HereWeGoAgain

Thank you! I'm 98% done with the first cliff, will hopefully be able to finish it tonight and post an update tomorrow. I'm really happy with how it turned out (posted a few things on IG already).

Generaly speaking "modularity" in Lego, at least for me, implies something that can be opened (floors removed <=> loose connections with jumpers), connected (to an other building for example), rearranged (the physical position of the model) and is a closed build (so no open back). In terms of standards, the link posted by @alois sums it all up. Oh and there's always a sidewalk in front of the building with some street furniture. But it's not limited to buildings. I tried to build my city in a "modular" way where I can remove things easily while I work on it (for instance my train bridge you can easily remove the pilar from the base and the tracks from the pilars).

That's a neat little caravan! I too travelled with my parents on the road in the '90s, we used to rent RVs when we went to the US and Canada for 3 weeks at a time and just move from camping to camping. Good memories. Thanks for sharing and for the instructions!

Hello Brick fans, Had a bit of time to work on the cliffs. Progress is relatively slow for different reasons (parts I don't have, sorting I need to do, figuring out how to build something, actually building official sets (just did the Hidden Side El Fuego monster truck, cool build...and work and family, the usual :)). I think it looks pretty neat, not a rock work master builder just yet but trying my best not to just build up vertically, although simpler. On top of the front "rounded" rocks will be a little platform with greenery and stuff. Lots of details to add. Anyway, here are some pictures, with and without one of my bridge towers. Have a good week-end!

The underwater station actually looks pretty much like the space station from the latest space wave, same design only different colors. To be a bit picky though, the shipwreck of the 2015 set was way better as it was an actual ship, wrecked and with a play feature too. I feel like the sacrificed the side build for a larger ship. I wonder if the 2 joint boat hulls are the reason for the price bump to what, 150$? I'll be picking these all up in any case, but not at retail prices (at least for the large exploration ship set).

Honestly wasn't too sure about 8 wide either, but after building the Ferrari, not only does it look good, it fits just exactly on one side of a road plate. I like it anyways, but I can understand others do not. Also built the Audi. I have the Nissan in my backlog as well as the Jaguar pack. Waiting for the Lambos to be on sale, over 60CHF over here just seems too much to me.

Huh? You can download and use it just fine, they are just not updating it anymore.

Woo-hoo! Not disappointed by the deep see stuff! The base looks great and so does the boat. And the new 3in1 creator are pretty awesome as well!

Hello Brickfans, Wow...up since 4:38am, my eldest has been up since 3am and finally fell asleep at 6am after my wife and I battled to get her to close her eyes. I couldn't sleep anymore, so I took the opportunity to enjoy the silence at home for a few hours. After about 2 days of playing around in LDD, I started to physically build the first cliff that will be on the the right side under the bridge. I of course ran out of wedge and slope parts as I had used them in LDD, but it gives and idea of where this is heading. A brickling order with a bunch of them should come in within the next few days. Not using BURPS is going to take...forever Most of what is shown below is the back structure to put the rock work on. I used some ball joints to create an angle at the outer corner (on the edge of the table). It's an interesting process to learn how to properly use bricks with studs on the side along with 1x2 or 2x2 plates with studs on the side as to have the correct height to have no gaps when building vertically, as well as properly tiling the sand at the bottom for the slopes to lie flat. It doesn't look like much at the moment. Height of the cliff is about 19 bricks. Obviously all the rainbow bricks will actually be covered up. 'Til next time, Cheers

Hey brick fans, No picture update yet, I've been trying to tackle the rock work for the cliffs around the beach. As usual doing it in LDD first to translate my ideas into bricks, but it's a slow process. I'd love to have an entire day to spend on this, but I can't . I really want to emphasise on snot rock work by using a large variety of slopes, wedge bricks and plates and create some nice angles etc. Height is 19 bricks, width is a 32x32 baseplate to give you an idea. Initially I though about just building on top of a whole bunch of BURPs. I purchased some already but I want my rock work and cliffs to be different from my little mountain rock work as they will have more exposure. In total I have about 9 such cliffs to build What else? I got some bricklink orders (sellers are starting to send free gifts with the amount of bricks I purchase lol...). Last week's order was 1826 pieces mostly for the beach/water and yesterday I got another 1157 with a whole bunch of slopes, wedges etc....I really need to stop browsing stores and go like "oh, this could be useful"... Stay tuned, Cheers

