zinfinion

All fixed! Those pesky pinless bricks are too easily accidentally grabbed when speed building. And then once you start cloning it's like rabbits. Or sheep. Or something. And the cheese slopes were red at one time, I probably misclicked them while doing the black around the windows. I also had a wooden door handle for a few minutes before I noticed that one myself. This is what happens when I don't have a Bricklink inventory to run through LDD Manager.

Likely due to creating an overall group, with the roof and the store as sub groups.

3300003 LEGO Brand Retail Store - Theme: Promotional - LXF File [Duplicate] Errors: - Missing decals. - Beaten by ADHO15!!

This is incredibly slick! The somewhat stiff and comedic movements are great, as well as the slightly sped up timing. Quite the treat to watch. I'm very impressed with everything you have done with these Space Marines and look forward to seeing more.

And... time to unplug the internet.

I am not a lawyer and don't really want to stir the pot, but I do have a few questions about all of this. 1) Why is LEGO buying a library of parts they likely already have most of in CAD form? Those instruction manuals aren't drawn by hand I'm guessing. 2) What of all the time and effort put in by volunteers in creating this parts library? Did they wave all rights as part of some "user generated part contribution agreement" or something? 2a) Will this not be seen by the volunteers as a rather offensive move? $5.35 million ain't pocket change. I can't imagine the guy who laser scanned in all the Fabuland heads is real thrilled about this, for example. Unless he is one of the $5.35 million. 3) What is the future of LDraw and the LDraw parts library? Is it now essentially over since the core of the LDraw group are now TLG employees presumably working on LDD? The LDraw steering committee member states that he expects LDraw to have a bright future, so is TLG basically just paying for the current library and allowing LDraw to continue unabated? Will they have access to all future user generated parts? The whole announcement is rather vague and poorly worded. I'm curious to know what the actual effects of this are, both for LDD and LDraw.

I'm curious about the brick pattern column of the spiral staircase of Weathertop. I can't tell if it is a single column or is attached to stairs. Or if it is even new. Never mind. It's a Harry Potter piece. Which is why I was unfamiliar with it. And it's not in LDD. So now it's a wanted part! 40243 Newel-step

I really need to add caveats to my statements. I mainly look at CPUs/GPUs in terms of gaming performance, and obviously a die shrink of a CPU wont gain much performance there since almost all games are GPU bound. It's quite possible that it does better in other areas, but I'm not expecting more than a 5-10% increase (wild speculation) in most things. The lower TDP and integrated USB 3.0 are nice additions that I would most certainly wait for if I were upgrading from a previous generation of CPU/motherboard. Be sure to look into the K model of the 2600 (or the equivalent Ivy Bridge) that can be overclocked. All it takes is changing one number in the BIOS, and it is super simple. I'm at a 36% overclock, and could easily go higher with better cooling.

Without going into to much technomumblejumble regarding all the new anti-aliasing methods, around 4+ years ago (mainly due to the Unreal Engine 3) a lot of games switch to deferred shading for lights which is mostly incompatible with the established multisampling anti-aliasing (MSAA) that has been around for years. There were ways around it, but they were very memory and GPU intensive, so not all that helpful unless you had a beast of a card. So the GPU devs started working on anti-aliasing shaders that would run after the lighting passes to remedy this. AMD was first with MLAA for AMD GPUs, then Nvidia with FXAA for all GPUs, then SMAA was done by a third party for all GPUs, then there was talk of Nvidia's SRAA which seems to have been pushed aside, and now there is Nvidia's TXAA, which will need to be enabled by developers in their games/apps. Long story short, they are a new way of doing anti-aliasing that is more compatible with modern game engine rendering techniques, TXAA will be the most compatible thus far it seems, especially when HDR and things are present. The other upside is they are faster than MSAA, work on alpha transparency, use less VRAM, etc... Nvidia's 300 series drivers (for the GTX 680 only currently) allow forcing FXAA on DirectX games in the control panel, I am uncertain how/if it is implemented for OpenGL in these specific drivers, as I don't have a 680 (yet! ). I am also unsure if MLAA on AMD cards can be forced on OpenGL as well. So mainly, it's for games, I tend to use SMAA on games as it has the best image quality. The FXAA in the 300 drivers is a newer revision than the current injectors, so it might have a better quality as well. As far as LDD goes, it's hard to really capture the difference anti-aliasing makes with screenshots, it's mainly noticeable when rotating and zooming in and out. It's not a must have, but it is a bit easier on the eyes, at least for me. As far as your build goes, unless you plan to do a lot of virtualization or video encoding or other things that really benefit from having the four hyperthreads of the 2600, you could probably do better with the 2500k and overclock it. I have mine running at 4.5Ghz using the stock Intel cooler. Everything else looks fine. I use exclusively Corsair power supplies, they are definitely one of the best brands. And as far as Ivy Bridge, form what I have seen there is practically no increase in speed or anything else compared to Sandy Bridge.

