General Part Discussion

[2GodBDGlory]

11 hours ago, Auroralampinen said:

If you have dreamed to have this unique piece. The new cada alpine one F1 set has got you covered:). 

Not a part I was dreaming of, but I can imagine it being pretty useful! That particular situation feels like one that doesn't have many good existing solutions

[gyenesvi]

Also, I just skimmed through the build video and saw the extensive use of ball joint connections to achieve angled placement of panels, which is a nice trick to achieve smooth paneling. I think the use of ball joints in Lego sets is underrated, could be useful for many more things (such as angled tubular structures), there should be more parts available for that as well.

[Divitis]

2 hours ago, gyenesvi said:

Interesting viewpoint, but I think it only holds true as long as you don't need to build very compact / dense things.

For small builds, something like the C shaped 3x2 beam/frame with holes in different directions from a few years back is a useful and inherently flexible part (which nobody saw coming).

Conversely, this s-shaped beam does not truly open new possibilities, rather simplifies what can already be achieved with two 3x3 thin liftarms and some tinkering with the adjacent structures.

Edited Tuesday at 07:14 PM by Divitis
Grammar

[gyenesvi]

1 hour ago, Divitis said:

For small builds, something like the C shaped 3x2 beam/frame with holes in different directions from a few years back is a useful and inherently flexible part (which nobody saw coming).

Agree that it is useful, though I find it most useful for two reasons:

1. A 3L flip-flop beam does not exist, and in some cases it can be used as essentially such part (with some extra pinholes)
2. Since it is 3x2 with parallel pinholes, it can connect two parallel beams that are 1 or 2 studs apart in a stable way. But that has not much to do with the fact that it is C shaped.

I rarely find utility to it's C shape that could not have been built before from other parts, though of course those situations also occur when it's a great match. But clearly, any new part can be useful in some situation when exactly that part is required. So it's all a matter of priorities. I often think that if the selection of more regular parts was more systematic, then the utility of these irregular ones would be less.

1 hour ago, Divitis said:

some tinkering with the adjacent structures.

That's the problem here. That's what makes things bulky, which is often unaffordable. On top of that, in this example, when you connect the two 3x3 L shapes, then some of its important connection points will already be consumed by that connection, blocking the actual connection possibilities that you wanted to make in the first place, or making things even more bulky. For example if you need to connect two parallel beams that are two studs apart, then that connection made of 3x3 L shapes displaces one of them, and can also be in the way for the actual beams.

In general, my problem is that there are simple / basic constructions that cannot be achieved in simple ways with lego parts, and the lack of S beams (or even L beams in various small sizes) is a good example of that. For example, often I'd be in need of offsetting a beam in one direction, but not in another. That's pretty hard to do in a stable and space efficient way, even though anyone new to technic parts (with some structural understanding) would think that that should be easy to do.