Lipko

I agree it's fun to build such huge vehicles, and interestingly I don't mind motors during building despite my preference for manual models. In general it just looks awesome how they fit into a chassis. It's just the few hours of building fun doesn't justify the prize and the final models "faults". It's been so long I built anything, those "PLIFTARMS" change constriction a lot, don't they? I would love to try those one day (heck, I even missed the larger frames)!

"Lego is for kids". Therefore we have these 18+ sets, so that you, as an adult, who don't give a crap about Lego so you don't see how inferior they actually are in comparison with "normal Lego for the kids", can have a cool model never meant to play with on your shelf and don't feel uncool (better keep the box so if you get some risen eyebrows from your frieds you can proove them you are not uncool, because the model will fail to proove it by itself). It's just marketing. I started before Lego was cool. Now Lego is coming down the chimney. Edit: the high prize can be attributed to that "feel cool" thing. One must be a cool person if one can spend 450 on a decoration.

The [TRIPLE] contest had 500 parts limit too. It was on the honesty of the contestants.

Jim never sleeps. (He only sleeps when the voting ends in a contenst and forgets to close the voting topic for days )

Maybe this could be solved by disallowing heavy editing and force some rules to make videos look equal. only static overlay text or white text on full-black background. Arial font. no added graphics/effects simple background (no obvious outdoor footages or footages at special places) no real life effects. For example adding real smoke to the scene or special lighting no music no sharing of a fancier video version on Youtube/wherever until the voting is over no slideshow of your high quality pictures (which I do all the time to compansate my poor video skills) dunno. Whatever. Maybe even a general script could be defined. Like: go aroung the model (general impression), show all functions, show chassis/internals Similar could be done for photos too. Plain background (anyone can "invest" in a sheet of A0 paper or two), no effects apart form color corrections, no added graphics, etc. Linking to photo and video tips threads on the announcement topic. No stickers.

Popularity? That's why there is a post limit, so no new members can vote (no point to gather voters on Facebook/Youtube/Insta). Popularity here on Eurobricks? I don't see it a problem either, there's not that many posts here so you don't have to "pre-filter" what MOC you check and what you don't. Honestly, your entry was a bit ugly, based on a model that was also ugly (not your fault), you were using so many system bricks with many literally copied areas from the original. I know, Technic is about functions and all, but since 1990, looks also matters (because we have the parts to make them look good), and even more so building Techniques. True, this contest was very controversal how you interpret the rules and ""spirit"" of the contest. It was certeanly not about perfectly exact placement of knobs and everything. That is just one (and not that important) criteria. In my opinion, it was cetrainly not the best contest we had. Just accept the results as most of people accempted it. There were contests when popularity mattered (no post limit). For example I came in second in a contest instead of first because of the one-time-poster-from-same-country-as-the-winner votes (I guess because of a Facebook sharing, I didn't blame the contestant). I swallowed a big and accepted it, even though it was more "unfair" than you are claiming now. A more realistic claim would be that bigger is always better, but once I was so upset that I went through all contest to check my theory. It wasn't true. In a contest you have to accept that you really have to make something big in ALL aspects: concept (and fitting the theme), evaluation and presentation. It's not about parts you have. I managed to win a contest with a small inventory but with a killer concept, proper models and I took the time to make proper photos and video. I passed a contest because parts were two days late off the finish date. I swallowed the crap and went on. I guess that makes me a """pro"""?

Man, I was exactly thinking of Eurovision Finns always vote on the Hungarian contestant (sadly the opposite is not true).

Related: What is the reason behind showing the country of a member in general? There's some bias in voting if the contestant is from the same country as the voter. I remember getting maximum points from many Hungarian members in contests. Maybe just coincidence...

I'd lower the post limit but no restriction would lead to 1 post voters gathered on Facebook. Since contest here are not Facebook popularity contests, I think it's good to let only "real" members vote.

