Support for Bricksmith models about ldr-importer HOT 7 OPEN

First of all, thanks for all the nice work on this importer! I'd like to have a look at supporting Bricksmith models (as I'm a osx/bricksmith user myself). I'm very new to all this 'lego stuff', so could you give some pointers to what the problem is or where to start looking?
The only thing I discovered so far is that the importer doesn't understand 'nested' models.

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Hello!

Let me start by saying I am deeply sorry for taking so long to reply. I usually try to reply the same day or the day after, but I was caught between school and JavaScript, and have not had time to reply or even work on the script lately (I will be resuming work soon). I really cannot apologize enough by keep you waiting. 😢

No, thank you for taking an interest in the importer! :D We do the very best we can, and it is always a joy (at least for me) to hear from the users. Also, thank you for wanting to help develop LDR Importer!

This may sound bad, but truthfully I have a hard time wrapping my head around the script. :P You'll want to talk to @Banbury and/or @tribex for more, but the main issues are

1. nested models and
2. the recursive loop

Someone has generously donated a base script for us to rewrite the script with in order to fix this crazy loop (that's on the rewrite branch, BTW), and I'm sure it would solve nested models as well. Like I said, we'll need one of the other developers to provide more information, but I would think nested models might be the way to go.

There are some contributing guidelines on the wiki, be sure to go ahead and read those. Honestly, there are there simply to create more consistent code. I am not too strict about this stuff. Because the rewrite is no where near completion yet, just ignore that branch and work off the copy on the master. 😉

Again, thank you for taking an interest in LDR Importer! 😃

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Hi, no problem! I do understand this project is not the only thing in your life. 😄
In the mean time I delved some more into the code and did some more reading on the LDR format. Indeed the recursive loop is quite crazy (no offence). Ater I studied it for a while it started to make sense, but I still don't fully understand what's happening there.
For now I will check the code some more (also the rewrite branch) and see where it makes most sense to contribute. If I have specific questions I will ask them (in the appropriate place). AND I will try to take small steps. To fix multi part Bricksmith files, I would basically have to rewrite the core of the script (as I see it) and that's maybe a bit much to start with... 😉

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Wow, if you are starting to understand the loop, you're making more progress than the rest of us. 😄

I've been over the code several times and failed each time, good work!!!

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Out of curiosity: if seemingly nobody understands the loop, how did it get in there?

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I would assume the original writer of this script, from which le717 picked it up from?

(Can I get a confirmation on this?)

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Tribex is correct. As I wrote in History.md, this started out as a Blender 2.5 script. From what I can gather, David was rewriting a Blender 2.3 script, and the original might have had the loop as well (I need to double check). Either way, yes, it was already present when I picked it up. That's why we have ldraw_import_ng.py on the rewrite branch as our base for an entire script rewrite. :)

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