Jeroen Ottens

Beautiful model indeed. Only minor gripes: IR receiver sticks out too much Not sure about the 1x4 plates on the rear lights, how about 1x4 tiles? I do really like the grille pattern on the rear hatch door (or whatever that is called ).

Nice! Well proportioned and not many pieces left... What more can you ask for in a C-model?

Beautiful... Both technically and aesthetically...

1 : 10 6 : 6 2 : 4 12 : 3 17 : 2 10 : 1

Good start for a first MOC! The body is a bit too boxy for my taste, but so is the original, so you captured that look well :)

I never met the people that developed these axles, so I didn't have the opportunity. Also we didn't feel the need. In those days we could simply cut the flexaxles to length if needed and than have it added to the assortment (this was around the milleniumchange when rules for new parts weren't that strict). This is maybe also an explanation why the collection never expanded: shortly after the new part rules became much more stringent so designers were encouraged to only use the existing lengths...?

Given that metric was introduced around the French revolution, the only studs at that time were created by the guillotine... On a more serious note: I happened to work at Lego when the flexaxles were introduced. We were handed these odd lengths by some technical development center. No idea why they had chosen these, but I still have some grey prototypes in exactly those odd lengths.

Cute model, I like the solution to close the gap beneath the 3x11 panels of the hood. Front bumper does look a little too big though.

Wow! What a beauty. Great lines, smooth curves, very well capturing the look of the real thing. Does the 4 XL setup deliver what you wanted? Even if it doesn't break speed records, does it feel fast? One minor detail: did you try to use yellow beams above the front lights? With the black beams it gave me Angry Birds vibes...

Very nice switching mechanism. Two questions though, both related to the forces needed to switch gears: 1) Do the bionicle teeth stay on the #2 connectors, or do they slowly wiggle themselves of the friction pin with axle? 2) Can the CV-joints take the stress of switching? I now realize that the CV-joints won't be stressed if you use the old switchingrings with the smooth axle-connectors. Do you use those? Oh, and are the red levers spring-loaded so that they automatically return to their original position?

I agree with Erik. This is a move in the good direction, smaller is better Colouring can improve. At first sight it looks more like a crane boom transport. Having a yellow superstructure on the carrier will help.

The problem I foresee with LDCad is that I need to enter all rotation values by hand. Each brick will have a different rotation in two directions. I am not even sure which rotation point to use... As for the goal, this is more a Buddhist approach to building , the road is more important than the goal . And who knows, maybe someone else does have the bricks/money/time to actually build it. Or maybe I do get so excited that I do throw all caution to the wind and invest in bricks (might be a good reason to join some LUG to get access to the LUGBulk program). Thanks for the advice. If I stick to a technic beam inner structure I might actually be able to make that (if all else fails I can still take apart my Zeppelin, that definitely should provide enough beams, it is about the same length). The curves I made so far are without (too much) stress in the lego pieces, but it will be a challenge to find the right support points so that the hull remains smooth and doesn't become all bumpy... I probably need some kind of adjustable connection between the hull and the inner structure... Hmm...

Hi, I would like to present to you a project that I most likely will never finish, but I hope the road to failure is interesting enough to share. It is a project which I first thought of over 4 years ago. I spent some time designing in LDD, got all sorts of brick collision issues because of all the SNOT techniques used, then lost the files because of a computer upgrade and finally stopped working on this project. But recently (after seeing the superyaught kiss of VFracingteam) I restarted this project. Here is a picture of the ship in question: I attempt to design a 1:100 replica of this beauty. However I have nowhere near the required amount of bricks to ever finish it. I also don't expect to be willing to ever spend so much on lego to acquire the necessary bricks (the hull alone requires an estimated 7500 1x2 bricks). Almost the whole hull is curved (unlike modern cruiseships that are more rectangular slabs with a bow tacked onto them) and even the decks are not horizontal, but have a very slight, but noticeable bending radius (in Dutch this is called 'de zeeg van het dek'). My ambition would be to design it such that these beautiful curves stay intact, which means using a bending-brick technique where each brick is rotated just a little bit within the manufacturing tolerances. Here are the first attempts to capture those curves: The red lines are the base of the hull. The white lines are the boarding of the front deck. This is a close up of the front deck together with the drawings I purchased 4 years ago. Because of the bending-brick technique I can't really use LDD and my expectation is that LDCAD is also not very friendly when rotating so many bricks. So I'll have to design parts in LDD (especially the cabins on the decks with all the windows are a nice challenge to design in CAD) and parts will be made in colourvomitted legobricks. Over the coming months bits and pieces will appear if you are interested in them. All advice is appreciated

