Ways to satisfy a Technic obsession

[DaddyWhale]

Of course the best way is to build/design sets. But that gets expensive and I've run out of places to hide my new creations from my wife, who just does not understand the whole lego thing...

Forums can be fun, but there seems to be relatively few active ones in English. The only ones I go to are here on eurobricks and (less frequently) the brickset forums. Are there any other English language ones that you might recommend?

[allanp]

Of course the best way is to build/design sets. But that gets expensive and I've run out of places to hide my new creations from my wife, who just does not understand the whole lego thing...

Forums can be fun, but there seems to be relatively few active ones in English. The only ones I go to are here on eurobricks and (less frequently) the brickset forums. Are there any other English language ones that you might recommend?

There is Lugnet, but it's not as active as eurobricks.

[Blakbird]

Of course the best way is to build/design sets. But that gets expensive and I've run out of places to hide my new creations from my wife, who just does not understand the whole lego thing...

Forums can be fun, but there seems to be relatively few active ones in English. The only ones I go to are here on eurobricks and (less frequently) the brickset forums. Are there any other English language ones that you might recommend?

The first step in your recovery is admitting to yourself that you will never be satisfied. I have every Technic set ever made and I'm still not satisfied. I just moved to a new house, took apart all 300,000 parts and put them back to together and it still wasn't enough. I've built another 100,000 parts of MOCs. I've added a 600 square foot addition onto my house just to display them all. Still not enough. So all you can do is accept the truth. You are an addict. Feeding your addiction with lots of ABS seems to help. You've already discovered online forums. Looking at MOCs on MOCpages, Brickshelf, and Flickr can kill lots of time. Then there are thousands of videos on YouTube. If that's not enough, you can get into LEGO CAD. It's free and you have as many parts to play with as you want, so you'll never run out. Between learning all the software and techniques and making renders of the results, you can spend the rest of your life on it without running out of new topics. If you really want to kill time, try making instructions!!

If you like Technic, you can read lots about the sets you don't have on my site, Technicopedia.

You can always start going to conventions too. I don't know where you live, but BrickCon is coming up in a few weeks.

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

Of course the best way is to build/design sets. But that gets expensive and I've run out of places to hide my new creations from my wife, who just does not understand the whole lego thing...

Forums can be fun, but there seems to be relatively few active ones in English. The only ones I go to are here on eurobricks and (less frequently) the brickset forums. Are there any other English language ones that you might recommend?

If you didn't sound like somebody with a major already, I would say the best way to satisfy a Technic obsession is studying Mechanical Engineering.

[paul_delahaye]

If you like Technic, you can read lots about the sets you don't have on my site, Technicopedia.

And it will be even better when we get the long awaited 1996 revision

[DaddyWhale]

The first step in your recovery is admitting to yourself that you will never be satisfied. I have every Technic set ever made and I'm still not satisfied. I just moved to a new house, took apart all 300,000 parts and put them back to together and it still wasn't enough. I've built another 100,000 parts of MOCs. I've added a 600 square foot addition onto my house just to display them all. Still not enough. So all you can do is accept the truth. You are an addict. Feeding your addiction with lots of ABS seems to help. You've already discovered online forums. Looking at MOCs on MOCpages, Brickshelf, and Flickr can kill lots of time. Then there are thousands of videos on YouTube. If that's not enough, you can get into LEGO CAD. It's free and you have as many parts to play with as you want, so you'll never run out. Between learning all the software and techniques and making renders of the results, you can spend the rest of your life on it without running out of new topics. If you really want to kill time, try making instructions!!

If you like Technic, you can read lots about the sets you don't have on my site, Technicopedia.

You can always start going to conventions too. I don't know where you live, but BrickCon is coming up in a few weeks.

Hi Blakbird,

Thanks for the great suggestions. As usual you are a font of knowledge (and I'm not being sarcastic)! I've indeed been to technicopedia.com and plan to spend more time there as I slowly build 8110. You've done a great job with the site.

I hope this is not getting too personal but...are you married...to the same spouse through your 300,000+ parts odyssey? If so, I could surely use your advice on juggling lego and wife!

Hi allanp,

Thanks for the pointer to lugnet! I'll check it out.

[Paul Boratko]

Funny... I have the exact opposite problem with my wife... She is the set builder in my house... She just finished the Unimog yesterday and started building the Plow for the front about an hour ago...

