How are primitives numbered?
Primitives are essentially highly reusable subparts, and for ease of use have highly coded names to allow maximum use of the eight character limitation. Existing primitives are described in the Primitives Reference, but if you think there is a need for a new class of primitives, contact the Parts Library Admins first. Wouldn’t things be simpler if we allowed filenames of more than eight characters? A: Yes. The original LDraw and LEdit programs are MS-DOS based, and as such can only recognise filenames adhering to the 8.3 standard of that era. Nevertherless, many of the newer LDraw applications do support long file names for models. In May 2008 with the ratification of the LDraw File Format 1.0.0 specification, part filenames can now be 21.3 (25 characters including the mandatory .dat extension). The Parts Tracker is being enhanced to remove the 8.3 restriction. I’ve read all this, but see there are some released parts that don’t adhere to the rules – how is this? A: The part numbering
