Ralph_S

Even before I built my Scania recovery truck a few months ago, I'd been thinking about building more European trucks. Being a Dutchman, a DAF was near the top of my list (DAFs are made in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands). My truck represents a DAF XF105, the current top of the range for this manufacturer. DAF XF105 (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr My truck is closely based on a real truck used by a Dutch company called Van der Veld. I'd been searching for an interesting colour scheme for a DAF for a while when I came across this one. The cab is built using LEGO dark red and dark tan. This shot also shows the refrigeration unit built into the front of the container DAF XF105 (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Containers often have corrugated sides. Refrigerated containers also don't have flat sides, but the profiling usually isn't as strong. I did feel that it was important to do something to the sides of my model to break up the flatness of it all. I'm not completely happy with how the 7-pointed star in the MAERSK logo turned out. It's not quite pointy enough and should be a bit bigger, but at least all the cheese slopes are properly connected (most of the white ones are two studs wide and connected behind the logo). DAF XF105 (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The stripes on the tractor unit were a bit of a puzzle, but not the hardest part by far. That honour is reserved for the arrangement of the radiator grille, the headlights and the lower parts of the doors. It may not be immediately obvious, but I used a lot of parts mounted on their sides or vertically and a lot of half-stud offsets. DAF XF105 (5) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The truck has a number of working features. The doors on the cab and container open and the tilt cab can actually tilt, but the battery on my camera ran out before I could take pictures of that. The container sits on a separate chassis, which is designed to carry different lengths of container and consequently can be changed in length. I'll get back to taking more pictures two weeks from now, when I am again temporarily re-united with my LEGO collection.

I agree with Kyphur that the tyres look a tad small compared to the size of the vehicle. I know LEGO use these tyres for anything from a regular sedan to trucks, but to me they look odd on something this big. Rog is right too. If you'd raise the body (including the mudguards) by at least on plate, it would look more like an SUV. I tend to build minifig scale vehicles a bit smaller than this including a Chevy Suburban. I'd still call it six wide, though, but I include the mudguards. I'd call yours seven studs wide). Because it's smaller, the wheels look about right and it does have bigger gap between the top of the tyre and the mudguard. It doesn't seat 3 minifigs , however, although I could probably rework it to fit two. Building minifig scale vehicles that can seat multiple figures generally requires compromises in terms of scale and shape that I am not willing to make. Cheers, Ralph

I think you've hit the nail on the head. I don't know how many I have broken, but a lot and those that didn't break completely often have a few small teeth missing. One of the uses DLuders didn't cover was connecting two axles at a different angle, as shown here (one of my favourite technic sets as a child): In that role they were replaced by angle connectors, which are a lot harder to break! I still use the old parts quite regularly though, and in uses where I can't easily see an alternative. Check out the nosegear on my Flanker, for instance. Su-27 Flanker_hres by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

I think the black farm SUV is much too big. It's the width of a truck! So, this is much better IMO. Many SUVs aren't all that much wider than regular cars, so this goes very well with most other cars in the LEGO city theme, including the fire fighting pick up truck from one or two years ago and the Coast Guard 4WD. Nicely done. Also, even though the body may be four studs wide, if you include the mudguards it's five and including the wheels its six studs wide! Cheers, Ralph

Getting together sometime sounds like fun. I did join De Bouwsteen earlier this year, but so far have only made it to one meeting. It's not just for looks in this case. The deck had to be tiled in order to be able to move the planes across it easily. No. We only have five or six of them. I built the prototype, built a copy together with Ed when he came over to the Netherlands earlier this year and he used that copy as an example for building the rest. So, we didn't need instructions for it. Cheers, Ralph

Did somebody ask for a lime green Miura? Lamborghini Miura (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Lamborghini Miura (7) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Been there, done that! I built it almost two years ago. At the time I didn't yet have any curved slopes in lime green (power miners was only just out). I should probably have a go at pimping it a bit. The larger scale model built by Mattyy 666 is really nice, by the way. It captures the look of the real car really well and I love that it has the pup-up headlights. I couldn't quite manage that on the scale of my model. Cheers, Ralph

