LDD: Friend or Foe?

[VaderFan2187]

Hi all!

What do you all feel about Lego Digital Designer? Is it good or bad, and why? Feel free to comment below, maybe with a  to indicate you like it and a  to indicate the opposite 

 

 I personally feel it's a great tool, it puts you in the seat of a LEGO designer, with a full palette of pieces and colors. Illegal connections aren't allowed, either, apart from glitches, and thus you can't use unstable connections that are used in some MOCs.

[Gnac]

It keeps stealing my puddins from the fridge, so it's an enemy. (it's not an enemy)

[VaderFan2187]

5 minutes ago, Gnac said:

It keeps stealing my puddins from the fridge, so it's an enemy. (it's not an enemy)

Umm... what?

[DaveDoc]

How hard is to learn how to use LDD ?

[Gnac]

DEVILISHLY easy.

[VaderFan2187]

Download it and keep playing around with it. You'll learn some tricks with experience.

[dr_spock]

Foe, that they don't seem to have LEGO Friends minidolls in the palette.  Make it a little hard to create LDD entry for the Best Friends contest over at LEGO Rebrick.

 

 

 

[Lego Otaku]

LDD has some pluses and minuses.  The biggest plus is it's crazy easy to use for people who aren't familiar with any kind of 3D CAD and just want to get going in simple and easy project.  The minuses are: it was never designed for use with really large project. Some computer starts to slow down when you reach around 10,000 parts and very few people have gone past 50,000 parts without crashing.  The largest project I've done was over 400,000 parts and it took like a minute just to rotate the whole view.  Also LDD generally don't have older parts that were discontinued more than 10-15 years ago so some older LEGO sets can't be recreated correctly. Since LDD is still closed, hack and custom part files aren't allowed on this forum.

 

LDraw is open and can have any parts added by users and they have dang near every parts LEGO ever made in the last 50+ years but it is much more difficult to use for beginners.

[VaderFan2187]

5 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Foe, that they don't seem to have LEGO Friends minidolls in the palette.  Make it a little hard to create LDD entry for the Best Friends contest over at LEGO Rebrick.

True! Just that I don't build LEGO Friends   

Come to think of it, they don't have Duplo either 

4 hours ago, Lego Otaku said:

LDD has some pluses and minuses.  The biggest plus is it's crazy easy to use for people who aren't familiar with any kind of 3D CAD and just want to get going in simple and easy project.  The minuses are: it was never designed for use with really large project. Some computer starts to slow down when you reach around 10,000 parts and very few people have gone past 50,000 parts without crashing.  The largest project I've done was over 400,000 parts and it took like a minute just to rotate the whole view.  Also LDD generally don't have older parts that were discontinued more than 10-15 years ago so some older LEGO sets can't be recreated correctly. Since LDD is still closed, hack and custom part files aren't allowed on this forum.

Um… what? The largest model I built on LDD was 3001 parts, and it was UCS Starkiller Base based on 75159 

I don't think I'll ever go beyond 10,000. How do y'all do that? 

Yeah, the problem with LDD is you can't make new molded parts like a real LEGO Designer. But that's what makes LDD submissions to LEGO Ideas okay, I guess. 

[lipanz]

the easiest tool.. so its a friend...

[Sven F]

It's a good tool for quick mocups without having to break out all your bricks,  it saves me money by knowing exactly which pieces and how many i need to order for a particular moc. It offers a lot of elements which you might not have thought to use had you not seen them in the inventory. 

What I don't like about it is when it's used as a final medium, especially in contests.  I take a lot of time sourcing strange elements and rare colors and consider it part of the challenge.   Also there is no gravity in LDD so you could just suspend parts in the air while things have to be sturdy in real life to even stand up on their own.  I get a feeling that digital creations,  even when nicely rendered never get the same wow effect and credit as real bricks. 

 It's a good tool as an alternative to a sketch pencil,  but not a substitute to bricks in my opinion.  The exception being Ideas where you might want to influence new part colors into production. 

Edited November 30, 2016 by Sven F

[msx80]

I actually love LDD, i'd just wish they made it a little more open. Letting people design missing parts or generally poke around would make it beyond great. It would also simplify exports of models for rendering or other porpouses. Having to depend on them for updates (before the the last one there was a huge period of silence (fun fact: i and other Remake builders indirectly caused the release of the update.. so, you're welcome :P )) sucks too.
 And the flexible part tool can make you question your mental sanity. But despite all of that i'd give a

 

[VaderFan2187]

On 12/1/2016 at 11:58 PM, msx80 said:

And the flexible part tool can make you question your mental sanity. But despite all of that i'd give a

Yes! That tool is freaking annoying sometimes!