PDF Quality ... not always the best

[DrJB]

While exploring some Building Instructions on TLG's website, I've noticed that some PDFs are very difficult to read ... i.e., difficult to distinguish the parts ... Is TLG running short on storage space or having bandwidth issues?

[jantjeuh]

The instructions for the A models are deliberately of lower quality, to prevent piracy. You'll notice the instructions for the B models usually look a lot sharper.

Edited November 7, 2014 by jantjeuh

[jodawill]

The instructions for the A models are deliberately of lower quality, to prevent piracy. You'll notice the instructions for the B models usually look a lot sharper.

Piracy? They give these things away for free on their website. Why are they concerned about piracy?

[zweihander]

Piracy? They give these things away for free on their website. Why are they concerned about piracy?

My guess would be people may print out A-model instructions and try to sell them as genuine.

[Gongoro73]

^Well, to make it genuine would cost a lot of money, much more than the reselling price anyone could ask for on ebay. You can't make a perfect copy in a digital printer. You would need an offset printer, wich are veeery expensive and you would have to order at least 300 or 500 units. Besides, just removing the backcover from the PDF will be enough to ensure nobody could make a complete copy.

I just don't get why they give us such a poor low-res instructions PDF. It doesn't make sense at all. You need to have something that can be easy to follow. But the actual PDF's are such a mess, browns and blacks are nearly the same, for example.

[dr_spock]

I think it is a plot by LEGO to encourage you to buy the set which comes with a copy of the printed instruction booklet in high res. I used PDFs when I don't feel like digging out the printed instructions. It is not too hard to figure out what parts are what from the PDF if you have built the set before.

[Blakbird]

This has been discussed in quite a few topics before. There is no official answer, only speculation. My speculation has been that it is to prevent Chinese piracy. There are already Chinese companies producing exact replicas of entire LEGO sets and marketing them under many different names. If high quality vector instructions were available, these same companies could just take the file and print their own copy to include with their fake products.

The side effect of all this is that if you are a legitimate builder and need the digital instructions (maybe you lost your copy), it can be very difficult to build with them. I just reproduced an LDraw file using the PDF for 8682 and the quality is so bad that there is no way to tell how long certain black parts (you can't see the studs or holes so you can't count).

[DrJB]

Right on Blakbirf. My gripe with this is, when we buy large lego sets, we try (with my kids) each to build different sections and use a tablet instead of printed instructions ... but it's very difficult (as you rightly pointed out) to know what size liftarm (number of holes) is being used

[jodawill]

It would be nice if they just put watermarks on the instructions.

[NXT45]

It would be nice if they just put watermarks on the instructions.

Right on I wish they did that too.

[dr_spock]

I hate watermarks, plus they are not that hard to edit out for someone with the skills and time.

[krtwood]

Any company that is on the scale of mass producing knockoff bricks and sets can just buy one set for the instructions. If the set has any new parts in it they would need the parts to make a new mold anyway.