I actually got her the 8070 Supercar for Valentine's Day this year(Thanks to Skyliner for hooking me up from across the pond )

My wife loves to build. If she builds a set that she doesn't like, it becomes part of my inventory... Sad part is the last set that I built myself was the 8448 supercar like 12 years ago before we met... Oh yeah and Nathanael's Concept Car 2 years ago to display at shows for him...

Best thing to do is try and incorporate your wife into Lego and get her involved... They are either going to accept it or not...

I remember when I was on my first date with my wife, we actually went to a Toys R Us because she was looking for a gift for her best friend's daughter and we walked past the Lego section and she said "I can't believe how cool Legos got since I was a kid" and I replied "You have No idea" I knew that I was going to be in good shape from day 1...

As far as Lugnet goes, last time I checked there, the front page hadn't even been updated in like 2 years... I don't know anyone who even posts there anymore... The technic section was pretty dead...

Edited September 16, 2011 by Paul Boratko

[nielsvdv]

Funny... I have the exact opposite problem with my wife... She is the set builder in my house... She just finished the Unimog yesterday and started building the Plow for the front about an hour ago...

I actually got her the 8070 Supercar for Valentine's Day this year(Thanks to Skyliner for hooking me up from across the pond )

My wife loves to build. If she builds a set that she doesn't like, it becomes part of my inventory... Sad part is the last set that I built myself was the 8448 supercar like 12 years ago before we met... Oh yeah and Nathanael's Concept Car 2 years ago to display at shows for him...

Best thing to do is try and incorporate your wife into Lego and get her involved... They are either going to accept it or not...

I remember when I was on my first date with my wife, we actually went to a Toys R Us because she was looking for a gift for her best friend's daughter and we walked past the Lego section and she said "I can't believe how cool Legos got since I was a kid" and I replied "You have No idea" I knew that I was going to be in good shape from day 1...

As far as Lugnet goes, last time I checked there, the front page hadn't even been updated in like 2 years... I don't know anyone who even posts there anymore... The technic section was pretty dead...

:P i have the exact same thing, i met my girlfriend 2 years ago, and she loved lego from the start :)

i am not the kind of person who loves lego and hides it, so i told her honestly. she looked at my hobby and she thinks it is really cool :)

she loves system, harry potter,.. technic is too complicated for her ..cough... :p but she is going to buy the VW VAN, witch i love to :)

Edited September 16, 2011 by nielsvdv

[3nslav3]

:P i have the exact same thing, i met my girlfriend 2 years ago, and she loved lego from the start :)

i am not the kind of person who loves lego and hides it, so i told her honestly. she looked at my hobby and she thinks it is really cool :)

she loves system, harry potter,.. technic is too complicated for her ..cough... :p but she is going to buy the VW VAN, witch i love to :)

same with my girlfriend :D we were doing some xmas shopping untill we got the "crazy" idea of buying a lego set and have some fun on a cold winter evening.

and now... we are addicted, she loves the creator and the modular buildings (just finished the pet shop :P ) and i'm hooked on lego technic again (I really like the new studless pieces)

we still even have the lego bricks from 15 years ago

and about the VW van... i'm probably getting 2 sets :D

girlfriends and lego can be a perfect combination!!!

[DaddyWhale]

Funny... I have the exact opposite problem with my wife... She is the set builder in my house... She just finished the Unimog yesterday and started building the Plow for the front about an hour ago...

I actually got her the 8070 Supercar for Valentine's Day this year(Thanks to Skyliner for hooking me up from across the pond )

My wife loves to build. If she builds a set that she doesn't like, it becomes part of my inventory... Sad part is the last set that I built myself was the 8448 supercar like 12 years ago before we met... Oh yeah and Nathanael's Concept Car 2 years ago to display at shows for him...

Best thing to do is try and incorporate your wife into Lego and get her involved... They are either going to accept it or not...

I remember when I was on my first date with my wife, we actually went to a Toys R Us because she was looking for a gift for her best friend's daughter and we walked past the Lego section and she said "I can't believe how cool Legos got since I was a kid" and I replied "You have No idea" I knew that I was going to be in good shape from day 1...

As far as Lugnet goes, last time I checked there, the front page hadn't even been updated in like 2 years... I don't know anyone who even posts there anymore... The technic section was pretty dead...

