Ralph_S

I have no idea what forum this is supposed to go into, but town seems fitting despite there not being a minifig involved. It's a little something I whipped together this morning. It's for one of the monthly build challenges held by LUGNuts, the club for LEGO car enthusiasts. This month's challenge is called Alternate fuels. Rather than some fancy high tech electric car or something powered by, oh, I don't know, unobtanium, my first thought was old-fashioned pedal power -being Dutch and all ;-) Cyclist (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The bicycle was inspired by bicycles used in LEGOland parks, although mine is marginally smaller. I've had a few bicycle models much like this for a few years, but in order to add a cyclist I had to make a few modifications. I also added trans clear wheels, which give a much better impression of a bicycle wheel than solid pulley wheels, and an elastic band representing the bicycle chain. Cyclist (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

I like the yellow stripe you made with stepped plate, but overall it looks a bit unfinished. A few pictures from other angles wouldn't be out of place either. Cheers, Ralph

I have a mental list of the various things I want to build and buy parts and sets with that list in mind, usually long before I start building. There is all kinds of stuff on that list. Ideas can come from any direction. I moved to the Netherlands about two years ago, after having lived in the UK for a few years. Living in the UK lead to me building a British high street with shops, restaurants and houses, as well as a train and a whole range of cars. Since I returned to the Netherlands, I've been building a collection of Dutch emergence response vehicles -a police car, ambulance and fire engine, as well as a Dutch police helicopter. When I got a new job, working for the defense department, I built a Royal Netherlands Navy helicopter and hope to add a matching air force helicopter too fairly soon. As is clear from the examples, I tend to come up with themes for myself or make models I build part of a larger project. At the moment I am thinking of building my own little part of an American city, prompted by people on flickr suggesting I build a fire station to house a series of US fire engines that I've built. It'll incorporate various other things I've built over the years, such as a US style diner, but I have a lot of ideas for other things that may go well with it. I already built a train for it and intend to build a brownstone office building. Even if it ultimately doesn't pan out, I'll have fun just thinking about it or just building little things. A massive source of inspiration has been joining a LEGO users group. I would probably never have started building the British high street if it weren't for a contest organised by The Brickish Association when I lived in the UK. It lead to several members, including me, building a display for a public show that consisted of a long street with cafe corner compatible buildings. I don't know whether there's a LUG near you, but if there is, I'd suggest that you check them out.

I don't think using it on transparent parts is a much of a problem. It is a polishing agent after all, so if used with care should give you a smooth finish. In fact, I've used it in the past to fix up scratched and dull canopy parts. Cheers, Ralph

This probably depends very much on the person, but I don't really see LEGO as a child's toy. Of course, I know that it was designed to be a child's toy and I certainly used to play with mine as a child. However, I don't think many AFOLs use it in the same way as children would. For me it's a model building medium. If I would have more patience and wouldn't suck at painting, I'd probably build plastic model kits. I don't see it as a slippery slope at all. As long as it doesn't actually keeps you from your responsibilities such as your job or being available for your significant others or keeps you from having a social life, there's no problem. In fact, I'm convinced that building with LEGO can be such a good way to relax, that it actually helps me do my job better! Cheers, Ralph

For me it actually helped with my social life. I moved to the UK in 2006 for work. I'm not much of a pubcrawler and not into sports either and at first I had a hard time getting to know people outside of work. I joined the Brickish Association, and found that several of their members lived in my area. We used to get together now and then and I also traveled to many different paces in the UK with others to display LEGO models to the public. I made a lot of friends and had a great time, all through LEGO. It may not help me find the future Mrs. S, but that wasn't what I was looking for to start with. I don't see what I build as creating a fantasy world or trying to find a refuge. The city stuff I build is a representation of the world around me, not a fantasy world I'd like to live in. My job tends to be draining at times and building stuff helps me relax by being creative. As far as finances go, perhaps collectors are more susceptible to their spending getting out of control, because they are constantly looking to add to their collections, with time to buy new stuff, money and space being the constraints. I buy LEGO sets mainly for the parts and I can buy them a lot faster than I can actually build new stuff! I could easily spend far more on LEGO than I do, but I don't. I don't see any harm in spending money and time on LEGO as long as it is in moderation. Cheers, Ralph

