RoxYourBlox

I understand that there may be difficulty in expanding colors and types, but currently the selection is very limited and needs improvement. Several bricks and colors commonly used in this year's sets are not yet or no longer available in DBM/PAB (e.g., non-red streamers, non-black hinge plates). While it is possible to recolor selected bricks in extended and universe modes, it is not in Design By Me mode. In DBM mode, it simply deselects the bricks. Furthermore, no mode allows you to click and drag the bucket tool, which would be a useful way of quickly recoloring a subset of visible bricks in a large model.

2 suggestions: 1) Make more colors available for purchase. The past 2 major updates saw downgrades in terms of color and brick selection (aside from Hero parts), leaving me with the impression that LDD was designed as an outlet store for old bricks sold at premium prices. It was for this reason (plus a notice on Lego's site that another update was supposed to arrive sometime after Aug 31, 2011) that I felt pressure to rush my projects out the door before I was ready (financially). 2) Paint bucket tool. Click and drag the paint bucket icon to recolor several visible or selected bricks at a time.

A genuine Dragon Knights castle would be nice before the Kingdoms line is retired; however, I feel the Prison Tower Rescue serves that purpose, and the Dragons Knights were also featured as rivals in the village sets this summer. For future castle sets, I'd like to see a return of the Vikings / Norse mythology theme.

Nice topic. This method was how I made my models here, except that I did the trigonometry on paper+calculator and/or in Microsoft Excel. (Actually I've never tried the hinge align tool!) Given any right triangle, it was easy to find a triangle with all sides ~= integers by copy/pasting equations until they would yield a size that fit (<0.05 stud error). In cases where I couldn't calculate the angle beforehand, I would rotate the side of a polyhedron until it would collide in either direction, then average the two collision angles, manually input the predicted angle (trial and error), then take the average of the two most extreme angles that LDD would accept. A completed polyhedron with no errors (doublecheck by saving, closing LDD, and reopening the file) was always a good reason to celebrate. At other times, LDD errors could be overcome (manipulated) by adding connected hinges+plates of polygons in different sequences. The update from LDD3 to LDD4 solved a lot of the leeway though; LDD is more accurate now than it had been.

Wow, I'm feeling guilty for not having order the pieces for that now! I have another idea, though, to be explored after my wallet recovers.

Kastle K and Snow Spire launched my project. When I approached my daughter about what she would like to see in a castle of her own, she gave me ideas for each room. I drew a blueprint with crayon and construction paper. When I asked her what she'd like me to design next, she said "a tower." I asked what shape; she said "pentagon," and so the rest followed. I later retrofitted her first castle to have the base of a square. I agree about a UCS Castle; I'd buy it! Thank you! I may revisit the pentakisdodecahedron at a later time but not as a castle. Octblock is not yet built. I designed technic elements into the bases of the blocks to strengthen the structure. Downward weight (hopefully) will distribute between the technic elements and central platforms. And yes, the Tetra Pyramid can be separated into 4 modular pyramids. Surprisingly, you can pick it up with one hand at a bottom corner and another at the opposite joint. Its foundation is quite strong!

Yes, remove the 1x4 plates; I found this unusual, too. By the way, has anyone posted pictures of a motorized version (there are no instructions for doing so, and I haven't found pics in old topics)? Where would be the best spot for the IR receiver? I imagine the battery would fit in a modified luggage/coal car.

Bricksandparts: I would use MS Excel for trigonometry and search google or wikipedia for a dihedral angle (an angle between sides of a polyhedron). The most extreme example was Air Isle, which at one point looked as shown below--before I scaled back its design due to budget and space constraints:

I've updated the original post with photos. Or visit brickshelf.

Hi! This is my only train MOC, although I did a brown & blue color mod of Emerald Night.

Thank you all for the comments! I designed these with the intention of building them, so structure has been a chief concern! Dual Dour would be most likely to present a problem of the four remaining. Nevertheless, I have planned a slight alteration that hopefully won't compromise stability. Indeed, these aren't meant for realism, thanks to my lack of sanity. We have recently purchased a DSLR camera, and I'm waiting for a sunny weekend afternoon to shoot some photos outside. In the meantime, please enjoy the .lxf's and this quick snapshot:

This is an homage to Lionel's Automatic Refrigerated Milk Car, #34X2. I have the bricks on order and will update with photos after it is built. Thanks for viewing!

flickr

Huh. I just reopened LDD and clicked yes for the patch, and it happened to work... I didn't try anything different. I emailed Lego yesterday AM, and someone suspected it could have been bad compression of the .zip.

The installation error for Macs has been fixed. Reopen LDD, and the patch should install properly now. Thank you, Lego!

I have been encountering the same error message (cannot access server) on my Macbook Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.8. Clearing the downloads folder didn't solve it. Next, I successfully downloaded 4.1.8 here and attempted to reinstall to no avail... "Operation 1" error. I don't think the problem is on my end, as the download/install/patch processes for 3.x, 4.0, and 4.1 have previously run very smoothly on our Macbooks. Can't wait for v4.1.9!