Lego Otaku

While waiting for parts to arrive and another $100 or so to get the rest of the parts I needed to build the hardware store, I was looking at a few old digital pictures and noticed a few really nice shot of a nearby downtown village that had many older building. It got me thinking if I could replicate the design in LEGO and before I realized it, I had lost about 5 hours: Just the facade of second floor facing west. I still need to add north facing wall but it ended up about 96x32 sized modular. A triple wide modular... wow. I do know the history of the building. It used to be upscale department store over 100 years ago, it was 3 stories and yeah that wide. (picture above shows top 2 floors) After the department store went out of business, it went through many changes and eventually got split into 4 sections, it had ice cream shop, candy shop, nickle and dime (I still remember wanting things there!), and currently it's video rental, electronic recycling, and barber shop with one still empty. The upper floors were converted to apartments and it's still occupied One of the detail I couldn't figure out how to do in LEGO is the slanted bricks: Probably will skip those as it's too complex to try without breaking LEGO system. Since it has ended up triple baseplate wide, I've decided to split it in 3 with connector pegs so it'd be easier to assemble, transport, etc. The connector system will not be LEGO standard as it'd be awkward the building were placed out of order. Anyway the prelims file is at http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Lego-0taku/ldd/large_department.lxf I'd have to scrounge up old picture at local museum to see what the first floor looked like back then. Right now it's got garrish awing and signs and it's really hard to see original facade or even where the original doors and windows were. Also to do the rest of the walls and add floors and roofs. All those crazy half brick offset I used to try and get decor to match closely to the real building. PS please lock me in padded room if I feel like doing one of the building near downtown Oxford, MI (specifically, at intersection of Washington St and Burdick St) as the building have 45-degree walls and it would be rather difficult to build and furnish interior. If I build using the 45 degree bricks, window and door won't work without gap and snots. If I use hinge brick to get 45 degree wall that works with windows and doors, upper floor and roof wouldn't connect with the angled wall.

Sometimes just restarting works. For future reference, be sure that LDD is not running, LDD2POV is up first and stays up when POVRay is launched to render. If an error pops up, try rebooting your PC.

I do remember seeing those signs in early 80's so some stores could have kept using it for many years, long after LEGO stopped using the color bar design on the box sets and started using yellow box.

I'd go with option 4: rob a bank and buy em all. J/K

Now if only LEGO would release carpet piece that looks like carpet and made of cloth. They did have many cloth elements before including: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?pg=1&catString=48&catType=P&v=1 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?pg=1&catString=167&catType=P&v=1 and http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?pg=1&catString=102&catType=P&v=1

First batch of order are in and I've picked through my spare part bins, I got more than half of total bricks I need. I still need to figure the furniture for the ice cream shops and for second floor room. I'll get most of the rest of pieces I need to finish this later as I am a tad short of money for the next 2 weeks. Dang emergency dentist bill. I'm glad I don't type as funny as I talk because of the pain killer

Make sure it's DC output. AC output would cause motor to spazz out trying to run in both direction and it may damage IR receiver.

It's often the local resellers who are making polys hard to find. When new polys come out, they often exploit the fact poly tended to be limited production, and buy em all then sell it on eBay or Bricklink at big markup. Or to part em out for pieces if the poly contained unique piece.

FWIW you could also cobble the old tracks with modern RC tracks or 9v tracks if you can find a way to lock the rails together. The spacing are the same, only the connector is different (RC and 9v used flat ball and socket while older ones used plain studs) The only hard limitation are the 9v train can't be used on non-9v track. 12v train can be used on almost all tracks provided you have enough 12v track contact to connect together.

Something in the future but right now it's just fodder. Maybe I'd do a e-recycling shop that takes electronic wastes and crush them up? Check with the staff. It seems to vary but at my store, it is fine if the lid still touches the cup. I could probably stuff it so full of big pieces the lid can't go on straight but as long as it touches the side, it's fine. You might be trying to hard for something that is already OK. I don't use the tape, the store employee uses the tape. If they say no to loose lid, come back at different time and hope for an employee with relaxed rule or try for a different store.

I don't think it would help much there since it's slow climbing up and down and locking down each floor. A crane to pick up next piece might help a bit.

Went to LEGO store in Troy, their PAB wall sucked they had quite a lot of empty bins and no parts I really wanted like masonry profile, olive green slopes, or 1x1 round tiles. I did pick up a lot of tan, dark bley, and white parts for my future moc among a few other parts: 6 big cups. All of the empty spaces were stuffed with 1x1's since it's basically free. 2x2 slopes with radar and disk slot pattern, it's the biggest printed piece I've seen on PAB at Troy. Lots of 1x1 light tr-blue jewels. A few other including Medium Lavander plates. They had flowers in red, white, and dark pink as well. A chart below shows what I got and based on Bricklink Quantity average about how much I would have spent if I went there instead. I would have packed better and gotten more but back-to-school sales have started and I didn't want to stay and put up with kids. I didn't count the tr-dark blue round plates as I ended up with one big cup full at the end, it had to be more than 4000, probably less than 5000.

Here's a suggestion particularly for one who has multiple countries allowed, how about including the store's country in the result page? Either in form of letters like USA or with country flag? That way user could scan through a few combinations to see if they can find a combination of countries that suited better (cheaper shipping for example) or something?

