SearchFunction

Its so that one model can be used in several sets without the need to create additional manuals. So If you want to include a police car in a police station set, all that have to be done is to add the already existing manual(and bricks) to the package or vice versa.

I did actually watch that. It was what sparked my interest. The dog was obviously created solely for that particular set. But how about say a part like 52038 Surely that wasnt modeled in clay first? If I where an executive or something like that at LEGO, I think I would ask the designer who came up with this piece to show me examples of useability that couldnt be done with already existing parts. An aproval phase of some sort. I was wondering if they have that. In the police station set, they knew beforehand that a dog was to be included so a modeler was assigned to the team. Or do they have some kind of yearly conference where suggestions for new parts are discussed? For instance the new inverted bracket - 99780 How did that one come into beeing?

I was wondering how new elements are created within Lego. When a team of designers are to make a new set I guess they don´t just go into the machining room and create a new mould. So whats it like? I guess for a new element to appear several teams must have been requesting it. Also I suppose there is some sort of evaluation process of weither or not the new element can be used for multiple sets and if its irreplaceble in the situation it is supposed to solve. Care to elaborate?

This coupling part used to be the main way of attaching trailers: Plate, Modified 2 x 5 with Towball Socket : part no 3491 3491 The others in this series are in there Hinge Bar 2.5L with 2 and 3 Fingers on Ends (Pantograph Shoe Holder) : part no 2880 2880 These I´ve often wanted Technic, Plate 1 x 4 with Toothed Ends : part no 4263 4263 Technic, Plate 1 x 6 with Toothed Ends : part no 4262 4262 Technic, Plate 1 x 8 with Toothed Ends : part no 4442 4442

I´ve been wanting to do a Mercedes 500K like vehicle for a while now. Yours come pretty close to that. Great work.

I just love these 5 wides.

Hello people! I have recently been doing some minor changes to the constructions in these to make them buildable. They still look the same though. I shall reupload the lxf file. I have a hatchback design done as well, it is just a 4 seater instead. I will be ordering the bricks for these sometime next week so I will get around to test them eventually. Actually I have a whole line of cars in the pipeline, not posting them takes serious effort...but I really should test the designs first . I will upload some stuff to brickshelf tonight and once its been aproved, link to it in this thread. EDIT: Link has been updated. I didnt realize my pictures where oversized. Anyway here is the red car design I was talking about. It is in the Rd4seatr folder. Hope that can give you some ideas Hubert!

I´m dying to know your technique for those red roofs. So smooth!

For more information I recommend R.C. Andersons book "The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720" and Wolfram Zu Mondfelds "Historic Ship Models". Its a very tricky subject, but there where strict rules as to the proportions of everything and they changed over time and from nation to nation. British ships where less manuverable but steadier gunplatforms, the french better sailors but less stable. This was due to the shape of the hull. Anyway the lenght to breadth ratio typically was 1:3 and the height of the mainmast could be something like 2,5 times the breadth on a full rigged ship. Anyway its a very very diffecult area to study if you want 100% realism. I would recommend simply finding a model of a ship and copy and modify it to your liking. As for the steering wheel, it wasnt invented until 1695 and not in common use until much later, like the 1730s. Up until then steering was done by a slightly different mechanism, but you can look that up in Mondfelds book if you REALLY want that much info.

The classic era of pirates where all the famous ones are from, where right after Queen Annes war ended in 1713. After 11 years of warfare, there where quite a lot of military men who where let go, but had become so skilled at what they did, that they simply continued anyway on their own. In the beginning noone really cared, but eventually the problem had to be dealt with. By 1725 most pirates had been hunted down. Blackbeard went down in 1718. Bartholomew Roberts in 1722. Edward England (who flew the Jolly Roger) in 1720.

Yeah sorry for that. I was in a bit of a hurry and imageshack which I usually use requires user registration now, so had to find something else. I made a brickshelf account a while ago but it didnt seem to get aproved. After checking it now, I see that it is actually there! I Shall work on moving them. I was not aware lxf files could be uploaded to brickshelf as well. I shall explore it. Glad you liked the file. I should do some color checks while I´m at it as well.