The best ideas come when one is sitting on the toilet. This cabinet solves this too!!!1

I do that all the time if I have WIPs. I simply find mixed threads confusing, especially multipage threads. Poorly edited first post (original content deleted) - confusion. Thread title changes (*cough @Didumos69 *cough) - confusion. No first post edit with almost-finished and finished pictures close to each other in a wall on posts - confusion. Advices mixing with praise even after the model is called finished - confusion. Also I find it harder to call something finished and get it accepted as finished when there is no distinct "it's finished. Period." thread. A separate thread has a kind of statement function besides clarity. The worst type of a WIP thread is that when the model is called finished, then after months or years it gets resurrected as a MOD WIP thread. So to sum it up: I prefer a separate finished model thread with a link to the WIP. And also a link to the finished model in the WIP thread. I don't think that would result in too many threads. A proper presentation of a model takes time to make, probably the WIP would sink in the thread list anyway, this is a quite active forum. IMHO.

option 5: WIP thread but a separate own thread for the finished model.

Option 4: Post the finished model one time but add description about the design process with WIP pics. Like many posts on my portfolio website.

So to sum it up, a proper comment should be something like:

I think that some of the criticism is here from some people comes across very condescending. These are the best MOCers at the same time. This can be "devastating" to a newbie (not just newbie in MOCing but in the community too) because a bit of Dunning-Krueger effect, the newbie just finished its first MOC and feels high and posts and gets a mere "this doesn't remotely look anything like the real mode" or "everyone and their grandma can build car models" sort of comment. Just imagine. For ""grown ups"" like us, we have grown some skin and don't get discouraged by such comments (and actually feel happy if we get their attention), but we know the commenters and that it's just their internet face, not their real personality. I can name @Sariel @mahjqa @M_longer. Whoever knows them a bit knows they are perfectly normal and kind person in real life (it comes across from their videos and building topics) and that they are perfect in English but not native speakers. Maybe that's a reason why some of their comments come of condescending. Maybe another reason why these comments are so discouraging because these commenters only praise or have comments that are not critical about the best new builders in the world. And this may have the effect on the newbie that (s)he will never be in this elite club, and most MOCers in their hearts want to be in this club. For the "grown up" thing. Many of the people who some of you refer as snowflakes are actually in their early twenties. And nowadays most of them aren't really a grown-up yet. No own family, life to lead, whatever. For them, Lego MOCing might be what defines them. ,

Yup, that mess-up if you modify the model comes from the fact that the file itself is a plain text file with parts listed and other "meta commands". In MLCad-LPub-whatewer tools, some of the commands are ignored, some meta commands ignored in every programs but hadled by different plugins (LSynth for example, which handles flexible parts pretty well), and so on. This "mess" will mean that the order of the text-lines in the file might get screwed and some of the features are very sensitive to that. This is also the reason why that system is so flexible: the human readable text format makes it relatively easy for a programmer to make their own plugins, tools etc. See this thread for example:

