Jan

The Weightlifter just arrived here at my home in excellent condition. To be sure, I leave him in quarantaine for just a while, and check him first for anabolic steroids and such. I'm sure I will find a place for him in a future MOC. Thanks, Jan

Great to have it in a proper place

Wow thats the second time in a few months that I am lucky enough to win some here on EB. It was a great hunt with some nasty clues, but as said before, while searching you find out lots of interesting topics around the forum. Well I am allready emptying a shelf for the weightlifter, one of the toughest to find , for me at least. Thanks, Jan

Great desk you've got there (do you have pricing information? ) Just one remark. Long time ago I used to have a sliding shelf underneath my desk for my keyboard. It came in very handy because of the space it left on my desk, but from an ergonomical point of view I would never do it again. I keep the space under your desk free for my legs, and be very aware of the importance of correct height of your desk. 1 cm allready means a lot. I have mine at 76cm, but for smaller people 74cm can be more convienient. 75cm is average. I hope we may view the result soon. Jan

Same as for digital printing, I can imagine that pretty soon this 3D printing will be widly available as a service you can send your data to. Of course this kind of service is allready available, but will become cheaper and better over time, same as photoprinting is now. So of course there could be a possibility that this will be available for not to much money for home users, but I think that for occasional use an external printing service will be much cheaper. Of course, if this 3d printing results in products as good as the original LEGO, possibly TLG will also step over to this proces as well. No molds are needed, no special machines for different kind of parts etc.. So one way or the other, this will become reality. And I think as allready mentioned, the hardest part for TLG will be mainly not to get confused with homemade 'inferior' products. Only way to do so is to exel in quality and design. thats my opinion Jan

Pm sent, have found the last two surprisingly fast. Great hunt, and for sure something to do again in the future. thanks, Jan

I think that the Sagrada Familia belongs to the same category as for instance the Taj Mahal. And is more like world Heritage, and therefore beyond suspicion. Thats my opinion at least.

And a young horse is born.................................the young horse still a bit wobbly <- click

If I understand well, you can or do not want to make your models in LDD, but still want to have instructions for your brickbild mocs. Well, thats very simple, you can do it in two directions: 1) you build, and while you add bricks, you make photo's every time you make some progress. 2) you do it the other way around, and take a moc which is finished, and take it apart and make photo's. If you want to add an inventory for each step you can use the part pictures from peeron, or bricklink. or make photo's of the parts you use, or take out of the model, which is even easier. You could put it together in any decent wordprocessor, or even better something like indesign if you have that available. The quality of your photo's, and the logic in the steps you take between the photo's make your tutorial readable. So some daylight and a good white background, combined with a decent camera will do the job. Lookking forward to your tutorials Good luck Jan I was typing while there was no reply yet

Oops, then I want to take the thanks back for that from Prateek, and pass it to you. And I wanna leave Prateek with only the thanks for his comment. I hope this way it's solved

Prateek, Thanks for adding a poll, I found out last evening that I needed another 450 post to do it myself. Jan

The Sagrada Familia (Barcelona, Spain) would be great. Till the expected finishing date 2025 it would be nice to have a finished model allready wikipedia link

21003 Seattle Space Needle general information (from Brickset): theme: Architecture, Landmark series Pieces: 57 size: 222 mm (8.7") x 80 mm (3.1") year released: 2009 us availability / price: 01 Feb 09 - now $19.99 uk availability / price: 12 Apr 10 - now £17.99 link brickset link peeron instructions Introduction Because I received this as 2nd prize for the LDD contest and found out that there wasn't a review yet on this model, I felt the need to do something in return for Eurobricks, so here is my first review. Hope you enjoy it. The Box When you have this set in hand, it really feels like you got a present. The size and quality of the box is very different from the normal Lego sets. It feels strong. And as you might be able to see on the foto you can easily open and close the box once you cut the seal. On the photo is also visible what the leftovers are. 3 small cut-off pieces of rigid hose and two small parts. The Instructions Similair too the box, the instructions are printed on fine quality paper, and feel better then the usual instructionbooks. The book starts with a small introduction on the real Space Needle and informs you of its height, width and more technical details. The Parts Now close your eyes for a moment an think of something completely different, forget the Space Needle.............And now open them again and look at the inventory. If you see these parts for the first time and don't know what set they belong to, I doubt if you will ever find out. Except for the printed tile with Seattle Space Needle on it there are not really new or exceptional parts. It's just the combination of them. For the part fetisjists, the parts come in two unnumbered bags. Building the model The whole model takes about 5 minutes to put together, and cutting the rigid hose is probably the most time consuming part. The instructions leave nothing up to your imagination, and with the limited amount of used colors there are no color issues. The finished model The result is great, The size, and the details are really well done. Although I haven't seen the tower for real, only in movies and TV-series, you don't need a second look to identify the landmark. End of the story The instruction book ends with a word from the artist, and a general note on the architecture series. Conclusions and thoughts This set, and I guess the other Architecture sets aswell are really great to give or receive as gift. As there is no play value, and the scale is far from minifigure, these models are made for your bookshelf. I would have bought this set myself, but only as an souvenir after a visit to the real Space Needle. Although it's retail price seems high, I think it's good value for money. Not as a price per piece set, but more when you put together the nice box, booklet and model. My only complaints are about the use, or better non use of colors. The whole model is build in grey while the introduction text mentions: "Astronaut white for the supporting legs, Orbital olive for the core, Re-entry red for the halo and galaxy gold for the sunburst and pagoda roof". I guess it's just the fact that certain parts aren't available in certain colors, because I think an all white model would allready been closer to the real thing. My interest in the Architecture series has really grown after building end reviewing this set. I am not gonna give grades to this set, so I leave it all up to you to judge for yourself. Thanks you for reading, Jan

