When do you feel "part limited"?

[Niloc]

Hi all,

While building, I recently found out that my collection has diminished due to scattered, lost, broken parts and such, as well as my selection getting old, with 90% of "old" basic and semi-specialized bricks (dirty colors, plates, wedges, etc.) VS 10% of "new" bricks (fresh color, brackets, cheese slopes, tiles, etc.). Although I can still manage to find a way to build what I want, I've been facing a wall more and more while creating stuff. I often feel "part limited".

Sometimes I don't have enough of a certain part (e.g. 4 light gray tap parts), sometimes it's in a limited palette (e.g. I have 1 pink brick in my entire collection), or I want the part/color and I don't have it at all. It results in sometimes mismatching colors in a MOC when I don't have enough parts of the same color. In some situations, I want to try new techniques but I don't have the parts required. In others I want to make a rock landscape but I don't have enough slopes... My vision can't be brough to life... And is it frustrating! Every so often I want to reboot my entire collection and buy 1000$ worth of bricklink parts!

Did you ever see that wall? Do you feel part limited? If so, at what point (e.g. 20 white 1x1 tiles isn't enough for me anymore) and in what situation (e.g. I want to use new SNOT techniques but I don't have any brackets)?

What do you do then? Do you enter a rage and punch your MOC? Do you think outside the box and find another solution? Do you empty the Bricklink stores? Do you quit LEGO? (...)

Edited June 11, 2015 by Niloc

[ShaydDeGrai]

I have bad news for you, feeling part-limited, as far as I can tell, is an intrinsic aspect of MOC-ing.

My collection easily outweighs me several times over. When I place a Bricklink order for some part X, I buy the store's entire inventory of that part even if I only need a few dozen under the presumption that If I need that part now, I'll probably need more of them later. Back when Lego stores would actually allow you to buy PAB parts by the case, I'd routinely ask the store what they had on hand and buy entire boxes of anything I even suspected I might need even if I wasn't working on anything at the moment.

Still, I routinely feel "part-limited"; either I have the right piece in the wrong color, or I need 100 of X and only have 98. It's frustrating, but it happens - a lot.

I did a sizable sculpture of Barad Dur a couple years back, I remember buying 5000 black cheese wedges thinking, "I'll use the leftovers eventually." A month later, I'm cursing myself saying "You knew how big Barad Dur is, why did you only get 5000 cheese slopes?!?!" as I noticed I was running out and only half done.

I find it particularly annoying when I have some momentum going on a build and end up shy by just a part or two. I don't want to sit around for a week or more for a Bricklink order to come in. Or a month or more waiting for parts directly from LEGO. Fortunately, I live a reasonable distance from four Lego Stores and a Discover Center gift shop so I've got several Pick-a-brick walls to scour in search of (near) immediate gratification. Even so, I must admit, in desperation I have bought entire kits just to get a needed part or two for a MOC I wanted to finish.

[lowlead]

Oh, I have plenty of parts, I'm just 'talent-limited.'

I used to MOC quite a bit, and if I was compelled to embark on a particular project, I would take a good, long objective look at my parts level. If said project was possible to complete, or at least close, I could begin and keep any tail-end Bricklink orders to a minimum.

Sometimes a particular MOC would start with a part or parts I knew I didn't have, thereby beginning with a small Bricklink order on the front end.

Lately, however, I'm 'free-time' limited, so I have delegated the heavy lifting to all the expert MOCers out there, whom I classify as artists with an ABS medium.

If I were inclined to take on a big project now, such as a vehicle, I would do a lot of planning and research before I picked up one brick, and settle in for the long haul - really take the time to do the very best job possible, even if it takes months before the big reveal. If that meant dozens of Bricklink orders, so be it - I would have already budgeted for that in the planning phase ;)

[ekobor]

I definitely feel part limited. All the time.

I have a VERY small collection, and all of it is new Lego. So I have a very wide array of colours, but few pieces in each colour. So 99% of my MOCs ignore colour.

I have very few "special" bricks (hinges, rocking plates, bricks with studs on multiple sides, etc.) so I sometimes just can't do something. Which is frustrating.

However, I've found ways of working around most of my limitations. I ignore colour when building in reals. Then, if I like the structure of what I made, I LDD it in proper colours.

I build things in really random and inefficient ways because it is the only apparent way.

I build things solely on LDD.