:P i have the exact same thing, i met my girlfriend 2 years ago, and she loved lego from the start :)

i am not the kind of person who loves lego and hides it, so i told her honestly. she looked at my hobby and she thinks it is really cool :)

she loves system, harry potter,.. technic is too complicated for her ..cough... :p but she is going to buy the VW VAN, witch i love to :)

same with my girlfriend :D we were doing some xmas shopping untill we got the "crazy" idea of buying a lego set and have some fun on a cold winter evening.

and now... we are addicted, she loves the creator and the modular buildings (just finished the pet shop :P ) and i'm hooked on lego technic again (I really like the new studless pieces)

we still even have the lego bricks from 15 years ago

and about the VW van... i'm probably getting 2 sets :D

girlfriends and lego can be a perfect combination!!!

Thanks Paul, nielsvdv and 3nslav3, for sharing your own significant-other stories. Unfortunately I did not get hooked on lego until after we got married and our children were old enough to get into the regular lego sets (we had gotten them duplo stuff before that). The first real lego set we got them was a three in one fire engine/helicopter/jeep. I knew I was hooked when I became very protective of the models around my 4 and 2 year old boys. As they invariably trashed the fire engine model, I collected all the strewn pieces (behind bookcases, in sofas, hidden among their other toys), and started building the model b and model c. I decided to get something for myself next, more complicated and substantial - 10196, the grand carousel. You should have seen the boys jaws drop when they say that in action! Immediately after which they started pulling horses (to them unicorns) off and dissecting them and having fights over which belonged to whom. Managed to again find all the pieces and now my collection is tucked away in the closet of my study.

One of my wife's gripes is that the children get obsessed with lego (they've since gotten a bunch of Toy Story, Cars and Star Wars sets) to the exclusion of their other toys. But fundamentally she does not get into engineering and model building (history PhD). Funnily her sister (engineering PhD) loves lego, Star Wars (not my wife's cup of tea), science fiction (she's even written a book) and so on. Her son who is 7 years old has the UCS death star, the largest Harry Potter sets, etc - well over 10,000 pieces is my guess.

Such is life...

[Blakbird]

I hope this is not getting too personal but...are you married...to the same spouse through your 300,000+ parts odyssey? If so, I could surely use your advice on juggling lego and wife!

Am I married? Occasionally. The linked incident had nothing to do with LEGO. I am currently married and was very up-front about my LEGO "hobby". I told her about it after we started dating (so as not to scare her away before she knew me), but before she found out on her own. Her initial comment was that there were a lot worse hobbies for men to have. Of course, it wasn't until later that she really understood the extent of my obsession. We've been married 1.5 years now and I still don't have them all reassembled, but they have spilled out of my "LEGO room" into the rest of the lower floor of our house. She is generally supportive, though does not necessarily understand what all the fuss is about. She does not try to stop me at any rate! She has been with me to BrickCon and is at least mildly interested in the modular houses. If you can manage to get your wife interested in any aspect at all, that will help you out. She may not care about Technic, but maybe modular houses or architecture or sculptures or mosaics. If she has no interest whatsoever, than you can simply point out the alternative hobbies on which you might go spend money and LEGO will start to sound pretty good!

[nielsvdv]

Am I married? Occasionally. The linked incident had nothing to do with LEGO. I am currently married and was very up-front about my LEGO "hobby". I told her about it after we started dating (so as not to scare her away before she knew me), but before she found out on her own. Her initial comment was that there were a lot worse hobbies for men to have. Of course, it wasn't until later that she really understood the extent of my obsession. We've been married 1.5 years now and I still don't have them all reassembled, but they have spilled out of my "LEGO room" into the rest of the lower floor of our house. She is generally supportive, though does not necessarily understand what all the fuss is about. She does not try to stop me at any rate! She has been with me to BrickCon and is at least mildly interested in the modular houses. If you can manage to get your wife interested in any aspect at all, that will help you out. She may not care about Technic, but maybe modular houses or architecture or sculptures or mosaics. If she has no interest whatsoever, than you can simply point out the alternative hobbies on which you might go spend money and LEGO will start to sound pretty good!

I always tell my girlfriend that its better to spend my nights in the lego room, than going to a pub and come home late and drunk.

and if u spend money on beer, it flouds away, if i spend it on lego, i can keep it forever

who has troubles about lego and girls/boys, tell em this!

[timslegos]

I have been dating my girlfriend for almost 9 months now, and i told her about my lego obsession as well. Believe it or not she loved Lego when she was a kid to!! Anyway, she is very supportive of my hobby and she actually takes interest in it. I guess its good to be upfront with people, before they find out about it for themselves.

tim

[technicmad]

I'll add my 2c :) I was already married when I started coming out of my dark ages and I think she thought it slightly amusing at first. Now, she buys more sets than I do (for the kids supposedly) and loves to build all the little winter village scenes for Christmas etc.

