Daphatty

Edit: nvm. Damned mobile version... Thought I had check all of the recent posts...

Having just completed my own the UCS Millenium Falcon with the same engine mod, allow me to share my write up of the implementation. Make sure you follow the link at the bottom of my post to the mecabricks.com website. There is a parts list available there that should help you figure out what additional parts you need to pick up. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=90828&st=25#entry2213056 In hindsight, my only regret is not documenting my build process. Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I hope my efforts will save someone a bit of time and money. At least until Lego releases another one. :) I don't currently have any plans to add lights as I am still trying to find the space to display the falcon. :) I'd rather keep it at home and will need to get creative so the wife will appreciate it as much as I do.

Hey everyone. Just wanted to share my interpretation of Pepa Quin's Millennium Falcon engine mod. I first stumbled upon this mod while browsing through ScottishDave's UCS thread. Right away, I knew I would implement this design but there were some challenges that needed to be addressed. Unlike Pepe Quin and Scottish Dave's Millennium Falcon, my MF would not be heavily modified. Therefore, I needed to find a way to implement the new engines while maintaining the structural integrity of the original design. Also, the changes needed to look seamless. To solve this problem, I designed a custom bracket for the left and right connection points. (Here is the expanded view of the bracket.) As you can see, on one end of the bracket, I used the original 30364 bricks which allow the brackets to connect to the existing frame. On the other end of each bracket, I used two 1x1 technic bricks (6451) with the connector holes lined up. In order to mate the new engine to the brackets, I added a 1x2 Technic brick (3700) to each end of the engines. I then used Technic connector 6558 to join the engines to the brackets themselves. Here is what the new brackets look like mounted on the MF. Believe it or not, the center mount point took me much longer to figure out, mostly because I tried to get too fancy with the design. Ultimately, a simplistic design won the day. By replacing the center 2x2 plate with a 2x10 plate, I was able to attach the middle section of the engine directly to the frame of the falcon. Doing so required the removal of a 4x6 plate from black technic brick of the existing design and the addition of the 2x6 bricks and 2x3 plates you see above. (Note: There are some color differences between the model and the photos of my actual mod.) If you look closely, you should be able to see where the three 2x6 bricks attach to the falcon's frame. Here is another pic from further away. The addition of the 2x6 bricks requires that you also relocate one brick from the panel that typically sits above this point. As you can see in the photo below, the 2x6 black brick has been moved back one row from its original location. This will allow the plate to sit in its original orientation as intended. The end result is nearly identical to both Pepa Quin and ScottshDave's mod. Overall, I am very happy with the outcome. If you'd like to look at a 3D model of the parts and mod, I took the liberty of creating them on Mecabricks.com. You can also download a parts list in .csv format on that page. Just look for the green .CSV button below the model viewer.

If you truly think the ISD will satisfy your inner Lego fan, I say go for it. I just bricklinked the UCS Millennium Falcon and I couldn't be happier. I was very reluctant, at first, due to the high cost of finishing the build. Ultimately, I had to let go of that mental roadblock and I am glad I did.

Thanks for the photo. I agree it doesn't look bad in black and I may end up keeping my model this way. I have to admit, I am shocked that you would have disassembled this so soon. Do you have a lack of display space? That is fantastic! My current costs are about £100 higher (factoring in currency conversion from USD). I used Brickficiency to assist with the ordering but I wasn't as OCD about costs as I could have been. I'd say I overpaid on 10-20% of the parts. I also screwed up one particular order from Lego that cost me an additional $25 USD. By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late to modify the order. Still, the experience has been great so far.