Hello there I set out to try and make a closed 2-seater with doors. I finally came up with a design I like. As always, I couldn´t help making variations, so it came to be 5 in all. Link to the LDD file is at the bottom of this post. I have not built these for real, but I have done my best to design them so that they actually work and are stable. Also the colors used should be availible for all parts. I apologize if there should be a slip-up in there. I present these as a set of ideas for anyone interested in making cars in this scale to be used freely. Perhaps they can inspire to some designs of your own, or give you some ideas. First an overview picture of the 5 models: This red car was the first I made. The cabin is built as 5 wide, transforming into 6 wide around it. This means a sparse interior design as I wanted to make it as solid as possible. It does however provide for minifigs to be placed as low as possible in the car. Image The blue car is a convertible version of the coupe design. It uses a 6 wide design all way through, real doors and has the standard edition dashboard design I like to use (you can see it up close in the white car). Due to it beeing a convertible, I allowed myself to raise the seating 1/3 brick (used in all the convertibles). This make it much easier to build a stable bottom. It also allows for 2 figs to be seated next to each other, provided you arrange their arms in the same way as in the LDD file. This I HAVE tested in real bricks, and there is a bit of wiggle room so you do not have to cram them in there. It was rather diffecult to come up with a caleche design I liked but I think it strikes a nice middle ground. Also headrests! Image Obviously, I had to try a beefed up police interceptor version. Supercharged with a spoiler in the back and upgraded exhaust system. I like the interior in this one. I could not find any printed tile that shows a monitor for the computer and the 2w cheese pieces also do not come with a dashboard print, but perhaps you can make your own if you really feel like it. These are cops after all, so I figured the cup would do as 1 part of the coffee & donut duo. Image I had to also try some designs with the slightly smaller wheels. It came out to be 2 versions. The orange car is a sporty open car with the same removeable roof design as a Ferrari 308 or a Pontiac Trans-Am. I like the seats in this design. Image This white car is a more relaxed cruiser type. The grilles on the front bumper unfortunately do not come in light bluish grey, but perhaps they will someday. The design reminds my slightly of a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville. Image Feel free to have a look at the LDD file here - , and let me know if these designs works. - Updated 9 may 2012 I myself have very few lego pieces so I would have to get the needed parts exclusively through bricklink. I´m also on a limited budget so I will probably wait until I have some of my other designs ready and evaluate what I can afford to get at a later date. I love designing through.

Why not use one of the new 98138 pieces. Just turn it upside down http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=98138

Potentially this could be good, but it really needs to incorporate some kind of advanced voting process. Amongst 1000s of projects even good ones would drown. Searching abilities and the like would need to be implemented. Categories. Estimated brick counts. Anything to make it easier to navigate. They have said they are working on improving it, so looking forward to that. Right now I got the most out of going to the search bar and typing in NOTHING, then using the most vievew, most commented subselection buttons. Will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

V-LV-37F Allright a little late but here is the last car. It was inspired by and uses some, but not all of the same techniques as MasaoHidakas 2 seater as seen on . And the entire handfull: So 4 seaters is possible in 6 wide : ), which is what I set out to research. I do not have a studio setup to take pictures nor an advanced camera, but I hope you got something out of it anyway. Everything was designed in LDD. Each car is around 200 pieces. I must say that I admire the official lego sets for getting so much in much less. Thanks for the fine words everyone! EDIT: soccerkid6@ "You did a good job of making it so you can put people in without making the car too big. " That was one of the goals as well : )

V-LV-37D & V-LV-37E Thanks! Got around to take some pictures of the interior of the camper today so here we go! First the door opens into the seating area 3 figs can sit there Next to the seating area is the closet(?), also large enough for 1 fig although getting in and out is a bit of a hassle. On the other side is the kitchen with fridge, sink and cooking plates In the back is the sleeping quarters. Exterior And inside from above The roof solution works okay, but it has a tendency to jam at the front so I might have been better off simply making a removeable roof. My main inspiration for it was a Knaus 450 EL. Next up is a regular trailer that every man has in the backyard: Ready to go to the junkyard How it looks empty: This one is completely stable. No changes required. I´ll get the 2-seater sports car tomorrow.

V-LV-37A to V-LV-37C It was the first design, and I kinda liked it, even though visibility is limited. @Cotton : To seaters I find are difficult to make with the low windscreen but there are some interesting ideas out there for tilting the larger ones. I havn´t had much succes with that though. Here is the next car I made. The goal was to fit 4 minifigs and still have space for luggage + towing ability: (the grey part on the front top of the camper was supossed to be white, but I am missing the part atm. It has a full interior, will do some pictures of that once its finished) The nice thing about this solution here is that the rear opens even with the bicyles on top Fits 4 suitcases..and at least 1 bike helmet. The second was kinda thrown in there through the side window after the compartment was closed : ). Ready to camp On this next picture you can see the interior better. Its nearly the same one in my police car When I made the next version I couldnt settle on ONE design so I ended up making 4 versions: This design also fits 4 figs(its a tight squeeze!), but there is no luggage compartment, and some of the roof solutions limit the selection of hair and hats that the figs can wear. There are also issues with stability in most of them, and its hard to open the rear doors without rotating the column above it. I do have some new LDD designs ready that should fix most of those problems though. Might or might not build them: I havn´t checked for colors, but I do know that the "hood" part dosnt come in blue so would have to rework the front end. I have 1 more car and a trailer to show. Later : )

