Up and Down among layers and objects.

[Johan Söderberg]

Ive always wondered why in LXBeams...

- is the layer I put on top of the list of layers the bottom layer? In Vectorworks, Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, etc. its the opposite order.

- when drawing 3d objects the "start Z" is the upper level of and object and "End Z" is the lower. To me its more natural to start from the floor with an object and stretch it towards its end upwards. Maybe a renaming would be a simple solution ; change "start" and "end" to "upper" and "lower" which cant be that easily misunderstood.

Im a bit surprised this has never been mentioned in this forum, so I cant help thinking that maybe its only me being unamerican or something. I dont know...

[lanternz]

I agree about the "Z" issue. Our plans work from 0 at setting line and centre line and should do the same for vertical components. Distances below stage level would become negative.

[admin]

It does not really matter which way you use the start Z and end Z coordinates of 3D lines and rectangles. Except that it affects their display in the model window.

The difference between start and end Z axis coordinates really only matters as far as the open GL winding rule which determines the surface normal. In the latest build 3.1.10 (8020B) LXBeams will automatically select upper/lower of the two values when constructing faces for display in the model window.

Also, in 3.1.10, you can now choose which direction to display the layers in the Inspector. By clicking in the header of the table, you can switch from showing the bottom layer first to showing the top layer first.

[Johan Söderberg]

you can now choose which direction to display the layers in the Inspector

This is great news, and it seems you managed to ride out the storm of requests and bugfixes just in time.
Now i hope you´ll have a great birthday and can manage to forget all about software and picky lightdesigners for a while