anothergol

To me, those rules are important because that's where all the fun is, the limitations. Let's face it, if you use illegal techniques, you may as well paint your lego, glue them, cut them, use non-lego bricks, etc. That's nice if you're only interested in the end result and not following the rules, but THEN there are much better & interesting methods to get there. You could assemble pieces from various model kits, use 3D printing or good old sculpting, etc - you would get much much better results than by using legos. Don't get me wrong, I've seen amazing "illegal" or painted lego MOCs. The fact that they used illegal techniques only made them a bit less amazing to me. I see it as "categories". If you fight in a specific category, you've got to do as good as the best in that category. You don't expect as amazing in the "legal techniques" category. Now the problem is that those techniques aren't properly defined. Sure, Lego has a bible, and it's known what stresses parts & should be avoided. But I haven't read rules about separating parts that come pre-assembled. Like small turntables or joints - afterall it's easy to break those. Also something we see A LOT in MOCs is the use of minifig hands, I'm not sure if Lego would do that in official sets. It's often cleverly used, though, and using minifig hands is a bit like the Wilhem scream of Lego.

If I take a part like 32174, the longest axle hole is blocked, and I can well understand that it's to make it easier for kids, yet it's bloody annoying in practice, considering there is no 1.5 axle. Still, that same piece has 3 different designs, would have been nice to have a non-blocked one. In the LDD, it's even working as hollow, actually! ..but what's the reason for a 30367 to be blocked? Can't think of any use. There is no blocked 3062 and no one would see a use for that. Worse, I often see 30367 sold as "blocked or hollow" at BL. I'm not sure what that means exactly, maybe hollow means the X cross instead of the plain filling, because I've never seen a true hollow 30367. Talking about this "hollow, but x-crossed blocked", this one had a purpose btw and it was anti-choking, not to save plastic.

I came back to Lego after 20 years. I had kept my old bricks for that long, thinking that one day I'll get back to it, and I did - and realized that my old bricks were so chewed up and dirty, that they were worthless :) I think it works that way: when you're a kid you wanna be an adult, at some point you stop with classic lego, maybe moving to Technics. As a programmer, I thought I'd go for using Lego for robotic stuff - but it was boring, felt like work, never made anything out of my Mindstorms set. Now I'm back to Lego and it's not at all for technic stuff, only design & the fun of it. Only (big) difference, instead of playing with a limited pile of bricks, I'm not doing it all in the LDD and then building it. I've checked what I missed during those 20 years, and IMHO - not much! I quite like the sets that came out after 2008, but frankly, what came out between 1990 and 2008 isn't very thrilling. I'm also glad I wasn't there for the "light grey change".

I think there are many bricks that would benefit from plastic-saving then, like every hollow part that's filled in places, preventing bars or axles to fully pass through them

really? Seriously, what % is the price of plastic, in the final cost of a brick? I would have expected it very, very, very low, waaaaay less than marketing, design, molds, etc. So, 3 tiny holes in a ball, saving maybe 1% of an already very low price, I wouldn't believe in that. It's not like making something hollow to save 80% of plastic, here. In fact, it probably costed more in new molds.

will have to take better pics, but the walker is going well:

Recent (large) ball-joint balls have 6 holes in them, while old ones don't have any, anyone knows why? Friction seems very random with those joints (& it matters - you want more fiction for legs & less for arms, for ex), and I thought it may have to do with the holes, but not really. I can imagine those balls being used for snapping, but I'm not aware of any ball-joint part with matching bumps for rachetting, anyone knows?

When I was a kid, tubes came in very long and you had to cut them yourself. But I know I wouldn't cut tubes myself, even though it's "proper lego". But "proper lego" may also mean knitting a pullover out of official Lego strings, that would still be "Lego-legal" afterall :) IMHO a basic rule should be: anything done with parts, can be undone, and cutting can't.