[bb15080]

my girlfriend brought me out of the dark ages.

almost 2 years ago she give me a the 7639 camper and the 8045 small sets but enough to trigger the enthusiasmfor the lego

and I must say I have to control myself not to spend a lot of money on lego

and otherwise I spent a lot of time searching the net for deals and info. maybe ldd is something for you I just started with it

Edited September 20, 2011 by bb15080

[DaddyWhale]

Am I married? Occasionally. The linked incident had nothing to do with LEGO. I am currently married and was very up-front about my LEGO "hobby". I told her about it after we started dating (so as not to scare her away before she knew me), but before she found out on her own. Her initial comment was that there were a lot worse hobbies for men to have. Of course, it wasn't until later that she really understood the extent of my obsession. We've been married 1.5 years now and I still don't have them all reassembled, but they have spilled out of my "LEGO room" into the rest of the lower floor of our house. She is generally supportive, though does not necessarily understand what all the fuss is about. She does not try to stop me at any rate! She has been with me to BrickCon and is at least mildly interested in the modular houses. If you can manage to get your wife interested in any aspect at all, that will help you out. She may not care about Technic, but maybe modular houses or architecture or sculptures or mosaics. If she has no interest whatsoever, than you can simply point out the alternative hobbies on which you might go spend money and LEGO will start to sound pretty good!

Thanks for sharing, Blakbird. I'm very glad that things are better for you now. Thank you also for the amazing work on Technicopedia. It's a wonderful and deep resource and one that I want to introduce my kids to when they are a bit older.

I'll add my 2c :) I was already married when I started coming out of my dark ages and I think she thought it slightly amusing at first. Now, she buys more sets than I do (for the kids supposedly) and loves to build all the little winter village scenes for Christmas etc.

As you and Blakbird have suggested, I'm going to try to incorporate my wife into more of the boys' and my lego play. She actually got us started on the lego thing. When our oldest was a little over a year old (he's now six), she got him a lego quatro set. Our son loved it, but I was unimpressed. Things got a bit more interesting (for me) when he graduated to duplo. We're now both totally hooked on the standard lego bricks and elements. My wife's interest, on the other hand, has diminished as we've moved to the more advanced sets. I think this is partly because the elements for younger kids are easier to incorporate in simple, universal and immediate imaginative play: it's easy to build simple 'bridges', ponies, cars with duplo and quatro. The elements for older children and adults tend to be technical, even those that are not Technic - you need to be a fan of a theme (star wars, pirates, engineering, castles, etc) to totally get into the planning, building and playing. She's also not into collecting, which boys and grown up men like me seem to find compulsive.

and otherwise I spent a lot of time searching the net for deals and info. maybe ldd is something for you I just started with it

Thanks for the suggestion. I've heard about LDD and have bookmarked the download site. It's something I definitely will check into. By the way, does LDD model the dynamics of Technic sets? E.g. the transmission of power from one element to another; effect of switches, etc...

[PerryMakes]

By the way, does LDD model the dynamics of Technic sets? E.g. the transmission of power from one element to another; effect of switches, etc...

No, unfortunately it does not yet offer that ability. There is an application called SR 3D Builder that does (it's not SolidWorks we're talking about here... so keep you're expectations fairly low!) One big difference between these two applications you should be aware of, however, is that LDD is much more of a "fire up and go" piece of software. You can be quite productive without getting bogged down in the user guide (which works out well, because there really isn't much of a user guide). But I found that SR 3D didn't use as many standard mouse/keyboard controls that just feel natural without knowing any better. The author provides a 17-page PDF file you can download from the app's homepage that you'd probably want to at least give a once-over before making a go at this one.

Regarding the "significant other" meets LEGO issue, I've found that LEGO does not exhibit distributive properties! In other words:

LEGO(you + her) != LEGOyou + LEGOher

But I've seen this time and time again - find some imagery that she/he likes - bust out a LEGO mosaic as a gift - instant fan. And just wait for LEGO Friends! We thought Belville was bad...

Edited September 20, 2011 by PerryMakes

[RohanBeckett]

And it will be even better when we get the long awaited 1996 revision

+1

Eric... put down the renders.. and get back to work on technicopedia!

8480 awaits!

RB

[Blakbird]

+1

Eric... put down the renders.. and get back to work on technicopedia!

8480 awaits!

I see that you have figured out where all that "missing time" has gone! Sorry about that everyone. I realized the other day that it has been over a year since my last update which is really unacceptable. I wish I had more time. BrickCon is coming up, and after that I have no excuse not to work on it.