Well yep, I started building it a little over a year ago, have a thread for it in the forum too, I think I saw you reply in there already If I had the space in my house like Bevin's Bricks' barn he built just to have a giant man cave and Lego city (youtube), I'd dedicate some for an airport probably.

Having worked close to an airport, we often saw Etihad and other Middle East companies loading up sports cars in regular planes... Yeah those folks don't only take their underwear on vacation, they literally take their car with them. Not super impressed by the airport stuff, then again, not my thing and don't have space for that stuff in my city. Hopefully we get pics of all the diver sets this week.

A funicular could be nice indeed, but I fear it'll be a bit cramped. The middle table is only 3 baseplates wide and for the minifig beach, one will already be used up by the old fishing store. As I'll basically have cliffs on all 3 sides of the middle table that go all the way up to the 2 main tables, I was thinking of wooden stairs like you often see to access a beach, something like this, integrated in some rock work: As for how I build, I usually start with an LDD mock up. Not always, but most of the time. It doesn't have to be exactly a piece by piece representation of what I have in mind, but it makes creating easier for me as someone who doesn't have hours a day to pick bricks in drawers an do some free building. The big advantage of digital building is that all the bricks (at least most of them) are available with the click of a button so if I have an idea in mind I can translate it to bricks rather quickly. I received a large bricklink order today that should allow me to continue some ocean/beach work. I just did a bit of LDDing to mock up how I want the ocean and beach to meet near the old fishing store. I want there to be a pier in front of it for a fishing boat to drop of fish. This is where I'm at: The fishing store I found an LDD file of already. I elevated it by 1 brick + a 2x2 jumper. Most likely the beach for the minifigs will also be elevated by a brick. It is on purpose offset by 4 studs to the left which is also the depth of a BURP. I just randomly placed a first set of "rainbow" plates on the base plate in front of it to moc up about where the ocean/beach are separated. I color-code all those plates to make it easier to see what I used where. Then I layered the first set of dark tan 1x2 plates to represent the wet sand. And I always create groups so I can easily hide or select stuff :) As for the bricks I have, I have a fair collection now, mostly acquired by buying bulks of Lego on an ebay equivalent here in Switzerland. I usually target bulks with recent sets and instructions. It's a quick and rather "cheap" way to get parts that are not going to be too scratched up either. For the train bridge I fully built it in LDD then exported the parts list, checked what I had and ordered the rest actually directly through pick-a-brick. The reason was that I couldn't find a seller in Switzerland with all the parts I needed, and for those they had, they were usually more expensive than Lego themselves. I didn't want to order from outside of CH because the shipping and the import taxes usually end up making it not worth it and a real hassle. Through pick-a-brick, shipping is free above 100CHF and not import taxes to pay.

Are you on mobile? Because I think signatures are hidden on mobile, it shows up fine when on my laptop or desktop. The heater is used but not on full throttle and only when I'm in the Lego room and it's winter ?

Thanks for tagging along! Yes they are at the back of the table behind the bridge and will help gap the 2 main tables. They will get covered up with rock work in the front to hide the "rainbow". There will actually be rock work all around this middle table to close the gap between it and the 2 main tables. I'll have to figure out a stair or access ramp for the figs to access the beach and ocean. It's pretty clear in my mind how I want it all to look, but it's going to take time (money and bricks too...) to build it all. I usually moc things up in LDD before I physically build, I'll share some screenshots once I have something worth sharing.