Use the flex tool (left of the paint bucket in the toolbar) and make sure the element you are trying to bend has the flex tool symbol in the upper right corner in the brick palette. You will likely want to use 55668 Outer Cable 64MM or 76270 136MM depending on your application.

With regards to forcing Nvidia's FXAA in OpenGL, it's still experimental and has to be toggled using Nvidia Inspector, and only works in the 290.53 drivers (that I am aware of). The two most recent 200 series driver releases broke it (along with other things, Nvidia is probably distracted with the new 680 cards), so it's still very much an unofficial thing. Regarding AA in general, LDD is definitely doing something that standard AA methods don't seem to work with. I tried all the options, and basically lucked out with FXAA being the one thing that worked. There may be a way to enable AA in LDD on AMD, but not having one of their cards, I have no way of knowing for certain. Obviously the optimal solution would be for the LDD devs to build anti-aliasing support into the app itself, but until then I hope both Nvidia and AMD can come up with easy to implement workarounds. As far as TXAA, I'm intrigued, but also a bit dismayed since it requires the developers of the software to enable it. But they said that about FXAA as well, and now there are ways to inject that as well as SMAA into most DirectX apps (who am I kidding, I mean games ). All in all it's a very exciting time for AA as well as general image quality. After years of practically no improvements to AA (especially on the memory and workload fronts), all of a sudden there are more than 4 new methods, and probably more that we haven't heard of yet. Timothy Lottes, pretty much the guy for FXAA and TXAA has some insightful details on his site.

Bananas actually grow on banana trees (shocking! ) rather close to the ground and point upwards, rather than hanging down. I prefer to ignore reality in this case though, since this is an awesome MOC just the way it is.

I doubt a professional card from either vendor would see any boost in LDD. Unless you have other apps that require a Quadro or FirePro, you are better off with a consumer card. I personally prefer Nvidia, for a few reasons, but the most important one for LDD is being able to force FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing) in OpenGL apps (like LDD). Getting rid of the majority of the jaggies on the edges of the blocks really helps on the eyes. If I had a triple head setup, I would likely have LDD on the center monitor, instructions (.pdf or images) on another, and probably Bricklink (or some TV show I really don't care about) on the third. Trying to do all that on one monitor is a bit cramped, but I manage. Switch to the SSD. They are amazing. I can't stand to use computers with a standard hard drive now. I agree with Calabar about Crucial/Samsung. They both use the same Marvell controller chip, and it is one of the most stable, especially compared to OCZ's SandForce, which is in nearly all other drives (even some of Intel's) and it is known to be a bit finicky. I have a Crucial C300 (the predecessor to the m4 series) 128 GB, and will likely upgrade to something double that when Crucial comes out with their next wave of releases, which will likely be in the next few months as Marvell just released their newest controller. Really though, the difference in performance between generations of SSD has slowed down so this will mainly be for more space. The major upgrade in performance is in the switch away from a mechanical drive in the first place.

One thing, you missed a couple of blocks above the rack winder. And nice work on the hinges; the ability to mix in regular Technic parts with the new one compared to the old style opens a ton of possibilities! It was the missing digger hinges and the inability to place the fences on their sides that led me to give up on this set about a month ago. Those custom spines are ingenious! The lack of that part is what kept me from doing this set, but your version looks spot on. Great work.

I posted these over in the Special LEGO Themes section and I figured some of you might not notice them over there. Go on and take a look.

