Is there a Repository of 3D LEGO scans?

[yosmo78]

I'm trying to understand the physical measurements of lego minifigures and lego bricks (like the exact curvature and the measurements of every detail). I'm wondering if there exists a repository for 3D scans or point clouds of legos (like the minifigures or bricks). Does such a online repository exists? if not, does anyone have some 3D scan point cloud files laying around of minifigures and bricks that can be shared with us. I have looked around across many many different forums and posts on here and haven't been able to find anything.

 

any help would be very much appreciated,

 

thanks! 

[Mylenium]

Well, not meaning to be all cynical, but how many people do you think have a 3D laser scanner at all and then on top of it one that would fulfill your precision requirements? See the problem? With the "LEGO" stamping on a stud being something like 0.007 mm or so surely you would need a pretty expensive setup to even capture all the micro curves and crevices. Perhaps there's some nerdy person out there who has access to that stuff at a university or his employer and does this occasionally for fun, but I wouldn't expect any such data to be available out there en mass and for free.

Mylenium

[Horation]

I think you can download Studio's part designs, or at least import them on software like blender, but other than that I have no clue what you could do.

[Ryno917]

I guess the question is; what do you need it for? If it's to replicate for a digital model or to create decals, you can model your own (or, if a flat face, easily derive the final dimensions).

Most of it is pretty straightforward as LEGO is built on a rigid, standardized system that hasn't changed in 75 years.

Brick lengths are in multiples of 8mm, minus 0.2mm to account for tolerances (0.1mm offset each external face, so 0.2mm total shortening across the length of a part), so a 1x1 is 8-0.2=7.8mm, a 4L is 8*4-0.2=31.8mm, etc)

A tile/plate height is 3.4mm, minus 0.2mm for tolerances, so one tile is 3.4-0.2=3.2mm, 3 tile height (one brick height) is 3.4*3-0.2=9.6mm

Slopes that have a thinner edge look to have that edge at half a tile height, so 3.4/2=1.7. Subtract 0.1mm from the bottom for tolerance, giving a vertical face of 1.6mm.

As far as I can tell the curved slopes are all constant radius curves that are tangent with the top flat face, and always begin either at the edge of the brick or at a standard brick width measurement from the edge. The 45 degree slopes, I believe, are actually closer to 48 degrees, but the exact value isn't important as it's a simple product of the system laid out above. And due to the laws of inverse angles, they don't need to be exact 45s to align when rotated 180 degrees.

With that info, you should be able to accurately model any standard brick. Obviously there are some more complicated things, like angled bars and technic connectors and the like, but the usual bricks are all very simple. I'm currently modelling one of the newer windscreens in CAD using the above dimensions so I can unwrap the curved surfaces for accurate decals.

I've never seen a 3D scanner that can produce a model accurate enough to capture the tight tolerances of LEGO bricks properly, and I've (unfortunately) had to work with 3D scan data of varying levels of accuracy. Every single one of them has been a lumpy mess, and that's on larger items like helmets, so I can't imagine how inaccurate a scan of a lego brick would be. We know the actual dimensions the bricks are built to in CAD, so a 3D scan would actually be far worse in accuracy than that.

Edited August 4, 2024 by Ryno917