Lalror

The problem was Lego Universe, not Lego or the fans. If Lego had dropped the rest of the game and focused on the fact that they had the perfect sandbox and developed it more they could have turned the game into something other than just another marketing scheme.

I think everyone in the LDD forum would like a better more fully featured CAD program. I am kinda hoping that Lego will start taking LDD in that direction although it may just be easier for them to re-do it completely. It is so annoying that they already have their Easy Builder Tool for maya but won't release it to us fans. I mean seriously, everyone here would love that and yet Lego thinks that for some reason it's a bad idea. All they really need is a piece/texture library plugin that would work with most professional 3D platforms out there. That would be fine with me. Lastly, when is Lego going to realize the potential that the properties had in Lego Universe. That concept of being able to build your own world and then play in it is so unbelievably awesome and for some reason Lego is so blind to it. ~Lalror

Actually I am hoping that this will free up the developers to take some new directions with LDD that they couldn't when they were limited by DBM. I am thinking along the lines of making it more of a better digital tool rather then a way to design what you buy. Still, I wonder why Lego is suddenly shutting down different departments...

Also, if you are not aware of the Extended Mode, that can provide a lot more bricks than what you currently can use.

Can you try to explain it at least. I can't seem to download the file either.

Not all of the tile pieces are in one group. There are a few pieces such as the T-peice and the small claw piece that should be moved from their technic categories to something more suitable.

I am not sure if this counts but... The search option is so "child friendly" that it makes it hard to find something specific.

It is incredibly difficult for me to have the minifig and accessories collections mixed together. I honesty don't know which place to look for a even a simple sword which is not how "organization" should be.

There is some info out on the plug-in/add-on out there and I don't wanna get in trouble with any of the mods in case this is sensitive information, so I am going to stick with what I can already find out on the internet. Its called the Easy Builder Tool (ebt) and uses the same file format as LDD. In fact lxf. stands for Lego Exchange Format and is primarily used between Maya and LDD. I have tried to get my hands on EBT but it appears to be a strictly internal tool. It does contain a complete piece library of all the pieces that Lego has produced in a higher level of detail than the ones in LDD. The reason that LDD does not have every single piece is because they have to be very low poly models for LDD to handle them. I wish that a select few of us fans would be allowed access to it since I think that it would be pretty cool to have the extra functionality but it doesn't look like that will happen. P.S. Are the bricks in MLcad, LDraw, etc, official models or are they close estimations of the real thing? ~Lalror

Lego's mainframe graphics software that they use is Maya. They have a plug-in that they use which has all of the pieces in that specific format. I have tried for a long time to transfer models to blender, sketch up, 3ds max, etc but so far there is no way to do it. Hopefully Lego will allow LDD to export to other file formats than what they have currently but until then we're kinda stuck with LDD and LDraw.

Please request the decals and accessories for the Collectible Minifigs, there are a lot of unique pieces there that I would like to use in LDD.

Use the right mouse button to orbit, and Shift+Rmousebutton to pan. Hope that works for you.

There are a couple threads now that are full of suggestions for updates, you might take a look at some of those. Lego as a company is very hard to contact directly. Because of the large amount of children who want to tell Lego about their ideas, Lego has put up a lot of services to make sure that they don't get bogged down with lots of "letters to santa" if you get the point. With that in mind, a few of the moderators here at eurobricks do have almost direct contact with the people at Lego, and so the best way to get an idea across, is to make a post about it, and get people to read it enough till one of the mods thinks that it is an important issue. From my understanding, the mod's and people at Lego talk on a regular basis so when that happens, then maybe your idea will pop up, and then it is up to Lego to decide whether to use it or not. I was at one time able to get the email address of the LDD Manager, and so most of the info I am telling you is actually from him, and Superkalle. I know it sounds like a long and hard process and I wish that there was some easier way to communicate out ideas, but thats kinda what the rest of life is like anyway. ~Lalror

Welcome to Eurobricks Tontus, thats a good idea, and would work in theory. I think though that the work required to find the pieces, the group, and then try to make them correspond, for more than two thousand bricks would be a little tedious though. I like the idea of highlighting new bricks, but rather than a yellow background, just have a splash screen that shows the new features in the latest update. Maybe also provide a temporary collection of all the new bricks which you could then move, or have automatically placed in other groups. All of these a good ideas though.

Unfortunately, yes...