I think I know the one you mean. If I'm right, it's one of the original LEGO idea books and I still have a (very battered) copy of it myself from when I was a child. There are scans of it on peeron Cheers, Ralph

I've heard about these from US stores, but I've never seen them in the UK or Germany. Admittedly, it's been more than a year since I've been in either a UK or German LEGo store. Sorry, Ralph

Here's me, at Brickfair a few weeks ago. BrickFair 2011 by Legosim, on Flickr I had a ball at the event and I won an award, which goes a long way toward explaining the big smile on my face. Cheers, Ralph

I cab relate to this. I still manage to build a new model a month, on average (usually for he monthly LUGNuts build challenge on flickr), but besides that I have no time, which is probably more than many people manage, but I've got many more ideas. I see so many different people doing cool stuff and would love to do some of it myself, but at the moment can only manage a few hours of building during the weekend. Work is sapping most of my time and energy at the moment. I don't build sets I buy, but there are some that I would like to put together eventually. I've had a Taj Mahal and a Grand Carousel sitting in their boxes for almost two years now and still haven't gotten around to building them. I also have about a growing backlog (about a dozen) of other sets I bought for the parts and a few partially disassembled MOCs sitting around that I haven't had time to part out/ sort yet. Cheers, Ralph

Indeed. Mine came from 314, which is the police boat and it indeed had two of these figures. I have a blue 'armless' torso as well, but that probably was my sister's and came into my possession when she passed her LEGO to me when I was eight. Bless My first classic space man was definitely white. Cheers, Ralph

I get asked similar questions in comments on flickr on a regular basis. A couple of things: -You should be patient. I've seen people go from being collectors to proficient and prolific builders in a few years time, but they did it by trying, trying and keeping trying. The internet, other people's MOCs and builder's guides/instructions may serve as examples, but ultimately it's up to you to make it all come together and no matter how many books you read or pictures you view, practice makes perfect. I've been building as long as I remember and was coming up with all kinds of things and techniques that I still use long before there was an on-line LEGO building community. I didn't learn how to build by copying others, but by doing it myself and doing lots of it. -One other thing that I think is important is that you shouldn't get too hung up on techniques. Builder's guides and advanced techniques can be helpful to get some ideas for building a particular feature of whatever it is that you're building, but ultimately I think that the overall look of the end result is far more important for the impact that a model has than the techniques used to get it. There are awesome models built the 'old-fashioned' studs up way and crap models built using some of the fanciest techniques in the book. -There is also not a single best way of doing things. We're all different people and a strategy that works for me may not work for you. Furthermore, I think that how you go about building a model very much depends on what sort of thing you're trying to build. The approach of fiddling with some parts until you end up with something that looks interesting and then deciding where it goes may work well for fictional models of, say, some space fighter, but if you want to build a model of an existing jet fighter, for instance, some planning in advance might be useful. I suppose that looking at a particular part and coming to the realisation that it might be perfect for a particular use and starting from that may be a good idea in some cases, but it's not how I do things. I almost always have something in particular in mind and work out what parts to use from there. Rather than writing everything from scratch, I'll refer you to a blog post on building aircraft I wrote more than a year ago. They're some of the most complicated things I do and I personally find that what works for them works for pretty much anything else I build too. Cheers, Ralph

LEGO themselves had a guide describing the standard on their website, but they took it down. I do remember a few of the rules though. -They need to be on a baseplate/ a combination of baseplates that is a multiple of 16 studs wide and that is 32 studs deep. -The sidewalk/pavement needs to be 7-9 studs deep, with a light blueish grey kerb. -The technic bricks in the sides, for connecting them, need to sit with the centre of their holes at 10 studs from the front and back edges of the plate. -the recommended height per floor is 7-9 bricks. Cheers, Ralph

I realise that the figure I posted isn't the figure 22kane intended, but it is the first figure that I had. Sorry for the confusion. If minifigures are only the ones with arms and whatnot, I'm lost, because I'm sure I got several of the early ones 1978(?), including a white classic space figure. Cheers, Ralph

I don't know set numbers by heart, so I looked up the first set that I remember having with a minifigure. It's 314, and this is the figure in question. No face, no arms, no moveable legs. Cheers, Ralph

It's hard enough to build either a decent-looking car transporter or a properly driving RC truck, certainly on this relatively small scale. That you managed to combine the two is mind-blowing. Great looks and impressive functionality, Lasse. Cheers, Ralph

