Hello.
I'm an old newbie - haven't time lately - but I want to catch up and redone the tutorials.

I've just followed the WED tutorial to some point at which the level just won't run (can't open WED.C error 355 Startup failure).
Even if it would work, it's a really pain in the back to build something in there or edit it.
So are there any 3rd party alternatives or workarounds? After all, I make my meshes in an external app anyway. But idk whether and how I can add the lights and all besides the normal 3d objects.

BTW the house in the tutorial gets compiled as a wmb in the main wmp? Still don't get how entities, lights and others are compiled or if you can just pop them out at runtime...

GED

Better use WED instead of GED

GED is no alternative! It's buggy and although I'm always posting my bug reports to Conitec it seems like they are not going to fix them. I think they already gave up on GED and concentrate on the development of a complete new editor that will combine WED and GED. But I guess this editor is in the far future...

I hope the much awaited editor will make the jump in fitting users' hand from a sock to a glove.

How about the following, would it be possible?:
Make a surface and some solids in a 3D soft and somehow make it a level (wmp). From what I see in the wiki, a wmp file is readable and (hopefully) editable. No offense but WED is so... coarse and hard to work with. I almost feel like I'd be better off calculating all the coords on the paper and plugging them in a coded form

you can model your level in any 3D modelling sofware, export it to FBX 2010 and then import it in WED under file->import level from FBX

Thanks.
Now that's better. The internal formats and mechanisms of a level is unclear to me. From what I can think of now, the "standard" structure of a WMP should normally contain 3D objects like: a terrain (HMP), level entities (WMB) and normal model entities (MDL). If I make the level (the terrain and the blocks) in a 3rd party soft, how would WED know which to convert to HMP, which to WMB, or MDL?

when you import a 3d model as I said before, it becomes a static mesh, like a cube you have created in WED

Thanks for answering. This is the very problem in the first place: transforming the objects after they are imported. I wonder how do you or other users manage to transform (move/rotate/scale) objects in WED the right way? You or anyone else please, tell me so I follow the same procedure.
Here's a fact:
I have 2 256 x 256 cubes just by each other, laying on the ground.
If I scale one of them a little, it lifts from the ground and won't touch the other cube anymore, cause it shrinks by the cube origin (center). How can I move it after scaling, so it's again aligned with the ground and the other cube? How do you do it? I'm not that picky to ask for a possibility to edit the origin of an object, although...

Scale them and if move tool doesn't allow to place them so they touch go to file->preferences and in view options change the snap value to a lower one, this will allow you to move them with more accuracy