A working line

Yesterday the inserter was an idea. Today it got a body: a little gantry crane, the same kind I had put in my very first 3D test. It stands on four legs, with a rail and a stop at each end, a trolley running along the rail and a claw on a line that pays out as it lowers. It goes down, grabs, lifts, rides across, lowers and lets go, one motion after the other.

Getting that right meant rebuilding the animation system. Each moving part can now pause and carry on by itself, and hand over to the next part when it reaches the end of its travel.

The cutter grew to three tiles: a hopper at the back where goods drop in, the saw in the middle, and an exit tray at the front where the finished planks wait. Machines don’t have to be small, and a bigger footprint makes laying out a factory more interesting.

With the pieces in place I spent the rest of the day making building them feel good. A blueprint of the piece now follows your cursor, blue where it fits and red where it doesn’t, with an arrow on the floor showing which way it faces. Dragging out belts in one stroke, which I added the day before I went 3D, no longer overwrites belts that are already there, and starting a drag on an existing belt turns it into a corner. Whatever you pick stays selected, so you can place a whole row without clicking the button each time.

Moving around got easier too. The camera now flies freely, the same way it does in the model gallery, and the window can be resized, with Alt+Enter for fullscreen, and remembers both.

And the flat 2D view from the first screenshot of this blog is gone for good.