You have too many unique parts in your Wanted list. I've used Brickficiency extensively and I've found that 60-70 unique parts is about the most you should have in a scanned wanted list. Otherwise, the calculations will run endlessly and will likely return no results. Remember, the end result of a brickficiency scan is a list of no more than five vendors that have 100% of the items on your wanted list. If one item is not available, the scan will fail. As for the discrepancies, you can exclude the items from the scan without removing them from your Wanted list. Just right-click the item in question and select Exclude from the Status sub menu. I wrote a detailed how-to post for Brickficiency a few days back. Have a look and see if any of my tips will help you in your search. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=108018

Thanks for the links although they return 'Page not Found'. That said, I managed to track down the page on lego's site using the item number from the previous bricklink URL. I'm surprised that set has already been retired! Thanks to everyone for their feedback.

I recently placed an order via shop.lego.com and I noticed something interesting in my e-mailed receipt. In the lower right hand corner of the e-mail was a picture of a Microfighter sized Star Destroyer that looks legitimate but I cannot find it anywhere. Has anyone seen this before? (See attached photo.) - Rob

Now that I am in the throws of my second large Bricklinking effort, I thought I might share some of the tricks I've developed to help make Brickficiency as helpful as possible in identifying parts for the lowest cost on Bricklink.com. I developed these techniques while Bricklinking both the UCS Super Star Destroyer and, currently, the UCS Millennium Falcon. Hopefully these tips will help you save some time and money. If you have any tips of your own, please share. If you don't know what Brickficiency is - click here. As some of you may know, Brickficiency has a tendency to spend copious amounts of time calculating all of the possible combinations when pricing out large wanted lists. The more parts you have on your list, the longer it takes your computer to figure out what the best options will be. This is particularly true if you have an older computer! In some cases, the seemingly endless scan returns ZERO results. In order to make this process a bit more palatable, you need to do some Wanted List housekeeping first. Step 1 - Create a Master Wanted List on Bricklink.com You probably already have wanted list that contains all of the parts that you intend to buy. If you don't already have this list, go create one. Step 2 - Identify the number of Sellers for your parts Using Brickficiency, initiate a scan of your Master Wanted List. Allow the scan to identify the number of sellers available for each part on your list. Once this phase of the scan is done, Brickficiency will begin the process of calculating prices. At this point cancel the scan. You don't need prices yet. Pro-Tip: If there are any discrepancies in your list, the scan will auto-cancel. Discrepancies can include missing color info, missing quantities, and/or parts that are not available by any sellers in your chosen region. You must correct these discrepancies before the scan will process correctly. I usually exclude these items from the initial scan and address them later. Step 3 - Sort your Master Wanted list into smaller, unique lists. Now that the initial scan is complete, use the Seller information provided by the initial scan to sort your Master Wanted list into smaller ones. Your lists will be sorted by Seller availability on a per part basis. Create a new wanted list for items with 1-10 sellers, 11-100 sellers, and 100+ sellers Start by creating the 1-10 Seller Wanted List and move/copy parts into the new list accordingly. This will likely represent the smallest number of unique parts and will also be your most challenging parts to purchase due to the limited availability. Next, work on the 11-100 Seller Wanted lists. Lastly, create your 100+ Seller Wanted lists. Try to keep each of these lists at or below 30 unique parts. In my experience, I found this to be a sweet spot for a Brickficiency scan against a large number of sellers. Create additional lists as needed but stay as true to 30 unique parts as possible. Step 4 - Scan/Merge/Rinse & Repeat With your master list sorted, scan each new list individually. These smaller lists will be processed much quicker and will increase the likelihood of completion. It will also help you identify problematic parts that cannot be purchased within the confines of this program. Some parts have to be purchased one or two at a time due to scarcity. It is best to set those aside and deal with them individually. At this point, I play around with the merging of the 11-100 lists into the 100+ lists while restricting the overall footprint to no more than 50 items per list. Adding a handful of items at a time then scanning the list will show you how far you can take your list before scan times become excruciating long or no longer yield results. Step 5 - Buy stuff! As I mentioned, I've used this process to break up my large wanted lists into more manageable purchases. While this is only a small part to the whole Bricklinking process, it does help minimize some of the tedium that is involved with working on Bricklink.com. Hopefully this will prove helpful to someone. It has taken me quite a bit of trial and error to get this process worked out but so far I am happy with the results. Let me know if any of these steps are unclear or confusing and I will try to clarify them. Thanks for reading and happy bricklinking! - Rob

Lobot - I noticed you opted to purchase the black engine lattice. Did you keep the black color or did you paint them gray? I'm curious to see how they look on the final product.

