woolie

It's not as smooth, and it is more difficult to use. But I find it's actually usable. And it doesn't delete bricks from release to release.

Great set, good review. I'm about halfway done building mine. But you should check your white balance settings :)

The Western Town will never make it past review phase, even if it had a million votes. It would probably cost $500 or $1000 per set.

I was thinking about doing this pretty soon.. I want to do a high speed run across my living room, with a turnaround like this at each end. My cats *HATE* the trains. It's wonderful.

I tried large models like this using LDD but gave up, because the group system was too clunky and awful to use. I use BrickSmith, which is an MLCad/LDraw compatible designer for Mac. I put each major component into a sub model, and can view/edit that section independently from the rest of the model. Also, can use multiple references to submodels, so items that are repetitive I can design once and then clone.

When my desk was at a different window, it looked out over the helipad of a major trauma hospital. The helicopters would come and go all day long. As in your design, the helipad is on the roof.

Well... I told myself I was going to wait. But my wife called me on the way home, and said "2x VIP points." That was enough to knock down any willpower I had left.

I was planning on picking it up when it comes out, but spent all my Lego funds on a lot from Craigslist So it will have to wait a couple more weeks...

Sterilite 5 drawer containers on caster wheels are on sale at Target for $18, down from $22. I picked up 2 more (now have 5) and may still get 2 more if they're on sale next week. As mentioned upthread, these are going to be used for "basic brick" storage. So, it took 4 people working for 2 hours, but we did the first pass on sorting about 1/2 of the bulk lot I bought last week. I made a list of about 16 categories. Each person picked 4 categories and got a plastic bin for each category. I'd grab a large pile of bricks from the tub, place in the center of the table, and we'd each pick out our categories. Worked pretty well -- definitely much faster than I could have sorted 30lbs of bricks on my own. I'll be doing the second pass sorting (usually down to individual molds, or very specific categories) over the next couple weeks. I'll post pics when it's all said and done.

More Paradisa type sets. Lego City seems to exist only for the transportation of goods and protection of property. But no goods are actually consumed, and no additional services are actually rendered

Unlikely you would lose money, but probable that the returns are far more pedestrian than you'd imagine from the asking prices. Look at completed transactions and stock levels to get an idea of how quickly they move. Also, the AFOL fanbase is much larger now than it was in the past. You will be just one of thousands of people buying these sets as an "investment," which is a very different situation than several years ago.

This sounds like a particularly challenging contest. I look forward to entering.

My names weren't too far off "today's" names. I did refer to "plates" as "flats," though, and think it's a bit softer word than "plate." So, I still tend to use it.

Haha, well, since you're bringing a thread back from the dead, I might post some pictures of my sorting progress as well. Currently in the process of making space in my loft area :)

One final idea/question. I frequently deal with ontologies in my work -- how things are organized, hierarchies, "this-is-a-" relationships, etc. So I've been dwelling a bit on this: When I present you with a random element, you're going to immediately mentally put it into some category. And if you were going to sort it, it'd go into a bin. Do you rely on any of the "established" systems, or just what feels right based on your experience? I personally feel that BrickLink has the most "natural" grouping, also with an attempt to have second level groups like "brick, modified" and "technic, liftarm." And sorting to their system is advantageous if I am buying/selling bricks. But the tool that I use most often is BrickSmith/LDraw. I doesn't feel quite as natural, and it has too many useless top level categories, but if it's the tool that I'm using........ And finally, of course, LDD's grouping has the imprimatur of TLG. It is also largely based on functional categories, which is very useful and a natural way of thinking about building.

Well, I've been to this thread several times now. Please excuse my thinking out loud. My collection has been rapidly expanding lately I have about 10-15k bricks from my childhood collection. I have those sorted into plastic baggies (fairly fine grained) and then grouped into 4 rubbermaid containers. These are "offline, archived" bricks that I can access in an emergency :) Then in the past year I've acquired a bunch of sets, about another 15k bricks of which half are built and on display and half are disassembled and sorted into bins (described below.) But I'm shifting strategy a bit, partly because I acquired someone else's collection of about 10k bricks that I am now merging. Originally I purchased 2 Sterilite containers, with 5 drawers each, for my new bricks. Well, those immediately filled up and didn't give me enough bins. So, I bought 2, then 4, then 6 Stack-On drawer boxes (18 bins each) and moved everything into those. Those are fantastic! But my basic bricks quickly started taking up 1, 2, or 3 bins per type (e.g. 1x4 bricks). So I am going to add in a couple extra carts of Sterilite drawers for "basic system" parts -- bricks, tiles, plates, slopes, wedges, basic modified bricks/plates, etc. I probably won't be able to be absolutely fine grained (1 bin = 1 mold) in the Sterilites, but should be close enough to OK. Everything that doesn't neatly fit into the Sterilites will go into the Stackons. The question now is WHERE! The configuration of my house is a bit awkward for Lego. Three story townhouse, with bedroom suites on 1 and 3, and open plan living area with no walls on 2nd. Since both bedrooms are basically in use, and I don't want everything out in my living room 100% of the time, the garage is for cars, etc. etc., it's a challenge to find a spot for all my bins. I do have a small loft/office space on the 3rd floor landing. There is a little-used desk here, but I think I will put that into storage and build a shelving system (like the beautiful wood shelves for the Sterilite boxes upthread.) I will also have room for a small build table. Now, we usually build on the 2nd floor, so it will be unpleasant to be constantly running up and down the stairs for parts, but it's good exercise :) I will probably have room for a small build table upstairs as well. Anyway, I tend to go overboard. But that is the current state of my sorting.

I love the wallpaper :)

Incredible!!!!!

Flickr has teams of professional engineers on the problem. It's not a hobby site :P

It's amazing you got it to run on the wall at all, though. How do you keep the trains from falling off?

At least you'll be thrown to your death in style!

No, it's just the resolution of the embedded bitmap images that's changed. I checked out a couple just now. Old manuals are just simple, full-page, relatively low resolution scans. And compressed. Newer manuals are a mix of vector artwork (page layout, dividers, borders, numbers..) but the assembly illustrations are still bitmap graphics. The newest manuals are the same as above, but with higher resolution embedded bitmaps. If the manuals were 100% vector artwork, the file sizes would actually be much smaller, and you could print nearly any size you wanted. But the assembly illustrations are probably generated using their internal design tools, and then sent to the manual designers as high resolution bitmaps. To turn the 3D model into a 2D vector illustration might be very difficult unless they just redraw it by hand. Although they should finally realize that their color system is useless because you can't tell the difference between the different greys and blacks

Note to self: don't buy used bricks unless absolutely necessary...

I visit the fish markets where the shrimping boats come in occasionally... they have a very specific building type, and it makes me want to make a modular-style raised fish market :)

This makes me want to go out and buy the bicycle in every color :(