V-LP-6C Some time ago I posted about a way to make a 4 seater in 6 wide. I´d said then that I wouldn´t build them. Well... I couldn´t resist, so I ordered some parts and here we are. The first model I completed and was happy with was a traditional police car: A bit hard to look out but hey, at least they can see what they run over... It sports a full dashboard which I have found out by now, is impossible to see when there is minifigs in the car. Its mostly the same design I use though, so there will be some pictures of that from the other cars later. Of my design this one is probably the most stable. There is only one area at the bottom near the front where I have found a better solution, from when I finished it in LDD. Next car I think will be my family car. Later.

The flower can be seen at the right on the circle in this picture. You set it to manual by setting this wheel to "M". dpreview says manual focus is availible, but it isnt EDIT(I think what they mean by that is that something called "AiAF" can be turned off and instead of auto-focusing on something random, it will autofocus on what is in the middle of the display. The manual to this camera explains nothing.). aperture is choosen automatically in manual mode. I can see what it chooses before taking the picture though, and try to nudge the camera slightly to see if it chooses a higher aperture.

I can set iso level, but f is no where to be found. I did find the expose/shutter time? control and as I understood from the site it should be set as high as possible. I can set it to 15 seconds, though it dosnt seem to take that long to take a photo.. Looked up the description on dpreview as well. It appears that this camera has a special button that looks like a flower that one needs to press to get it into "macro" mode. I feel so stupid now, but it really isnt very obvious and it isnt availible in every auto-mode. The result is plenty good for me, though I still need to find out exactly how to manipulate the rest of the settings in manual mode to get the colors straight. Thanks for clearing it up!

Plenty of people here do SUGGEST DSLRs though, even if they don´t say it. The Samsung EX1 linked to by harakiri is 300 euros according to what I can see. Manual mode. Whatever its called. You put your things on a table, you get your camera out, and get close...and its not in focus, and by that I mean unsharp/blurry. Old cameras had a ring around the lens where you could adjust the distance to the object you intended to take a picture of. Digital cameras in the lower end of the price spectrum, dosn´t have this feature. Instead they focus on whatever the software thinks you want to photograph. And to focus they need light. Obscene amounts of it. It drives me nuts. Maybe I´m just frustrated. If you can tell me how to take macro pictures with my Canon PowerShot A560 I´ll be most gratefull. Right now, I´m convinced it can´t. My old 1980 Zenit EM camera could do this no sweat, like every other non-digital camera. If you have anything in the 100-125 euro price range, please do tell. The camera man in my shop said nothing less than 350 euro..for the cheapest one was any good, so they are not exactly a good source of info.

I think its funny everytime I see a beginner asking for something simple, like audio or similar in this case, and the pros come in and tell the poor guy that nothing short of $$$ is any good. The only thing you need is a camera with MANUAL FOCUS, because without it, cameraes CANNOT take close-up pictures, and they always need to have flash on, even in broad daylight, outside on a sunny day. I´m trapped now with one that can´t match the pictures of any old manual camera I ever owned.

Only the broadside guns are counted as these where the ones that mattered in the line of battle. If youre into accuracy, you might find the book "Historic Ship Models" by Wolfram zu Mondfeld and The Rigging of Ships in the days of the Spritsail Topmast 1600-1720 by R. C. Anderson interesting. Or The Construction and Fitting of the English Man of War by Peter Goodwin. That is if, youre into ships of the classical pirate era and don´t want to settle on any specific nation, as each nations ships varied here and there from decade to decade. Take the classical steering wheel, which was first introduced by the english in 1695 but wasnt common in other nations ships until around 1740, some 45 years later. Ofcourse with LEGO the scale determines the level of accuracy...if you want accuracy that is.

Allright I dont know if anyone mentioned this, but I don´t have the time to read through all 28 pages right now, so I will just put my bug here: It is possible to place a headlightbrick (4070) right up against another brick. This is NOT possible in reality as the headlights stud is protruding farther than the brick

An thats why I am surprised that they havn´t incorporated the rest of the production line into this. The factory is super high tech, but then they load the bricks onto trucks, drive them 300 miles to another country, unload them and THEN paint them? That just seems unnessesary wastefull. Also, why not use those robots in the distribution center as well? The large sets are packed..by hand? Guess they need bigger machines yes? Still improvements to be made I suppose. A special factory for pick-a-brick and LDD orders would be on my wishlist : ).