Hey, I had some things I came across modding jbeams I didn't (and some still don't) know what the the function did. Most questions I had were solved using the Wiki and just by trial and error, but some are not explained in the wiki and the trail and error method can consume lots of time while someone here might know the answer and is willing to explain. So instead of making a thread for a single question I thought I make a thread in which people can ask jbeam related short questions for which the answer is (probably) short as well. If it catches on, I can try to put every question and, if given, answer in the first post so a nice overview can be made, useful for modders and maybe useful to extend the wiki pages a bit. Please, before asking a question, look into the wiki first for an answer and notice it's meant for short questions only ( so NOT "I've made a Mesh. Now how do I make a jbeam?") I've got some questions, maybe someone here willing to explain? Questions: I sometime come across the line "{"optional":true} and{"optional":false},", what does it mean? In the latest build, the function "torqueArm:": has suddenly a ':' extra. (It used to be "torqueArm":) Is there any difference, and if, what? The colon there tells the jbeam parser that the value is actually a node, so when pasting the name of that node is internally replaced by the node cid, making it possible for the whole system to access that node. So everytime you come across such a colon in the name, it expects a node name as the value which then gets converted to a cid upon parsing. Omitting the colon will lead to very weird behavior and/or errors. (Thanks to Diamondback!) Sometimes bounded beams have an equal beamlongbound and beamshortbound, both lower than 1 while having an beamcompression of 1. Logically (and according to the wiki) the beamlongbound should be larger than 1. Why are they both smaller than 1? longbound = 1 + longbound shortbound = 1 - shortbound so shortbound of 0.5 means that the beam needs to be half length to qualify as shortbound, and a longbound of 0.5 means the beam needs to be 1.5x its length to qualify as longbound. (thanks to Dummiesman!) How does a brake jbeam know on which wheel they apply? There is no wheelgroup or so defined (except for the mesh) in a brake jbeam. Is it because of the jbeam hierarchy?
longbound = 1 + longbound shortbound = 1 - shortbound so shortbound of 0.5 means that the beam needs to be half length to qualify as shortbound, and a longbound of 0.5 means the beam needs to be 1.5x its length to qualify as longbound.
The colon there tells the jbeam parser that the value is actually a node, so when pasting the name of that bode is internally replaced by the node cid, making it possible for the whole system to access that node. So everytime you come across such a colon in the name, it expects a node name as the value which then gets converted to a cid upon parsing. Omitting the colon will lead to very weird behavior and/or errors.
