Newbie into castles, fantasy and SF

[HamsterHuey]

Hello everybody!

My name is Jamie, a 49 bearded fella from Cambridge, drawn to digital Lego building because I am really loving those modular sets, but was too poor to buy 'm all. So I looked into digital Lego and found this site first and fell in love with all of your dedication and fun builds.

I am using LeoCad and would love to find out the differences between the other programs, as I've already encountered that a lot bricks from the sets I am building (using official Lego PDF building plans) are not digitized yet. So if you have pointers where to get unofficial parts that are up to date with the latest bricks, I would love to find out.

As said, I am a newbie when it comes to LDraw, in it for the relaxation of it all, but expect a lot of questions!

So, here is my first question; how long does it take for new bricks to pop up digitally?

Anyways, I am looking forward to chatting with all of you's, but am not online often, so be patient with me!

[deraven]

Hi Jamie - welcome to EB!

I'm sure you'll have lots of opinions from lots of people on which digital tools work best, but I would suggest going with Bricklink Studio (www.stud.io) at this point, or Ldraw if that has greater appeal to you for whatever reason.  Lego Digital Designer (LDD) has had all support dropped for it a while back, and LeoCAD (which I've also used in the past and liked) is rarely updated these days.  LDraw has a big community and regular if not frequent updates so there's plenty of longevity still in that platform.  Studio, however, is a modern program in very active development with more frequent feature and parts updates, and since Lego bought Bricklink I think it's safe to assume that support and development will continue for a good long while.  I think it has some ease-of-use advantages over LDraw as well with how nicely things like rendering, parts list creation, etc., are integrated but that's largely a matter of preference (and it's not as extensible as LDraw if you want to really get under the hood).

Just my opinion on that - happy building, whatever you use!  

[HamsterHuey]

11 hours ago, deraven said:

happy building, whatever you use!  

Thanks, Deraven.

I am on a less than XP computer for now, as soon as I update that, I'll give Studio a try. I also frequent the new parts page on Ldraw.org, but that seems to be a half yearly update.

Is there a place where I can find newer brick-.dat's? It's a bit of a mixed blessing when I have to swap bricks for something not listed, as it is fun, searching for a replacement, but I rather have the proper brick.
I think in Studio you can design your own bricks?

 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Welcome aboard @HamsterHuey!

I suggest you the use ot Studio

[HamsterHuey]

On 7/18/2020 at 9:03 PM, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

Welcome aboard @HamsterHuey!

I suggest you the use ot Studio

Thanks, 12 Volts!

I have been testing Studio that last few days. Looks magnificent!