Splat

The last set of instructions that I made, I made the hard way! I recreated the physical model in MLCad I rendered each step in LDView, and exported the renders as PNG images with transparency I also rendered each individual piece for use in the parts list and piece call-out boxes I used Adobe Illustrator to manually lay out each page and add numbers, arrows, and sub-steps, etc. I then exported each individual page as separate PDFs Lastly, I combined the PDFs into a single multi-page PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro This created great looking instructions, but took a lot of time to create as it was a very 'manual' process.

@drakmin - Those videos are very nicely done. Thanks again for sharing your amazing MOC

@nico71 - Great work It looks like the updated method of moving the shuttle back and forward is working a bit more reliably now.

@drakmin - This looks great One of my favourite MOCs - a nice combination of function (PF and pneumatics) and aesthetics. Is the turret able to rotate indefinitely? From this photo it looks like PF cables might get in the way. I can't wait to see the video, and to see the 'cannon fire' feature, and to see what you come up with next.

If you are working with studless, you can use two 8t gears to mesh with the worm gear. When the worm gear is at one end of the axle it turns one 8t gear, and when it slides to the opposite end of the axle it turns the other 8t gear. If you take the output from only one of the red/green axles, it will always turn the same direction (except for a brief pause while the worm slides along the axle). You can also change the two 16t gears to get different output speeds (eg. 8t+24t, 12t+20t). So if you turn the input (yellow) clockwise, you get one speed, and if you turn the input (yellow) counter-clockwise, you get a different speed, but the output (red or green) still spins the same direction. If you don't want the two output axles meshed together, you can remove the two 16t gears, and the red and green axles can act as separate outputs, but only one will spin at a time, and they will only spin in one direction. Also, when they aren't meshed with the worm, they will be able to free spin, which might be undesirable in some situations (eg. a crane). If you have the pieces, build this simple mechanism and see what it does in real-life to get a better understanding. Whoever came up with this was a genius (alas, it wasn't me).

If you don't already have a 'supercar', or you want to build your own supercar, the 8070 Supercar will give you a lot of useful pieces such as all of the suspension and steering pieces, differential, 8 x pistons, gearbox pieces, some PF parts (battery box and M-motor), and lots of red panels. It's gearbox controls four functions (hood, left door, right door, and rear spoiler). Another (cheaper) set with lots of red panels is the 9394 Jet Plane. The 8109 Flatbed Truck has some nice design features, but has a fairly average piece selection (inventory), although it does have one 1x7 gear-rack, and two 1x13 gear-racks, if that is what you are after. It also has a PF battery box a M-Motor, but there is no suspension in this set, and the only blue is for the seats (and blue pins) - none of the current available sets have very much blue in them. The 9397 Logging Truck has some PF parts (battery box, M-motor, standard linear actuator and mini linear actuator), gearbox pieces, 4 x pistons, differential, and a full size turntable and mini-turntable. This set is quite long, and it does flex a little bit at the back (not as rigid as the 8258 Crane Truck from 2009). There is no suspension, but it's gearbox controls four functions. I don't have the 8071 Bucket Truck, so I can't really comment on that one, but you can read a review here. Your decision will have to come down to how much you want to spend, if you want a set that you can play with vs display on a shelf, or if you want a set with a good parts selection to make your own MOCS. Just so you know, the 9397 Logging Truck does have six wheels (62.4 x 20) (and some smaller brown hubs), but they aren't as big as the Unimog wheels (94.3 x 38).

I think this is a great idea! I bought some of those transparent Pod Racer Technic liftarms off BrickLink a little while ago, but as there are only two liftarms in trans clear, it's a bit difficult to do much with them. I ended up using them for display stands for my 9394 Jet Planes (let me know if you want me to take a pic). I would love to see more trans clear parts, but it looks like the plastic that is used is different to the standard ABS, and could be a bit more brittle. I wonder how these parts will last over time if they are under constant stress/tension. I think being able to see the inner workings of some of the models would be good though. For example, I love the gearbox mechanism in the 8258 Crane Truck, but it is currently too hidden away to be able to see what it is doing during use. Here's a render of my Water Strider in trans clear, but obviously those pieces aren't available at the moment (click to enlarge): Another thing that would be really cool is if you could get plastic that changed from transparent to opaque when it is moving/spinning, so only the drive-train that is moving/spinning becomes visible. Just a crazy thought!

@Blakbird - Thank you for posting your review and insights

This is true, but you can speed up the axle that the worm gear is on, which will make the worm slide from one gear to the other quicker.

