L3DT Users' Community

During time I ve added lots of custom materials, climates, settings. Now I have no idea, what I changed/added. Each version is saving these information into its individual settings (C:\Users\...), so migration to higher version require manual migration of all changes, because I need all these files.
Because of this, I ve decided to add all custom/modified files into project directory, but for example path for climates will always return to "C:\Users\JW\L3DT\resources\Pro 15.05.0.2\Climates" after saving and restarting project. Materials path seems saved, but when open project in higher version, I cant again load these files. Only solution is to copy all these files into "C:\Users\JW\L3DT\resources\Pro 15.05.0.2\Climates" (or some actual working version). Sotimes it is quite tricky, it takes loots of time to indentify what changed, I see all the time errors like: - cannot retrieve land type 28 in climate 'Temperate (coastal)'. I can fix it, but it takes time....

There is also problem with absolute path. So if I deploy project on other computer (via version cotrol system), it will not work, unless path is same.

Is there any approach how to solve this? Best solution would be, if all changes of configuration will be always saved into the project. And never use version/computer dependent directories in C:\Users. Thanks.

Hi Demostenes,

I apologise for my slow reply. Regrettably, portability with L3DT is not well developed, and not documented at all. I'm a bit pressed for time today, but I'll review what's supported, and have a thinker about what more I can do, and post back here later today or tomorrow.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Hi Demostenes,

The way I manage climates when using multiple versions on one computer is to have all the resources (climates, materials, etc.) in a folder like:

C:\users\[my username]\L3DT\Resources\All versions

Note normally each version keeps their own resources in folders like:

C:\users\[my username]\L3DT\Resources\Pro 15.04.0.1

Now, in each version of L3DT I'm using, I set the resources path to point to my 'All versions' path. To do this, select 'Settings->File paths' in the menu, then double-click on the 'L3DT->Resources' option, and select the 'All versions' folder. Restart L3DT to apply. Thereafter, all versions of L3DT that have been set to use that folder will see the same resources. Also, the installers/uninstallers will not touch that folder, so changes will not be lost.

Portability of resources between computers is definitely not well supported. I guess you could sync the 'All versions' resources folders on each computer, but that's far from ideal if one computer is changing resources whilst another is using them.

Ideally there should be an option for L3DT to pack all resources with a project in a big archive file. This way, when you load a project, you can be sure that the resources are exactly the right versions for the particular project. The problem, of course, is when the climates in a project conflict with climates already on the computer. Do you overwrite the climates on the computer or the climates in the project? (or some awful mix-n-match?) I also have to be really careful here, as changing climates in a project can require the entire attributes map to be re-written, which will be slow for large maps. I'll need to think more carefully abut these sorts of problems before committing to any particular plan for future developments.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

Aaron wrote:Now, in each version of L3DT I'm using, I set the resources path to point to my 'All versions' path. To do this, select 'Settings->File paths' in the menu, then double-click on the 'L3DT->Resources' option, and select the 'All versions' folder. Restart L3DT to apply. Thereafter, all versions of L3DT that have been set to use that folder will see the same resources. Also, the installers/uninstallers will not touch that folder, so changes will not be lost.

Great, this seems like usable workaround. Thanks!