Hi Teddy, I have built a lot of vehicles intended for minifigs. I settled on 1/45 for those a few years ago. It's a scale that is pretty close to most of the vehicles in LEGO's city sets, which means that in a collaborative display my vehicles and the sets look OK side-by-side. Trains are not really my thing. I have built one train in the last 20 years. Since it's a modern train the wheels are hardly visible and I didn't take the wheel diameter into account when choosing the scale. I chose 1/45 for that as well. The carriages ended up being 8 studs wide and roughly 60 studs long. I have no intention of running it on a track or through corners, so that length isn't a problem. I know train builders often selectively compress their models, in length in particular, but I have no experience doing that myself. Cheers, Ralph edit: fixed link

Thanks. Indeed, whether you use CAD or real bricks doesn't make much of a difference in how much fun it is to figure out how to build a particular shape. The process is similar. I suppose for me that is the most positive thing to come out of this. I enjoyed using CAD to build, despite the drawbacks I mentioned. I also don't think it makes much of a difference whether you use LDD or ML-CAD. I did have LDD 3 on my computer for a bit to see what that's like, in particular to see whether I could use it to make printed instructions. I don't think it is very suitable for that, but that's besides the point. The building experience looks similar to me with the exception of course that it actually models how the bricks go together, which probably makes some things a bit easier. ML-CAD can be a bit fiddly. I've never owned a Fiat Panda, but I have been building several normal cars lately, as opposed to classic cars or sports cars. The reason for this is twofold. Building a recognisable version of a car that in real life is not particularly distinctive in many ways is a lot harder than building a vehicle that is already very recognisable, like a Hummer for instance. So, it poses an extra challenge. The second reason is that I am thinking of combining several of my vehicles in a diorama -most likely of a motorway service station or part of a city centre- and since those normally aren't filled with classic cars I need some normal vehicles for that. You're welcome. I'm glad you like it. Cheers, Ralph

All right, here's a picture of me demonstrating the wing fold mechanism of my Avenger model during a talk Ed Diment and I gave at the Great Western LEGO show. IMG_0654 by GeekyTom, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

I'm sorry. I didn't realise that. Somebody on gizmodo remarked that 1/40 isn't even a particularly large scale. He's right in a sense. A 1/40 car model isn't much larger than most Matchbox type toy cars. However, if you buy model kits of aircraft carriers, they tend to be scaled 1/700 or 1/350, for an obvious reason! I don't fancy making 1/350 scale LEGO aircraft though Cheers, Ralph