I had a play with the BuildWithChrome website yesterday. There is a very limited colour palette, and very limited set of pieces that can be used. You can only use 1000 pieces in total, and you can't use any SNOT techniques. There's no undo feature, so you have to be careful when deleting pieces, and there is no ability to re-edit your model after you save it. Anyway, here is the result of my build (I ended up using all 1000 pieces): http://www.buildwithchrome.com/build/B7V7 It is a build of Popes Eye (which is a SCUBA diving site in Melbourne/Port Phillip Bay). I've added some wildlife (orange fish, grey sharks, red crayfish, and white birds in the sky), a boat, and if you pan around a little bit you can see a sign in the sky. Unfortunately you can't pan around like you can in the editor, so it might be hard to see the rock formations below the water line and the other details I put in there.

I just got an email from Lego S@H stating that my R2-D2 has just been shipped. It was on backorder when I placed my order during the 'May the 4th' promotion. For others that ordered at the same time, perhaps yours will be shipped soon too. I still expect it to take a couple of weeks to get to me though.

Hi LiamM32, I recently tried to use that wind-up motor (61100c01 - Windup Motor 2 x 4 x 2 1/3 with Orange Release Button) in a MOC, but it didn't have enough torque or speed to move much weight, and it only has about eight (8) turns when fully wound up. I got mine in the 5893 - Offroad Power set, and in that set it is only just strong enough to act as a winch. You might have better luck with some of the other larger non-electric motors, such as the 47715 - Pullback Motor 9 x 4 x 2 2/3 which came in 29 sets. I don't have this motor, so I'm not sure how well it works, but given that most of the sets that it came in only had a maximum of about 200 pieces, I doubt that it can move much weight either. Keep in mind that Crowkiller's Vampire GT has 1925 pieces, so it is a lot heavier than those smaller sets. Rather than using them for 'drive', they might be useful for other mechanisms where you just need to release short burst of energy, such as a Rube Goldberg machine.

Wow, I didn't realise that that DBG 6x6 Dish cost that much! I don't have the 4504 Millennium Falcon, and I wouldn't have paid the asking price on Bricklink, so I have no idea where I got this piece from (I have four of them). I must have gotten it in a PAB order at some stage. I added the DBG 6x6 Dish for two reasons: I didn't have a black 6x6 Dish, and the model was getting too black, and it needed just a touch of a different colour If you don't have a black or DBG 6x6 Dish, perhaps another colour would also provide a nice contrast. Perhaps Dark Green, Dark Red, or LBG. I think this MOC can also be made out of red panels, or a combination of colours (eg. LBG on the larger outer panels, and black on the smaller inner panels), and this might bring the price down too. Thanks VMLN8R I think I made the instructions the hard way! Here is the basic process that I followed: I recreated the model in MLCad (this is the version that Blakbird used to create his renders for me). Unfortunately that version of the file didn't lend itself to creating instructions too easily, so I totally recreated the MLCad file again, using three (sometimes more) sub-models per instruction step. The first contained the pieces from all of the previous steps, the second contained the new pieces in their 'exploded' view, and the third contained the new pieces in their final position. In total there were about 150 sub-models. I was planning to use LPub, but it kept crashing on me, and I couldn't work out why. Instead, I used LDView to render snapshots and save each step manually. One tip here is that the Lego instructions tend to use the same scale all the way through their instructions. In LDView, specify your latitude/longitude, but also specify your distance and keep the distance consistent all the way through, and don't use the Zoom To Fit option when saving the snapshot. I also set my Field of View (in the preferences) to be 0.1 which gets rid of (most of) the perspective. I saved each step (and each sub-step) as a large PNG file with a transparent background. I created a separate MLCad file that just had the pieces laid out to use for the piece call-outs and parts list page, and again rendered these in LDView. Once I had all of these images, I used Adobe Illustrator to manually layout each page one at a time. Illustrator was also used to manually add the piece call-outs, and insert all of the arrows and beam/axle/panel numbers, and the 1:1 images. I estimate that it took about one hour per page to lay out. Then I saved each page as a JPG (for Brickshelf) and each page as a PDF, and then combined the PDF pages into one single PDF document (for Rebrickable). Because each step was done manually, it took quite a while, and I was working with some fairly large Illustrator files. I still want to get LPub working for future instructions though, which should automate much of this process. If you have any other questions about this process, just ask... Thanks Blakbird. I'm not sure about the 'record time' though It still took a about three weeks since I promised to create the instructions. And there were only 277 pieces in my model. I can't imagine how long it took you to create the instructions for Crowkiller's Vampire GT that has 1925 pieces. Please do. As mentioned by nychase, there isn't anything too exotic in this model, so you might already have most or all of the pieces. Thanks again guys

Thanks Lipko. I knew that I would make a mistake somewhere I have uploaded the correct file to Brickshelf, but it means that the folder will have to be moderated again, so the links in my post above will be broken for a little while. For now you can get to the instructions using the deep links: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/slfroden/TechnicWaterStrider/Instructions/00000001.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/slfroden/TechnicWaterStrider/Instructions/00000002.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/slfroden/TechnicWaterStrider/Instructions/00000003.jpg ... http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/slfroden/TechnicWaterStrider/Instructions/00000030.jpg