Hello, by lipstick, do you refer to part 93094c01? Can anyone confirm that the colored part does separate, leaving just the handle? (edit: ah, I guess it does not. Is it a 1-part painted piece?) thanks

great use of mixel joints, for something looking organic without using illegal techniques for once

keep in mind that Lego ideas doesn't allow screen caps of the LDD, it's in their guidelines when you submit a project you can do a render using "LDD to povray"

The LDD file was in my post, 2 posts above yours. Should be easy enough to make it in black. I'm currently working on a walker companion for it, still waiting for some bricks but the body is ready & very sturdy. yeah that piece doesn't exist in transparent, but anyway the idea is that it's all driven by monitors inside, think Ghost in the Shell Next one has a transparent windscreen - hoping it will fit like it does in the LDD.

Thanks, that's what I already knew, it's not part of the known colors and yet there are a couple hundreds for sale - that's what's a bit weird. Plus, a clear light cover doesn't really make sense for its original use (since it doesn't color), so it was probably made to be used as decoration. I've already Bricklink-ordered from Belgium (my country), France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the UK. So far I've avoided germany because shipping seemed the most expensive, but at the same time it varies a lot according to the seller, and some don't send letters, only packets.

Hello, Because part 58176 (globe with stick) doesn't exist in clear, I'm looking for the very old 4773 light cover, but it appears to be very hard to find in clear. In fact, it's so rare alone in clear that I'm thinking that, in its clear version, it may be a sub-part of another part. I've checked images of bricks with light bulbs and found them in several versions, but it's hard to tell if they have transparent covers, or if they're just the bulbs themselves. Anyone knows where 4773 in clear transparent comes from? The internet doesn't seem to know. Thanks.

Here it is: http://fiastarta.com/SideStuff/Tricopter_Final.lxf Whoever wanna build one, most bricks are easy to find, you will have problems with: -6187 bar handle, getting more rare in light grey -45677 roof, doesn't exist in light grey (maybe this year? It's in the LDD), but looks as good in dark grey -58176 "globes", they don't exist in transparent. However, don't try colored ones, once they're in a hook, you can't take them out. They should be 4773 "globes", but those are VERY old (still findable, though). I've used transparent round tiles here. -(little round tiles that don't exist in dark grey [god knows why], light grey works as well) It's easier to build separately the 9 parts that are hinged together.

Thanks. LXF file here, I find it fun to rotate around it in the LDD. http://fiastarta.com/SideStuff/Outpost.lxf

I don't know if it counts as a MOC if it hasn't been built, this was my first serious try at the LDD (getting back to Lego after over 20 years!). Naively, I used all that was available, thinking I would be able to easily find every brick. Then, trying to, I quickly gave up & moved on to smaller projects with a limited set of bricks. But hey, it exists in 3D. It's some freestyle "castle/pirate/whatever" outpost, it was kinda fun making it destroyed. (a few LDD-to-POVRay converter bugs in this render, some bricks are oriented wrong)

A low-part count tricopter. I'll have to invest time in taking good pics, so for now it's better as a rendering. It's on Lego Ideas. Not that it has a chance to ever reach 10k, but it's still another valuable place to be seen. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/93273 If anyone wanna build one, I'll share the LDD. I made sure to only use parts that I could easily find. The rarest one is the dark grey wedge at the top, & most expensive ones are probably the paint rollers in the cockpit.

Looks really great, nice mix of red & greys, well-balanced shape, excellent

You mean with the base "wings" in light grey? Possibly yes, but it'd make the toes look even thicker. This said, I think the leftmost one looks nice & "chubby", while the rightmost looks the most accurate. I think the 2x2 slopes used on the rightmost, would be a perfect choice for a larger-scale one like Cavegod's, used as full 2x2, as the toes of the original AT-AT are kinda small and nearly squares.

Hello, I like the latest AT-AT and was gonna give him his missing toe, and tested if the feet couldn't be improved. I totally understand the reason for the missing toe, but as an adult I don't care for possible friction or whatever, so I have no problem with 4 toes. I'm suggesting 6 variations, 4 shown on the pic. I think I'm gonna go for the rightmost one, as the toes are thinner. While I liked LEGO's color scheme, dark foor, light toes, it's not bad either with light feet. The rounded 2x2 slopes don't exist as light grey, though, but they exist as 1x2. It's still strongly attached by 2 2x2 disks. The other designs may be slightly more fragile, but not much. The LXF, for those interested: http://fiastarta.com...f/ATAT_Feet.lxf