It is a very vague question. How would you approach a problem/task in general? For making instructions, it's pretty simple, to be honest. This will be lengthy but only bcause of the details. You make a full virtual model of the real model. For even big and complex models it's not that hard, you don't necessarily have to tear don't the whole model. But that's also an option: Tearing down the model gradially making photos after every step. This makes sure that the model will be assembleable. Using the photos, you can recreade the virtual model. This will be risky, you may forget to take photos or a photo doesn't show all changes. export the 3D to some software that's capable of instruction making, for example MlCad. It's still not the final document maker program, you'll need it to make the steps. But maybe you built the model with this program. In that case, ignore this step. Make the steps. The 3D file is actually just a huge list of the parts with their color, position and orientation. In some random order. No connectivity info, so is NOT usable as steps. In reality, the MLCad file is just a plain text file you can also view and edit in any text editors. So you make the steps by rearranging the parts in the list. The way this can be implemented in the User Interface will vary. In MLCad for instance, you have a rendered image on which you can clink and select parts, and there's also a window with the list and the selected parts are highlighted. Arranging can be done by dragging on the list (I'm not sure about this) or cut+paste the list entries. The steps themselves are just special text entries (maybe STEP in MLcad) in the list. You can (it's a good practice) make subassemblies (I honestly don't remember how that's implemented in MLCad file, maybe sumething like "sub name_of_subassembly" part list "end_sub") Make the actual instruction document itself in the program (or in a separate program, like LPub). It renders the text file as an actually instruction-looking series of images and all the visual stuff you'll find in an instruction, like parts list per step, length annotations on axles, and so on. You can place the rendered step images as you wish, you can set subassemblies to be rendered as callouts (little bubble with sub steps), and so on. By the way, in case of MLCad the file you are working on in LPub is still the same text file but with a tons of meta-commands added by LPub under the hood. These meta-commands will be ignored by MLCad commands but still be visible in the text list view. You have to be careful when jump back and forth between MLCad and LPub, some things might get screwed) Export the document in the program to something that can be published. Like a series of images or a PDF file. Some post processing if you like. I, for example, find it much easier to add arrows, highlighting circles and such at this point. It can be done in MLCad too in a very incovenient way (arrow is added as a part that has to be hidden in later steps, I don't even remember how).

I have to add that in my opinion, the prerequisite of working with any virtual design environment efficiently is that you are proefficient with the bulding techniques (mechanisms, gearboxes and structures). Either by building lots of sets or by building MOCs in real life. I, for one, rarely test-build virtual assemblies, the reason I regularly switch between virtual and real building is that in many cases it helps me (I don't fully understand how) to overcome impasses. I can't remember too many occasions when the real build didn't behave as I expected from the virtual model. Truss designs (when working with non-perpendicular connections so cannot utilize perpendicular beams) is one example that needs real life test building. Especially because of twisting. Designing only with real building has a big negative effect on me: I tend to stick to sub-optimal solutions because it would be too tedious to fix in real life. Change a deeply-dug beam in a real build vs in a virtual environment. You get the idea. This can be overcome if you can afford to copy and rebuild stuff and have 2-3-4 prototypes built at the same time, but this required a fairly big inventory, especially if special parts are involved. EDIT: this is just me and some other builders. There are many builders, some of them are among the best builders out there who doesn't use any virtual building environments during development.

For rapid virtual prototyping I'd toss Lego Digital Designer into a MOCer's toolkit. It's very quick for throwing together stuff, the biggest disadvantage is that many parts are missing from the inventory, though I believe there's a workaround for it. Never really needed it though. For more serious virtual design (for making animations or instructions), other tools are better of course. And I'm not falimilar with STUD.io, maybe it has pretty much the same features as LDD. If so, ignore my comment.

I operated a hot-wire foam cutting machine during my first job. It was a stock hobby machine but I designed a proper table for it and fixed it's jerky motion (backlash compensation to the spindle was added). Simple decoration manufacturing, so designing and implementing these modifications was much more interesting than operating the machine itself.

@nerdsforprezThat looks awesome! Though those shelfes look very long, I wonder if they would warp in time. On a second look, maybe it's just the photos and they are not that long.

It's just shading. It's mimics a bulging shape which is lit from above.

I cannot care less how a set is marketed. And I don't see either how marketing in this case correlates with quality. It's not a two-person company. And I don't get why color/sex/orientation is still a thing. But since it is, don't be surprised that marketing/politics is pushing the topic until it becomes all natural. If you don't like different people, turn away. I don't like these abnormal things too much either, it's a part of the human nature. But there's million times bigger shit to swallow (the worsening climate in this part of the world and COVID for example) than some strange sexual behaviour and strange physique.

Sicker headlights lately. This is a very bad direction IMHO.

I'd place the headlights half+half studs apart, if it's possible. Otherwise it's my favorite entry so far. I like the panel bumber much better, even if it's a bit off from the original.