I've found basic tasks in LDD to be tedious to learn without lots of reading and research. I stumbled upon the Workshop feature on Mecabricks.com and was able to quickly pick it up without the need to keep google open. Mecabricks is still a work in progress but the author is actively updating it. If nothing else, Mecabricks will give you a good intro into virtual Lego builds. It is also web based so you don't need to install anything on your computer. All you need is a browser that supports WebGL (i.e. Google Chrome).

Just wanted to jump in here and commend you (and your team?) on this awesome tool! Mecabricks is sooo much easier to learn than LDD. If I figure out a way to generate a Bricklink parts list from a Mecabricks model, my wallet is in serious trouble... :)

You are most welcome. I look forward to your next update, as time allows of course. :)

I knew I was missing something! Donation sent! I had the same concern when the idea came to me. I had hoped limiting the concept to seller threshold would make the option more feasible since Brickficiency checks for seller availability before it kicks off its larger calculations. Unlike most people, I was quite impressed by Brickficiency when it hammered the cores of my CPU with its calculations. Once the larger wanted lists came into my world, I moved brickficiency onto one of my work servers just to see it peg the CPUs at 100%. Nothing like seeing a 16 core server running at full capacity just to save me some money. :) I still had to wait several hours for the largest of the lists to complete but I found the experience quite satisfying nonetheless.

mdoupe, First, let me say THANK YOU for this wonderful software! Brickficiency made piecing together the UCS Super Star Destroyer a manageable affair. Now I get to enjoy the SSD every time I come to work. (Yes, I had to bring it to the office because I don't have the space at home. LOL!) Please let us know if/when you decide to accept donations for your software. I have spent a great deal of time figuring out the most efficient way to leverage Brickficiency against large Wanted lists. With each new Wanted list, I found myself repeatedly encountering specific roadblocks when running queries. The most common roadblocks have been Parts with extremely low availability negating search results Parts with no availability due to region limitations negating search results. Each time I encounter these problems, I have to manually exclude the problematic item. While doing so ultimately yielded the results I sought, the task proved to be quite time consuming with larger lists. With that in mind, I'd like to suggest the following. For items in a wanted list that have no availability due to region limitations, I would like to suggest an option (i.e., a checkbox option) that would allow Brickficiency to automatically exclude affected items from the query and continue with the search uninterrupted. For items in a wanted list that have low availability, I would like to suggest an option that would allow an end user to specify a Minimum Seller threshold. If the minimum number of sellers for a given item are not available (for example, 20 sellers), the item is automatically excluded from the query and the search continues uninterrupted. I have seen many people on this forum and elsewhere complain that Brickficiency isn't very good at handling large Wanted lists. I strongly disagree. While processing large Wanted lists does require some massaging, it certainly is possible. I believe these two features would streamline this process significantly. Anyway, thanks again for Brickficiency and let me know if you need me to clarify any of my points. I tried to be as descriptive as possible without being convoluted. Now I'm off to Bricklink the Millenium Falcon. :)

The only question on my mind - Will Lego release an updated version of the UCS Millennium Falcon? The possibility of an update is what is keeping me from bricklinking the MF.

This is inspiring me to bricklink my own MF. I just finished recreating the Executor SSD last week and I loved the experience.

mdoupe - Thank you for the feedback. With your help, I've purchased the parts I needed to build my own Super Star Destroyer for significantly less than current market prices for the boxed set. Kudos to you, sir, for this great program.

Forgive me if I am missing something but I can't seem to find this info listed anywhere. Is there a way to import the sales report into Bricklink such that it automatically creates my shopping cart based on the results of the scan? Or am I supposed to do that portion manually?