I have (finally) completed the instructions for my Water Strider, and have submitted my MOC to Rebrickable: www.rebrickable.com/mocs/slfroden/technic-water-strider The Rebrickable page has a link to a high quality PDF version of the instructions (about 18.5MB). If you would rather view the instructions as individual pages (images), they can be found in my BrickShelf folder: www.brickshelf.com/gallery/slfroden/TechnicWaterStrider/Instructions The BrickShelf images aren't as high quality as the PDF, but still easily readable. There are 30 pages in the instructions There are 44 steps, with a few small sub-steps along the way There are 277 pieces (65 unique) in my Water Strider There is a full parts list on Rebrickable, or on the last page of the instructions. This is the first time that I have created such detailed instructions, and as mentioned previously, it took a lot longer than I expected. I tried get them looking like official Lego instructions, although I know that there are a few areas don't quite comply. The only thing that I'm not 100% happy with is that it is a bit difficult to distinguish the pieces in some steps due to all of the black pieces. It does help if you zoom in a bit so that you can see the outline of the pieces a bit better. If anyone spots any mistakes in my instructions, or has any comments or feedback regarding the quality of the instructions that may help me improve them in the future, please let me know. If anyone decides to build my Water Strider (with or without modifications), all I ask is that you post a picture or two in this thread. Thanks

Nice work Nico This is looking really good. I hope you can get the accuracy and reliability issues worked out, and it'd be great to see a video of this machine in action.

egadzook, that shadow frame looks great. It looks pretty full at the moment, so it will be interesting to see what happens when Series 8 comes out... @everyone - Thank you all for sharing you methods of displaying your minifigs. There are some really great ideas in this thread. I'd love to see more, so keep them coming...

Nice review WhiteFang I consider this set as more of an army builder than anything else, and the same applies to the smaller 7049 Alien Striker too. I really like the Alien Conquest theme, and I wish that TLG would do more than one wave, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen I have made a few time lapse videos while I put the Alien Conquest sets together which you can see in my YouTube Channel, and I plan to make more videos as I open the remaining sets in this theme. I didn't make any "pew pew" noises while putting them together though. I look forward to your next review...

Nice work jFox. Thanks for showing us you display stand. I agree with fred67, I would go for 6-7-6-7-6 too. I've had my stand set up for about a year now, and I'm beginning to think that a two brick high step like yours might be better too, just so you can see more of the figs behind, and the shelf that I have them on the moment should be able to handle the extra height. I don't have a lot of spare system bricks, but next time I do a Bricklink or Lego S@H order I might get the extra bricks that I need - I just have to work out which extra bricks I need first! You are correct in stating that the Ikea DETOLF case isn't 100% air/dust proof, but it only has a small gap around the front door. The back edges are sealed. I find that I only have to lightly dust them every other month rather than every week.

That Porsche looks great in black. I really like how Spiderbrick has dealt with the rear corners of the car, where the tail-lights are. The hub-caps also look really good against the black. What piece has he used on the bottom of the front seats?

Thanks maundythursday I sent Blakbird a copy of my Water Strider that I pieced together in MLCad, and he was kind enough to weave his rendering magic and create a fantastic looking picture for me, as well as his signature revolving GIF Thanks again Blakbird I have also uploaded a few renders that I made (that don't look anywhere near as good as Blakbird's work), and they can be found in my Brickshelf folder once moderated. If only you could get all the panels and pieces in these other colours! PS. I'm still trying to piece together the instructions, but they are taking a bit longer than I expected. I definitely have a new-found respect for everyone that takes the time to create instructions for their MOCs.

I only have one lonesome Technic fig. This is one that is left over from my childhood, and I seem to remember my brother having a few too, but I have no idea where they would be now. I'd love to see some more Technic figs released again. I think they really help to give some 'personality' to the Technic line.

This turned out really well. I like how the 'snake' can articulate over the rough terrain. Are you planning on building a body for this? Even just some sort of roll cage frame would look good. Do you think this could work with more than three sections? What about a really long one with about 15 sections (with multiple motors)? I think the main problem might be the steering... PS. I've also started using Premiere for my videos. Once you've used it a few times you'll get used to how it works and be faster. One thing I tend to do when starting a new project is use my previous project as a starting point. That way you can have a lot of your title screen and stuff like that already set up, and you just have to make changes from there.

Welcome Swe_Mckvack I think this is the piece that you are referring to: Technic, Pin Connector Perpendicular 3 x 3 Bent with 4 Pins There are many other ways to join beams at 90 degrees. It really depends on their exact orientation, how strong you need the connection to be, how much room you have, and which pieces you have available that you can use. Perhaps looking through some official Lego Building Instructions will give you a better understanding of how beams can be joined together: http://technic.lego.com/en-us/BuildingInstructions/default.aspx http://us.service.lego.com/en-US/BuildingInstructions/default.aspx