Library of digital models

[marcselman]

I'm thinking of building a website where we can host all digital models of the official sets (LDraw, LDD or Studio files) for downloading.
All sets would be indexed and easily searchable by name or number etc.

Question is, are people interested in this, or would it be a waste of my time?

[Jason C. Hand]

38 minutes ago, marcselman said:

I'm thinking of building a website where we can host all digital models of the official sets (LDraw, LDD or Studio files) for downloading.
All sets would be indexed and easily searchable by name or number etc.

Question is, are people interested in this, or would it be a waste of my time?

Good morning, friend. Yeah, that might be cool, since the old LDD Gallery where we could upload models shut down a good while ago.

I spoke ahead of myself there. There's Bricksafe! I've seen folks upload models on that website, and I do from time to time.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Jason C. Hand

[Berthil]

A very good initiative to let the community build such a digital design database of official models under the assumption it will be a free service. I've used a few digital design available here in the Eurobricks thread, a more extensive, structured and up-to-date website would be very good.

[Toastie]

8 hours ago, marcselman said:

building a website

The idea is really nice; and applies to many, many other - vintage/collection/preservation/... initiatives.

As far as I am concerned, it is not the building (which is, of course (!), a lot of work) of such a website or repository - it is its lifetime, that - in the end - matters.

What is your idea of making it "sustainable"? I am asking with all due respect (!), as I see so many websites ... disappear and links leading nowhere ...

All the best,
Thorsten 

 

[marcselman]

@Jason C. Hand Thanks for letting me know about Bricksafe. I agree it's kind of similar but I plan to make my site alot easier to navigate and initially specifically targeted to official models.

I think I'll start off with 18+ sets like the modular building and the Winter Village etc.

@Toastie That's a very good question! I will probably initially host the site as an Azure Static Website on the free tier. The good thing is that on Microsoft Azure I am able to easily scale the site up when needed. To cover the eventual costs I could add some banner ads targeted to LEGO fans. As long as it's not costing me a lot of money there's no reason for me to ever take the site down.

I'm also thinking of maybe making the project open source so others can help add parts/features if needed. Then if I ever wanted to stop working on the project I could hand control over to someone else as well.

Anyway, I think I'll start with a proof of concept soon.

[The Undo]

I think this is a great idea. I recently made some official sets in Stud.io to incorporate into my digital MOCs and it was interesting to dive into those sets and all their little details and building techniques, especially since I don't own much LEGO irl. 

Having a whole website with digital sets would be a great way to get more familiar with various themes/sets and inspect their intricacies, be it some retired and vintage themes/sets, or new ones that one intends or it thinking to buy.

Edited December 13, 2023 by omerai