Perhaps kids don't use cheese slopes as much because they haven't quite figure out what a useful part it actually is. If you've only just reached the stage where you can build something that looks vaguely like, say, a car built out of larger bits in different colours, and have struggled to find a place for the wheels, adding a little cheese slope here and there is the least of your worries. I too like a somewhat classic look and I don't use cheese slopes for the sake of it, but they do allow me to build shapes that would be all but impossible to pull off without them. I think I've got two nice examples in the same picture [ It's a Maersk Maersk world by Mad physicist, on Flickr] These are two models built two very different scales and both use a lot of cheese slopes, for instance, 50 medium blue ones on the train and and more than 70 dark red ones on the truck. That's a lot of cheese. Now, imagine either of them without cheese slopes... Cheers, Ralph

What is your question, actually? How to go about building one? Cheers, Ralph

To me sets are parts packs and cheese slopes are useful parts. I've bought sets specifically to get my hands on cheese slopes in particular colours, so as far as I am concerned there is no such thing as too many cheese slopes in a set. I've got models where I've used hundreds and very few models that have none. I like both the 1x1 and the newer 1x2 variety. In my MOCs there aren't many uses of the 1x2 cheese slope where they can't be replaced with 2 1x1 cheese slopes. I have quite a few MOC where replacing 1x1 slopes with 1x2 is practically impossible (such as my SWAT van already mentioned by Stank) and various things I've built that are an odd number of studs wide, for instance. So, if I'd have to choose between only 1x1 cheese slopes and 1x2 cheese slopes existing, I'd opt for the former. However, the 1x2 variety does have its uses. I couldn't have done the letters on my Maersk train if 1x2s didn't exist, or at least, I couldn't actually have connected everything. (The upper black cheese slope in the letter K is double, so that I could fix it to a support structure inside). I've also used cheese slopes in combination with half-stud offsets, for instance on the cowl flaps on my He-219, and in those situations being able to attach a 1x2 cheese slope to a single stud can be very useful. Cheese, ... I mean, cheers! Ralph

Which is better probably depends on what you want to do with it. I gave LDD a brief spin a while ago and I think it's easier to use than MLCad. However, I use a lot of old parts that are no longer in production in my models and LDD (obviously) doesn't do those. Also, one of the reasons why I use CAD in the first place is to make instructions. LPUB (which works with LDRAW) is brilliant at this. There's no LDD equivalent. The big drawback to MLCad that I see is that the learning curve is pretty steep, but once you've got the hang of it (as you apparently do) there's no reason that I see why you should switch. Cheers, Ralph

That sounds like the 12x6 wedge plate I mentioned earlier. It should be a perfect match for the 3x2 wedge bricks. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. I wanted to raise the bar a bit compared to my old model. It wasn't bad, but the Spyder I built based on it looked a bit bland among my other cars. I guess I learned a few new things over the years. As it was I figured I'd take it apart soon after taking pictures for the challenge. After the rebuild, however, it's one of the nicer cars in my collection and I gave it a place on one of the shelves in my lounge. Thanks. She doesn't have full legs I'm afraid. There was just no room for that. The idea of building a figure with the streaming hair was the first thing that came to mind when I read that the challenge was for convertibles. All I needed was to build a car for it Cheers, Ralph

OK. Sorry. This seemed completely obvious to me by just looking at them, but indeed, the parts descriptions are misleading. The 3x2 wedge plate has a right-angled triangle with sides 1 and 3, while the 6x3 wedge plate has a right angled triangle with sides 2 and 6 and these are similar triangles. Even the 12x6 wedge plate has the same angle, because it makes a 3 x 9 triangle. Cheers, Ralph

A 2x3 wedge plate is simply 1/3 of the height of a 2x3 wedge brick, and similarly, a 2x4 wedge plate is simply 1/3 of the height of a 2x4 wedge brick. The diagonal of a 3x6 wedge plate is the same as two 2x3 wedge plates adjacent to each other. I made a little picture illustrating this: Cheers, Ralph

Somebody has not been paying attention in maths class The 6x3 wedge plates have the same angle as the 3x2 bricks (as do 3x2 wedge plates obviously). Similarly, 2x4 wedge plates give the same angle as 2x4 bricks. Cheers, Ralph