny to read its thoughts where it missed the click for the buttons and had to move the windows around to get back to testing the annotations.
also, it looks like bricklayouts has shifted to a pay model, despite originally having text on the page that said “we will never charge for this” or something like that. I wish I took screenshots. I plan to continue work on this and release it to other lugs who use wordpress. I’m aware most lugs just run on a basic gatorhost or basic webhost, so I’m not sure how usuable it will be, but worth offering. I know Jessica may see this post, but i at least hope it becomes a source of collaboration to improve both offerings, because I’ll have zero interest in adding non-lego components or details like trees and scenery. If it’s not on a moc or baseplate, I’m not really interested in working on it because it doesn’t directly benefit Steel City LUG at this point. /soapbox I’m all for progress and good natured competition.
mobile functionality still needs some work after the dock design. let me know if there are other requests/bugs to be aware of. if nothing glaring comes up, I’ll probably switch over and let claude take a crack at the inventory stuff and especially the custom icon piece where i was having a tough time getting track connections to be intelligent.
Plenty has landed since the June 15 update. Here’s what’s new to try:
🚂 Track is here
- Lay out actual track. 16 official LEGO parts are built in — 9V straight, curve, left and right points, crossing, the RC double crossing, plus the full monorail set (straights, curves, ramps, monoswitch, and left/right points).
- Drag a piece near another and the ends snap together, clicking into a real connection.
- Bring the end you want up to the end you want and it mates that way — smooth curves or S-bends, both work, just like real track.
- Track shows up in your printouts and exports, including part quantities, so you can total up what a layout actually needs.
✋ Working faster
- Group objects and move, rotate, or duplicate them as one unit.
- Copy and paste within a layout.
- Free rotation with a rotate handle — plus you can set the rotation step per layer, so track turns in 22.5° clicks while tables stay on 90°.
- A shortcut help panel so the keyboard commands are actually discoverable.
- A selected-object action strip — the common actions right where the object is.
📱 Better on a phone or tablet
- Compact editor controls that fit a small screen.
- Canvas gestures no longer fight with normal page scrolling and navigation.
- Landscape mode and the drawers behave properly now.
🖨️ Printing and exports
- Custom layers now print — previously they could be silently dropped from the page.
- Layer visibility and item counts are correct in print output.
- Exports follow your real layer setup instead of a fixed built-in list.
💾 Reliability fixes
- Objects no longer snap back to where they started mid-drag.
- Autosave won’t save a half-finished drag position.
- Clearer save-button feedback, and saving pauses safely if your login expires instead of failing silently.
- The editor no longer freezes if an image fails to load.
Please try it and tell us what breaks. Track snapping especially — it’s brand new and we’d like to hear how it holds up on a real layout.
@playingwithechoes – still working on the multilug functionality. I just won’t be able to test it before I leave for a week or so.
Still having issues. Objects won’t snap next to each other. I am adjusting snap tolerances but to no avail. Won’t realign neatly with grid. DSR rails seem to pop off and snap wildly elsewhere on the grid. They seem to have extra space on the right per the outline. The R104 R120 corners have trouble lining up too. Don’t know if I should just start over or if it’s inherent.
I am on a state of the art gamer laptop (i9 64gb ram 4090 gpu) running Win11 pro and using chrome. It was easier building a 1/8 scale model of the entire layout in Bricklink Studio. For the time being, I will probably stick to planning out TUBS 2027 on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet like in previous shows and then manually running figures. But will sub to this thread as I’m willing to try any new updates that make it PC friendly.
Both snapping features are working fine for me in Firefox, but it used to work fine in Chrome too. (but there’s other issues that could confound snap attempts)
The issue with the extra space on DSR seems to actually be that the label is considered part of the footprint (see screenshot), so any rotation other than the default has some extra padding on an edge and the system won’t let you put stuff in the same layer on top of each other (it seems to send it back to wherever the last valid placement was).
Feedback on the rotation: I wish the “hold shift to rotate in increments with the handle” feature was documented someplace (but I just now noticed the “selected object(s)” controls in the Tools pane).
I wish we could add snap handles to the baseplates so all the LUG track could be snapped together (or that we could move the custom track plates to the Track layer, if that would be easier than snap-points being possible on all MOCs).
OK, I think I fixed it @playingwithechoes. I also think a contributing factor was that a lot of your baseplates were not snapped to grid, so they were creating collisions that rejected placement. I went in the layout and adjusted all of them and filled it in.
and Claude took your feedback, Gabe. Thanks for that. Here’s a generated release announcement:
Layout Designer — New Update, Feedback Wanted
We’ve pushed a batch of fixes and improvements to the live site and would love for folks to give it a shot.
Big thanks to Gabe for the detailed feedback and bug reports that drove several of these — the baseplate placement fix especially came straight from what he ran into and helped pin down.
What’s new
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[*] New track parts: RC (Dark Bluish Gray), Dark Bluish Gray straights, and BrickTracks R104/R120 curves — alongside the existing 9V lineup. The track palette is now searchable (try typing “rc”, “dbg”, or a part number).
[*] Fixed a bug where baseplates could refuse to sit flush next to a neighbor and would snap back with no explanation.
[*] Mobile: you can now press and hold an object to pick it up and drag it — previously touch devices could only nudge things with on-screen buttons.
[*] A few keyboard shortcuts that existed but were never documented are now listed in the in-app help panel (press ? while editing): the rotate handle, Shift+drag for stepped rotation, Shift+R to reverse, and Shift+click to place the other way.
[*] Rotating an object now settles on a clean angle when it snaps to the grid, instead of possibly landing a fraction of a degree off.
[*] Blocked-move messages (like “overlaps existing object”) are now easier to see and stick around longer.What we’d love help testing
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[*] Building a track loop — mixing 9V, RC, dark bluish gray, and BrickTracks pieces to make sure everything lines up and snaps together cleanly.
[*] Placing and dragging baseplates around, especially right up against each other.
[*] If you’re on a phone or tablet, try dragging objects around (press and hold, then drag) and let us know how it feels.
[*] General poking around — if something looks off or behaves unexpectedly, we want to hear about it.Reply here or DM with anything you run into — screenshots or a quick description of what you were doing helps a ton.
Thanks for helping make this better!
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still working on some other bugs and the multi-lug shared layout functionality. I’ll let you know when that’s done.
Thanks, @joshhall and @gabevistica for looking into it and for making updates. I will gladly give it another try as I believe this will be helpful for the giant TUBS double footprint layout I’m working on and it’s potential for multi-lug collaboration. Seriously, thanks. I’ll let you know how it goes on my end.
@joshhall I gave the updated version a whirl and managed to get about half of the proposed double footprint layout replicated in the program. It’s looking good.
One thing to note is that the large corner track modules don’t allow the placement of baseplates within its corners. Like in real life, you can fit a 2×2 array of 32 baseplates in the corners since the large track is on just some baseplates.
Other than that, it is working much more smoothly. Thank you for doing the updates.
Last question for now is there a way to add an infinite mils track modules not in inventory, as a separate category that we can check and see if other LUG members might have some in their personal stock or use that separate category to create a wish list to discuss with BuffaLUG and RocLUG about their possibly bringing some of their inventory?
Also looking at your ravine bridge as that with the two bascule bridges would make three bridge super structures on the layout. Very exciting from a visitor’s perspective. 🙂
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