Honestly, colour isn't a big deal for me. If I could have a bunch of all types of pieces, but only in one colour, I'd do it. -shrug-

[TheLegoDr]

I usually don't feel too part limited. It all depends on what I'm building of course. Typically if I don't have the piece in the right color, depending on where it will go in the MOC, I will use a different color, but the right piece so I can still build it and keep the momentum going and order the right color later.

I ended up building Darth Maul's lightsaber recently and I surprisingly had all of the pieces in my collection. I was expecting to have to order some.

The bigger problem is if the piece you don't have is towards the beginning or is a central piece and it would be difficult to build around it knowing you are going to take it all back apart. That might indicate why most of my builds aren't super sturdy.

But sometimes it does surprise you how you think you'll have enough pieces and run out. I ordered 700 sand green cheese slopes for my Hogwarts MOC, but I can easily see myself running out of those after having seen how quickly you need pieces.

[Legocity2713]

Absolutely! I can't stand it when people say, "oh look at that set, you could build it from your own pieces."

My collection, like most Lego collections, is comprised of a good amount of bright colors like red, yellow, green, orange, and blue.

However, the way i like to build is with toned down colors like grays, browns, dark and light blues, maroons, blacks, sand greens, tans, and whites making for a more natural scene (especially when building superhero scenes just as I usually do.) Part limitations get extremely frustrating especially in the middle of building, but you gotta push through.

Every so often I want to reboot my entire collection and buy 1000$ worth of bricklink parts!

I hate it how much this line describes my thoughts.

[mediumsnowman]

I will either make a Bricklink order or dissamble a set for its parts.

[TheOneVeyronian]

I think that being "part limited" is a very normal aspect of MOC'ing. I MOC primarily in Constraction (Bionicle and stuff like that), and when I do hit a part limitation (which happens often despite me keeping a stock of 4000+ loose Technic and Constraction pieces for MOC'ing with), it hits very hard as the stuff I usually need is less readily available in the quantities I often need on BL than System or Technic parts, and direct from LEGO is often far too expensive in comparison. So sometimes it can take me weeks, even months to finish off one MOC as I often have to source parts from other countries. And it's definitely not helped by my sheer reluctance to take MOC's I am really satisfied with apart. Sometimes I might pinch a piece from my collection of built sets if it's only one particular piece I need to finish something.

But when I MOC with System, I often plan my model in LDD first then order the parts I need, so part limitations rarely hit with those MOC's unless I forget to order a particular piece (which happens a lot!) or some other incident happens where parts are missing from orders (as it has with a current System MOC I have that really should have been finished over 3 weeks ago!).

[Naijel]

I feel part limited all the time because I'm very picky about what I build and how to build it. I don't just build out of whatever parts I have or change the build to accomodate different parts. I build models and try to build as accurately as I can. So I'm always needing an exact part and more often than not, with my smallish/newish collection, I either don't have it or don't have enough.

My collection is also so small that I don't even have enough of basic bricks, plates, tiles, etc. to do buildings of 'modular' size.

Edited June 12, 2015 by Naijel

[anothergol]

I do nearly everything in the LDD, and bricklink everything once the design is 100% done.

Yet, it still means limitations, as some parts that exist in the LDD simply don't exist, or are overexpensive.

But Lego itself is very limiting, lots of parts that you'd expect to exist, don't (yet), so I can't imagine playing with a pile of bricks like I did when I was a kid.

[Naijel]

Me too. I do multiple versions of things in LDD until it's right, then BrickLink the parts. Learnt my lesson early on though about designing in LDD without taking care to ensure everything was actually connected together soundly and that only parts that actually exist in plastic were used.

Once I designed a fire truck and only found out after finishing it that the very solid looking model in LDD had a section in the middle where there was nothing actually joining the sections fore and aft.

[fred67]

I have a pretty substantial collection of loose parts to use, and always feel like it's the wrong things. I have a whole shoe-box size bin of brackets, but still had to order a different kind to do the last thing I built... it always seems that way for some reason.

[ShaydDeGrai]

I have a pretty substantial collection of loose parts to use, and always feel like it's the wrong things. I have a whole shoe-box size bin of brackets, but still had to order a different kind to do the last thing I built... it always seems that way for some reason.

Trust me, you are not alone...

[Nacho]

Just getting back into Lego recently my part selection is very limited. It's frustrating not being able to pick a couple of bricks from my collection to use and I'm having to buy literally every piece I need each time.

I need a way of bulk buying lots and lots of new bricks in every size, shape and colour imaginable!

Edited June 12, 2015 by Nacho