Another possibility is to use plates as slopes and use technic to handle the 45 degree connections. Check this page for an example done with 22.5 degree wall panels: http://brickset.com/article/6528

45-degree wall and roof are challenging because they don't fit LEGO system. If you're familiar with geometry, you probably know that the angled side is same as the length times the square root of 2. For example, if you wanted to build one section that is 5x5 with 45 degree diagonal section, the number of stud would be 5*1.414 or 7.07 studs. 7 studs diagonal could fit but you're taking offset of about half a millimeter. That is non-LEGO system and while it can work, too many 45 degree walls will end up throwing some section off center. Jumper plates can only handle 4mm offset and if you're crazy creative you could go for half plate (1.6mm) offset using a few bracket or headlight bricks but there's still limit to how much you can stress out of system and still make it fit. These sizes are close enough to work: 5 studs = 7 studs angled 6 studs = 8.5 studs angled (use jumper) 11 studs = 15.5 12 studs = 17 17 = 24 Any other numbers would be offset bu up to a mm or more and be too difficult to work in.

Building instruction is still a bit retarded at times. I had a moc that were fairly simple (not challenging like technic, around 500 pieces) and for some dumb reason a lot of pieces were put in out of order. For example it built the wall around but left hole for a 1x2 brick in the middle, which gets added much later. This is not a legal assembly since one would have to take the whole thing apart to insert the 1x2 brick before continuing. A few floating bricks too before anything under it is actually connected. Sometimes restarting the build instruction works, sometimes it's still weird EDIT: tried again. Baseplate was on bottom and it was the first item I put down when I started the MOC but LDD added the baseplace *after* some 200 steps with a lot of floating tiles for floor. It's going to be a lot of fun in the future trying to keep all 50 or so tiles lined up, then flip the whole thing and add the baseplate and hope all the tiles stayed in place.

I redesigned the set a bit: The color is a bit closer to what I wanted. I flipped the racks sideway with some snotting and I was able to make the area a bit smaller. Also I'm using rubber band pully so clutch gear was redundant, saving me a couple dollars. I used group function to set up 2 parts of the door if you want to slide it and see how it looked. The red pieces in there are just to "lock" the door in place since there's nothing else to hold the door if I moved something. They'd get removed when I build the real one to test with. http://www.brickshel...or_theory_b.lxf Missing is a pole reverser and a battery, those aren't in LDD. I'd need a few years worth of otoshidama or some other financial windfall if I wanted to complete the entire project, I can only do a little at a time.

McDonald's did have LEGO, at least twice that I can remember. Here's a quick list of known promo: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_promotional_sets Dixie doesn't come up.

Dang makes it very hard to ship MISB 10179 anywhere across borders. Might be time to invest in hiking boots and a big back pack to hold the set then start walking to hand deliver it, avoiding all kinds of security who may destroy the box to check for illegal or dangerous stuff.

Means the part in color you wanted were never released by LEGO. You need to go back to LDD and find the part and change the color to one that exists. Take for example, the 6x5 leaf element were released in 6 colors but if you used LDD in Extended mode you could have the same leaf in 50 different colors. It won't make LEGO release them in all those colors, you're still limited to what LEGO actually released.

Hmmm good point on second set of gears on top to keep it level. I'd still have to build one anyway but if it seems to work, good enough for me :D LDD isn't the best for fine tuning part placement or testing strength or something. And yes I did intend to have 2 section slide in opposite direction like in some shows. You probably saw a few of them in Star Wars ANH when Luke and Hans were blasting their way back to Millennium Falcon after rescuing Princess.

I've changed the view multiple times before I started using Fraps to record the issue. Hiding plate may have worked, I didn't think to try it. Yes, it seems to be buggy when you're moving (or used copy n paste) multiple parts, they won't obey line of sight rule and try to stick to the bottom. It's almost as if LDD only considers the top (the last placed brick before copy) as important brick.

You probably saw something similar in some sci-fi shows and moves, thick blast doors that slides in place to isolate areas. Such as when enemies are trying to infiltrate or escape, etc. link to LDD: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Lego-0taku/misc/sliding_door_theory.lxf There should be stops that limits the door to maximum of about 6 and 1/2 studs from fully shut to open. I may need to touch up on alignment a bit but I wanted to make sure it would work. The parts off to the side is another door design that I considered but didn't use. The motor will be mounted and the walls will be built around to hide the gearing. The color aren't final either, I choose mostly grey since it's not as "loud" as colors. I wish LDD does support gear movement then I could run the motor and test it. I guess it'd be too complex especially with unusual design of sliding doors and no rail other than bricks and tiles holding them in places. Also if I got my math right and that motor is 380 RPM as I found on internet, then after all the gearing the door travel speed would be about 28 studs per minute or about 2 seconds per stud?

If you're checking online LEGO.com, it could be they are sold out and are not producing any more of it. Do keep an eye on it, once in a while LEGO finds surplus sets and puts it back up for sale. They often get sold out quickly. Light bley and not for ages. They were very hard to get because everyone wants some and often they clean out PAB wall. I want to get some for myself but my local store never had any in stock.

I'm flattered you liked my ceiling fan design.