I am using a Mac, and for some reason I can't find any of that. I have access to all of the icons in LDD for the tools and the mouse options, but I can't actually find anything related to the individual bricks.

Thanks for the explanation, I was curious how this was able to be done. I am not as computer savvy as some people are, but at the same time I can do a lot that some people can't. One thing however that I am curious about is where the source files for the bricks and decorations are located. I am looking at this from the point of loading in my own custom decals in whatever file format the others are, or even possibly exporting the 3d brick models into other 3d software, such as Maya. If anybody has any input on this I would be very interested. ~Lalror

I am sure that Lego has some organization system that is the same throughout the company (it would be mandatory) but with the large amount of pieces and colors I think it would be good for Lego to release a piece and color catalog for reference. This would also provide non-official Lego sites such as bricklink to have better corresponding names. No.

One thing that is a big problem, but can also be easily fixed, it piece organization in LDD. With some of the recent updates in LDD, it is now very hard for me to find the pieces that I am looking for. It is true that after a while, you eventually get somewhat used to it and can remember where most things are, but the truth is that the current system is broken. Forgive me if I should be posting this in one of the update threads, but I felt that this is something that is important, and could be easily handled by Lego, and I wanted to speak out about it. The main problem with the system is simply the groups that the bricks have been put into. Currently, we have two different boxes for minifig accessories, which also makes it harder to find your normal minifig parts such as hair. There is currently an instance of where the main icon for a collection of pieces, is a piece that is in a different folder. I honestly think that any one of us could organize the many pieces in LDD in a more user friendly way. Even if they were simply organized by size, it would be more efficient than what it currently is. Seriously, for minifigs split up the head pieces, accessories, body pieces, etc, its not all that hard to do. Its not all that hard to organize a bunch of pieces, so I am hoping that this issue gets fixed. On one last note, if Lego cannot find a successful system that works for a majority, they should at least give us the ability to create out own groups, and move bricks from section to section to better fit our individual needs. If anybody else has any suggestions please comment below. Thanks for reading, I hope this message will get to Lego somehow. ~Lalror

Hi all, here is a small moc that I built in around a half hour. Although it is fairly interesting in itself, what is more interesting is the building technique behind it. I am sure a few of you more experienced builders have used this before, and I am also sure that most everybody here knows how to "float" a brick. However, this is something that I have been using for a while now and I thought some of you would find it useful. Although overall, the motorcycle looks sturdy, this model is actually composed of six individual models that have been placed almost perfectly next to each other. This would obviously never work in real life, but in LDD, you can make some pretty cool models that would otherwise be impossible to build. LDD currently has no way to move bricks around 3D space without having some sort of "lattice." But if you select two different pieces, and move one of them, the other will move also (as shown below). From here, you can move the pole structure, or even rotate it, to position the floating piece even more. One last tip that will save a lot of clicking and time is that on your selection panel, chose "select by color", and then color your floating piece, and your controller piece the same color. I hope you liked this mini-tutorial and I also hope that you can use it if necessary. ~Lalror

There is no way (yet) to transfer models between LU and LDD; my comment was more to describe the capabilities of the properties using a popular reference. ~Lalror

Hi all, as a few of you know, the first world in Lego Universe (LU) has been made free which means that now anyone can download and try it out. One area of particular interest to the LDD fans is that you can have a property in which you can build similarly to LDD, but can also experience your creations as a minifig. Note that there are some limitations, such as that you don't have all the bricks at your disposal, but it is still pretty incredible and I thought you guys might like to try it out. Imagine exploring one of Alienwar9's cites as a minifig! ~Lalror

Looks like its coming along very nicely. I know everybody says that but if you compare it to the previous RCB's, this one really stands out. Can't wait until my turn!

When I first started using ldd, I thought of it as more of an advanced pick-a-brick (pab) tool. It seemed like a good way to make a concept of your model, and then buy it. As time has passed, and things such as LU mode, and now the Extended mode have been released to us, its easy to see that it really wasn't just another way for Lego to make money. The past few months I have made more moc's on my computer, than I have with my physical Lego collection. Except for a few limitations especially in the areas of non piece usage (npu) and the lack of some bricks, you can still build almost anything you can think of. So what is LDD, what do you use it for, concepts of soon to be real models, do you actually buy the things you create, or is it a way to build in Lego without limitation?

I hope that when they do though, they add all the new Collectible Minifig accessories, cause there are some really cool pieces in there.