I was curious about the recessed grills on the sides of Big Ben and this happened. Both sets have the correct number of pieces, so I'm fairly confident that these are 95% right for the most part. Since each set was built from one photo of the model, the backsides are pretty much pure extrapolation. It will be interesting to see how close I came to getting it right when these release. Also, I don't really feel these are My Own Creations, more like My Reverse Engineered Creations. So MRECs. 21013 Big Ben - LXF File _________________________________________________________________________ 21016 Sungnyemun Gate - LXF File

6861 Super Build - Theme: Space - Blacktron II - LXF File _________________________________________________________________________ Errors: - Missing prints. - Replaced all 4475 Double Wing 8x8 with 4x4 Cutout with 6104 Double Wing 8x8 with 3x4 Cutout. - Replaced 3022 Plate 2x2 with 3023 Plate 1x2 due to smaller cutout of 6104 Double Wing 8x8. - Shifted all elements on top 6104 Double Wing rearward to avoid collision due to smaller cutout.

One other point about Dropbox. As long as you have the app installed, you are logged into the site/your dropbox, so the 90 day counter is kind of a moot point. The only way to actually go 90 days with no activity would be to uninstall the app and never log in to the website for 90 days. Even if my interest in LEGO faded (not that that would happen) I would still be using Dropbox for other things, so no worries on my part at least.

They actually did something similar to this with Blacktron II and M-Tron, where 3 sets combined to make a super model. I would not mind seeing a return to this sort of thing.

Quality varies wildly. Some are blurry messes, while others are 100% vector art that can be infinitely zoomed. Boggles the mind. It would be nice if they picked one quality level (high obviously) and stuck with it.

Excellent work! The moon pool in the front with the compressed air to equalize pressure is a really nice touch. The hatches, torpedo tube doors, and just all the small details are perfect! Also, major kudos for attaching the .lxf file. So many posters that make MOCs in LDD fail to do so for some reason. It's really hard to appreciate all that hard work if I can't spin it around and open it up and peek at the insides. I look forward to any upcoming MOCs you might be working on.

Angled freemovers. For example, move .5 LDU in +X Plane and 1.5 LDU in +Y Plane (since 2 LDU is smallest move) then do .5 X and 1.5 -Y for a sum total of 1 X, 0 Y. Two angled freemovers set to 22.5 degrees and positioned properly would achieve this. The math is rather simple to figure from there. I used 3.0625 degrees on the front panels of the Galactic Enforcer to move them down .125 LDU (0.05mm) to avoid a collision.

As seen @ VG24/7. Some new shots as well. Can't wait!

I completely understand your points. And if Dropbox did not exist, I'd still be using Brickshelf. As to Dropbox's user friendliness and the ease of accidentally deleting everything at once through Explorer, you are not wrong. Great power, great responsibility or something like that. Regarding accounts and their longevity here are the terms for both Dropbox and Brickshelf: - Dropbox reserves the right to terminate Free Accounts at any time, with or without notice. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, if a Free Account is inactive for ninety (90) days, then Dropbox may delete any or all of Your Files without providing additional notice. - You agree that Brickshelf, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, Brickshelf folder, use of the Service or use of any other Brickshelf service, and remove and discard any Content within the Service, for any reason, including, without limitation, for lack of use or if Brickshelf believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOS. Brickshelf may also in its sole discretion and at any time discontinue providing the Service, or any part thereof, with or without notice. In essence they say the same thing, only Dropbox is more specific about the period of inactivity. Basically all files hosted on a 3rd party site are there at the whim of those that run the site. Whether or not either site actually enforces these terms is another matter. There's really no free file host that is "forever" so to speak. Given all the above, I don't really recommend that people use Dropbox, also because some aspects of it are a bit obtuse, mainly getting folder sharing setup, and finding the right path to your files. It works for me though, and I see no reason not to suggest it as an alternative for those so inclined to take a look, going in with the knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses. Short of Eurobricks setting up a file host for forum posters, there's no 100% bulletproof free file host out there.

I currently don't even have Dropbox installed on my computer. Before I formatted, I deassociated my computer from my free Dropbox account (free and paid have identical functionality btw), formatted, and all my files are still happily on the Dropbox servers. I even used the web interface to upload the Galactic Enforcer pics and .lxf file the other day. The sync software is not a requirement to make good use of Dropbox, it just makes it that much more convenient. So how well it serves as a permanent file host is mainly determined by how it is used. For me it does everything that Brickshelf does, and does it better, faster, easier, and more reliably. Nothing against Brickshelf, they've clearly done a great thing for the LEGO community. But presented a better option, I'll take it.