At first I also thought it would be not too easy, but if you make the holes 2x smaller (and maybe make the selection circle still the same size, so the user can defer that it is not simply a scaled picture) you can make a 2x smaller grid...

Thanks for keeping this calculator up to date. One feature for the gear coupler app I longed for for some time is to have also the possibility to choose a position for a second gear in a 1/2 stud grid. Is that possible?

Interesting little contraption. I didn't know that this RC-part even existed...

I suppose we should move this to the generic contest discussion topic, but I second (or should I say fourth) the extra limits to level the playing field and force more creativity (or at least that's how it works for me )

The mirrors are much better now. I don't think you should change them anymore. In the real car it is a smooth wide base, as soon as you start to stack pieces together the seams in the stacking will detract the eye and destroy the effect you are trying to achieve. Check your PM as well ;)

Looking good so far! Very interesting suspension setups... And very interesting doormechanism. I think you made the right choice for the mini-LA's. I tried to use the damper-pieces in my Mistress as well, but it just takes too much force to compress them... You either get a very local force-path, typically resulting in a somewhat loose door, or you have to route all that force through the door in which case closing the door becomes a pain... Looking forward for more progress pictures

That is 6 #3 red connectors you'll be needing on the doors? I still love this model, but now the colours are smoothing the looks, some details caught my eye: I'm not sure I like the structure below the mirror of the front door. It's very bulky and detracts from the clean lines you have. Can you find a less bulky attachment method? I'm also not sold on the thick doorstyles (the stacks of black 2L liftarms). I'd either remove them (and use a stack 2L axle connectors instead), or maybe use an axle-axle connector at the top instead of #6 connector and make the stack all the way to the top. Finally the curve of the front fender is ending too far behind the wheel. The fender should be a half circle, but the rear quarter is more egg-shaped. I know it can be difficult to fix this without having the front wheel rubbing it when turning, but it would look so cool if you manage to pull that off. Do you plan to convert some pieces to white on the roof still? It could use them in the front corners I think Other than that, it is still an amazing Did you testdrive it already?

That is a spot on explanation, you can add motors until you run out of channels, so this system is extenable to 28 functions using 7 drive motors and one switching motor. I don't have more pictures at the moment. However the switching mechanism is similar to the one I used in my Alpha Romeo 4C Spider (that has a slightly different configuration of the knobwheels). I still haven't abandoned the project entirely (in fact it is still not taken apart). If I really abandon it I will release the LDD files for others to play with. The other option is that I will finish it and update & release the LDD files of the fully functional MOC (I don't phantom making instructions for this monster myself).

The abundant colouring does remind me of the end of the last century. It is nice to see something different than the standard primary colours, however it will not be easy to use these new colours in bigger MOC's since only a few elements in these colours exist. So I actually am a bit disappointed that even more colours are added, I'd rather see more bright green and medium blue parts instead of purple (and to a lesser extent lime) to increase the number of different parts in those colours. The more colours there are, the more likely it becomes that another #3 red connector issue will rise.

A few years ago I designed a remotely operated Liebherr LTM11200. In the superstructure a multiplexer mechanism was used. 4 motors were used to drive 12 functions (1 motor switches to four different states in which the three other motors drove each one function). The concept is easily scaleable. For each motor that you add you get 4 more functions that you can switch remotely. Here is the link to the topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=89963

Looking at the police interceptor: 2x3 small panels in white I don't like the lime accents What is with the yellow axle ends that are used to mount the crossblocks where the frontlights are connected to? Is that a 7L axle in yellow, or is this a 3L axle in bright yellow (like used in Wall-E). Or is this a 7L variant of the 4L tan axle?

Great model Steph (as always) I like the minimalistic design and the playability of the gearbox. The tailrotor looks a bit high?