Not All Tiles are Equal (In Search Of Studless Models - Part 2)

Initially I looked at trying to use 1x1 sloping roof tiles to place on each available stud but the problem with these parts is that they are not 1 plate width high, so not only do you need to identify available studs but you also need to know the gap distance between the stud and any parts above the stud.  In the little animation below it looks like I got lucky, but if you look carefully, there is an intersection in the model!

Another couple of intersections are more obvious in the model below.

In fact I've yet to solve this problem, so for now sloping roof tiles could only be used on the top of a model!

In Search Of Studless Models (Part 1)

Studs are, of course, the real magic of Lego, but isolating a specific stud on a specific piece of Lego within LDraw's construction system can be a challenge.  On a standard brick, in a given location you can calculate the stud location, but what if you are randomly placing random bricks and random plates into a model, how can you track the location of available studs within your model?

Tracking stud availability within a random model build would turn out to be a lot trickier than I imagined.   

I started by reviewing the layers of the brick matrix that I use to track the placement of bricks and plates during the model build

Previously I'd only really focused on a single matrix layer during the build process to track the addition of new bricks as they were added to the model build (so I always focused on the top most layer in the matrix).  What I would need to do now was track all the layers for each brick added to the model build and then compare each layer to try to isolate where a stud might be available, by eliminating studs as more bricks were added to the model.