{"id":452,"date":"2016-06-12T17:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-12T15:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anginf.de\/?p=452"},"modified":"2016-08-31T10:28:39","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T08:28:39","slug":"export-ev3-from-lego-digital-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anginf.de\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"Export EV3 from Lego Digital Designer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I created a complex LEGO model with Lego Digital Designer<\/a> and wanted to import the resulting model into Blender<\/a>. My export files were missing the LEGO Mindstorms EV3-components<\/a> that I had added.<\/p>\n

The reason for this behaviour are the missing parts in the ldraw.xml-File, which is in the same directory as the ldd.exe, the directory C:\\Program Files (x86)\\LEGO Company\\LEGO Digital Designer<\/code> held this file for me.<\/p>\n

The ldraw.xml is essentially a mapping file, which maps all the LEGO-internal structures to the more open „LDRAW“-File format. The EV3-parts weren’t listed and even in updated ldraw.xml-Files, which I could find on the web, these were never added.<\/p>\n

So I created the missing mappings on my own and the result works pretty good. Not all the colours are correct, but I couldn’t find an easy way to correct these.<\/p>\n

Here are the necessary steps to successfully export LEGO EV3-parts from Lego Digital Designer and import these with correct colours e.g. into Blender:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Copy ldraw.xml<\/a> file to your location of ldd.exe, overwrite the old ldraw.xml. (Unzip the ldraw.zip to ldraw.xml first)<\/li>\n
  2. Export your model from Lego Digital Designer to „LDraw-Files (*.ldr)“-format.<\/li>\n
  3. Open the file in notepad++, search for the following part numbers (they are located at the end of the line) and change the BEGINNING of the line from „1 71“ to „1 15“.\n