Thanks for comment, really appreciate it and hope I'll be able to keep impressing as I go along and build this city up! still need to find a good name for it though. I'm really not into social media either, but IG has been useful for quick updates I must say. Anyway, was able to complete the 3rd structure, I literally depleted all my 2-by-x bricks at this point . The 3 structures fit by the exact mm on my middle table. My fingers hurt from all the clicking. Pro tip: if you plan on building a city, keep those old dirty, bitten, yellowed bricks you had as a kid, they come in handy to make such structural work (not that you guys didn't already know this :-)). Benny says: if I fits, I sits!

Hello Brickfans, So as mentioned previously, here's a bit of progress for those that don't use Instagram (I can see my sig with the IG link, can you too? If not please let me know). I haven't made tremendous progress as the confinement continues for the time being here in Switzerland, I still work from home and the schools will probably not reopen, so one thing at a time. As I was waiting for parts to continue the beach/ocean, I had the idea of creating a little water pumping facility for my city with the goal of providing drinkable water to my habitants. I moc'ed it up in LDD and started building but of course, ran out of the parts in the colours I needed (I love medium azure and it seemed fitting for again, something water themed). It will eventually be placed next to my mountain/train tunnel next to the river where I have a space I didn't know what to use for. So here's a tiny preview: I have the tubing for the water already built, it'll go through the 2 round openings. As I go and build real sets and see other mocs, I try to make building more "complex" in terms of textures. We'll see how it looks when it's done. While I was again waiting for parts, I was finally able to build the Old Fishing store I had sitting in my collection for months. I love the looks of the set. I must admin it was a bit boring to build but the end result is great. This is about where I'll place it in my beach area. You may notice I replaced the tan 32x32 baseplate that comes with the set in favour of four 16x16 plates. The reason being I want things to be level once I get to create the beach which will have some elevation: Finally, I started working on the support structures that will run in the back of the middle table to bridge the gap between the 2 main tables: I need to build 3 of those (2 are done) and they literally used up almost all my stash of 2x2, 2x3 and 2x4 "rainbow" bricks lol. Duplo would be my friend here, I stole a few 2x2 Duplos from my kids (shhh, don't tell them :-p) as I had seen JangBricks use them in his mountain. These 3 platforms will host a train track, probably a small train station, a road (1 way so need to plan red lights on each side) and a rocky overlook of the beach/ocean for minifig tourists. The front will eventually be covered up with rockwork (this is going to take forever lol). 'Til next time, Cheers

Thanks for the comment! It's been about a year now since I came out of my dark ages and started this project ^^ Cheers

Yep keeping it private for the time being ;-) Cheers

Crap I thought I updated my SIG the other day. Will do it on the computer later. In the mean time: https://www.instagram.com/h311m4ns?r=nametag

Hello brick fans, I've been posting a few things over on Instagram (started using it after @Chilis convinced me to do so ;-)) . Link in my signature below. Things I've been working on: finished the old fishing store to place on the beach, started building a water pumping station to make fresh water available to my minifigs in the city as well as started the structural work at the back of my middle table to bridge the gap between the two main tables. Still waiting for parts to continue the ocean/beach work. I'll post some pictures in here within the next 2 days. Til next time!

I think the whole coppa thing caused him to have to change what videos he was going to publish. Happy to see some city stuff too.

Was just watching the vid about an hour ago, haven't finished it though

My set I ordered last week should arrive within the next hour. Pretty quick considering the circumstances. Edit: got it!

Diver theme is one of my all time favorite subthemes in the city line up and you can fit it in a city layout relatively easily if you have and ocean/beach in there. I really hope official pictures of the next wave release soon. I looked for the leaked pics mentionned on the previous page but couldn't find any. Anyway, Not specifically related to anything City, but since I can't yet post in the buy/sell/deals forum, if anyone here is in Switzerland, there's a 20CHF coupon on conrad.ch on everything. Picked up a few hidden side, city and creator sets some of which are already the cheapest in the country on that site. Code to use: MCDS2020