There was this artist who wrote something like: Everything has been done before, but not yet by me. That was his driving force. just like Ralph_S mentioned where I want to give credits to Ralph_S for using his line. good luck, Jan

I don't fully understand how it works, but it looks and works great. It's very nice that the codestrips are really legolike, and if I understand well, you can place them where you like, and program them with different task for the trains to perform? Am I right? I am really looking forward to further details on the trains and the used electronics, and of course if this system allows to work with more trains on the same track. Great work, Jan

Wow as well I think this is a good reason to give this LDD forum part a proper place in the forum structure. Under the special interests for example and not just as a sub-dot hanging under the general discussions and news

brickfactory does! <- click link an search on setnumber hope this helps a little

Seeing all these ideas and new proposed features, i suggest that it would be great to be able to choose your interface (simple | advanced). Simple is something like it is now, but with all colors nice spread out in a seperate pallette for ease of use and no hidden tools like (for instance the arrow submenu (select by color, select multiple etc.) but everything just visble in one view. All other functions go in the pull down menu. This way I think the program would be as accesible as possible for instance for my 6 year old son who really likes to use it but doesn't go into all the submenu's simply because he doesn't understand that they are there, and can't read the pull down menu's, but allready make s great things with the program. Advanced is with a selfconfigurable screen setup, floating menu's use of multiple viewpoint windows, different shading modes (with or without edges, shadows, reflections?)Advanced layer structure with ability to hide by layer, lock layers, select by layer, give layernames, and work in active layer and the use of reference layers which contain links to models outside LDD. It would be great to have an updating partlist (with thumbs), not only to keep count on what you made (because LDD manager does that job perfectly), but more to get your elements from. Because most of the time you use the same elements multiple times in the same drawing. Of course there should be a proper way to work with flexible objects. It would also be good to have the possibility to adjust the way LDD makes its instructions from your model. For instance the ability to select which step you want to use as first building step. It would prevent ldd from make instructions to build structures upside down. Well thats about all I could come up with for now. (knowing that some of the things are allready mentioned) Jan

Wow, I am really amazed, and flattered, my first contribution to this great community and immediatly a prize. Cheers to all the other winners and entrants, and of course to Superkalle. And thanks to the voters. I am quite sure that when LDD keeps updating and getting more functions and parts, the digital designs will get even more popular then they are today. Jan.

No measurable problems with this.

I was typing this post just before prateek replied. If you press top right button in LDD (or F7 button) you will enter build mode, a sort of automatic building instruction mode. It's far from perfect, and the building direction is most of the time not the most logical one, but at least you don't have to take things apart. And on top of that you can use Superkalle's LDD manager which produces a piece lists (almost on the fly) it's really a great tool. I am afraid I don't know exactly what you mean on all 3 points, can you explain this with a screenshot? - LDD does not work with gravity at all, it only works with legal connections. - Colors can be changed before placement using the color palette above the element selection, or after placement with the color pallette and paintbucket tool at the toolbar in the lower middle of the screen. In fact there should be no lines at all using the current way of displaying. This has been mentioned in some posts before, and I also think it would be better if there was an option to show or not show outlines on the bricks. As stated before, it only works with legal connections. But it would be great if they would be able to add a function to LDD which automaticly would adress and resolve fragile pieces of your designs. Hope this helped you a little, and LDD updates are allready anounced

Although I guess you mean vertical connections between the floors, I just wanna show you a digital model I made for the ldd contest where every story of the building including the roof is interconnectable (with pins), and the advantages of that system. A more fixed vertical connection wouldn't be bad either and could open some possibilities. (hanging floors?) link to my LDD contest contribution

Thanks both for the quick reply to my issue, one last question before I start to experiment myself. Did you modify the interior part of the switches to remove the friction of the switch, or is the solenoid able to overcome this friction, And will a 9 volt micromotor being able to work with an unmodified switch (is it strong enough)? Jan

I have a question, I am not so in to electronic devices, but I googled the tohe Solenoid and if I am right a pin is sliding in or out if you put power on it, or not? Does it mean that you have to have power on it all the time to keep it in a certain state? Or does it just switch when you put power on it for a moment? And what are you using to power these, 12volt transformator? This looks very usable and cost efficient, but also a bit big as already mentioned. Jan

Reminds me of the clock in the first TECHNIC idea book 8888, Someone ever build it?, was it precise? I doubt. One of the best technic products ever, I think, I mean the book.