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Lyichir

How to design large MOCs with price in mind?

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I have a problem and was wondering if the more experienced MOCists or collectors here on Eurobricks could help me with it.

A while back, inspired by my love of My Little Pony and Lego, and by the financial opportunity of selling my own MOCs, I designed a large-scale (46 studs long/18 studs wide/31 bricks tall) sculpt of one of the main MLP characters on Lego Digital Designer, with the idea that I could potentially order the parts to build and even sell the model.

The problem was that the main color for this character was Medium Lavender, and while I made sure that all the parts I used existed in that semi-rare color, I didn't check how many were available or how much they cost. When I finally went to try and calculate how much this model would cost, I found that I had inadvertently used 345 2x2 corner plates—not only an expensive part on Bricklink, but one that wasn't even available in those quantities from all the sellers combined!

I want to try to make this model a reality, and ideally I'd want to cut costs to the point where I could buy the parts to make duplicates and sell them at a profit. But to do soI have to rebuild the model completely, keeping the same exterior surfaces but using only those parts which are available, and of those, the ones which are the cheapest option.

Unfortunately, the only way I've found to do so is to try building each single-brick layer of the model using as many possible combinations of parts as I can, and then calculate to find which version is the cheapest—all while keeping in mind that there is a maximum number of parts I can use in that color. Given the size of this model, this is a long and tedious process. So I was wondering if there were a more time-effective way to build a model while taking individual part quantities and prices into account. Does anyone know anything that would help me in this endeavor?

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Short of going to look up each piece on Bricklink as you design to see how out there it is, there really is not. At least not that I am aware of? The only other thing I can think of is to build a portion of the model in LDD, export a parts list, loop it through BL to see where the problems lie, and then go back to modify, and stear clear of the problem pieces as you progress. Granted I mostly MOC Modular buildings so it is easy to do this at each layer.

The only other thing I can think of in your case. Since you will mostly know your colors, especially your problem exotic colors as you start, do a BL search based on color and see if you can spot the problem parts ahead of time. But yeah the most frustrating and time consuming part of digital design is the fact that while the programs validate for whether the part has ever been made in a given color, they don't tell you age, rarity or price. That has bit me a few times. (/e looks at godawful expensive red windows ordered from Sweden)

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