A few months ago some of us had a fairly heated discussion about the benefits of using digital building (LDD specifically) as a design tool. I didn't really see the point of using it as a design tool. I normally go from pictures, a model in my mind and a perhaps a picture to building my models in real bricks and to me using CAD seemed like massive overkill and even cumbersome/clunky for most of the things I do. I'm not afraid to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, so I decided to have a crack at it. (Actually, I live a few hundred km away from my LEGO collection for much of the week, so if I want to build anything I really have no other choice than to build digitally.) I thought I'd share my recent experience and tell you whether I've changed my mind. It's not my intention to start an LDD vs ML-CAD discussion (they are fruitless), but I will give the reasons why I chose to use ML-CAD and LDraw rather than LDD. I've recently used ML-CAD fairly extensively (to make printed instructions for MOCs, something at which LDD sucks), so I already know it reasonably well. This made it the obvious choice now as well. I also tend to use parts that aren't available in LDD -old style hinges in particular. It's not a matter of using LDD in Universe mode or not; the parts are simply not there because they are too old. So, now that this is out of the way, let's get to the MOC in question. AS with many of my recent MOCs it's a car. I chose to go for a fairly straightforward model: a Fiat Panda. For those of you from outside Europe, it's a small city car built in Poland. It's a best-seller for Fiat, with more than 1.5 million having been produced since 2003. Since it's a model of a real car, the shape is pretty much determined at the start. I did make a little drawing to work out the dimensions and then went to work with ML-CAD. Fiat Panda work in progress by Mad physicist, on Flickr I always build my car models from the outside in. The outside needs to look like the real car. The inside is primarily there to hold the outside together, although I do like to have a proper interior (with seats and a steering wheel, for instance) and some other details such as something that looks like an engine. I had LDView make a render when it first started to look somewhat like a Panda. There still were some exterior parts missing at this point, obviously. The front, the bonnet (hood) and part of the rear hatch and bumper (which you can't really see in this image). I did have some ideas on how to make the front, but I simply hadn't implemented them yet. The model had no interior whatsoever. Fiat Panda design by Mad physicist, on Flickr I was quite happy with the progress and continued with the model for a while, adding the front and rear and the bonnet, pretty much completing the outside. The model didn't yet include a number of connections, for the SNOT work around the front wheels and the headlights, for instance, but I did have an idea in mind on how to do them. I did consider also making an inside, but I soon realised that this was getting exceedingly complicated. Yes, I could move things out of the way to have some of view of the inside, but working out whether all the parts and things I wanted gave me a headache. Obviously I can rotate the model, but in my opinion this is where CAD falls very much short of building with real bricks. More experience may make this easier, but this sort of thing is a thousand times easier to do with a real model in front of you. You could argue that I should change the way I design my models, by starting with the inside and working out, but I have some doubts I'd end up with an outside that looks like the real car much unless I'd be willing to keep making changes to the inside as I kept adding bits to the outside. Figuring I'd work out the interior when I did have a physical model, I took a print-out of the model home in a weekend and got out the bricks. This is where the design process using CAD shines. If you don't have the bricks in your collection, you know exactly what to buy. In my case, I have a fairly good idea how many of particular parts I have (or at least, I know I have plenty of them even if I don't know the actual number) and kept that in mind during the design. When I started, I built this thing in less than an hour, without having to think much, since most of the thinking required to get to this point after all had already been done. Fiat Panda (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Fiat Panda (5) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Once the outside was pretty much all there, fixing the interior and building the structure didn't take much time either, perhaps two more hours. Then I ground to a halt. Even though I was quite happy looking at screenshots/ renders of the digital model, when I had the brick-built model sitting in front of me I didn't like it much. It had some things I was happy about, but it didn't really look like a Fiat Panda to me. Being able to take a proper look at it in 3D made me realise I needed to make changes. So, more fiddling ensued. It might not look very different and some of the changes are subtle, but they were quite a bit of work and overall do make the model look a lot more like the real car. The real Panda has a distinctive curve in the top of the side windows. Even though my CAD model was more-or-less the proper height, it didn't look right. I increased the height of the roof on the brick-built model to emphasise the curve. One thing I got wrong on the original design was the shape of the front fender panels. They have a decided inward step that lies in line with the car's belt-line. I recreated it using half-stud offsets. Fiat Panda (4) by Mad physicist, on Flickr I used a standard windscreen for the rear hatch in the original design, but when looking at the LEGO version I soon realised that this was not quite steep enough. I came up with the design you see here instead, which uses no fewer than four transparent headlight bricks and 1x2 transparent tiles (still rare parts). All in all I'm happy with the resulting car, but I have decidedly mixed feelings about whether or not CAD made this process easier. Obviously, I if you don't have bricks available it is a useful tool and I quite enjoyed using it -more than I imagined I would. However, going from something that, looking at it now, really wasn't quite there yet to a LEGO car that I am happy about was something I was only able to do by fiddling with real bricks and by being able to look at the shape properly in three dimensions. It may take a while yet before I am permanently reunited with my LEGO collection, so I will probably dabble with CAD a bit more. As I gain more experience I may yet change my mind. However, when I do have real bricks available, I don't think I would take the step to use CAD in the design process. Cheers, Ralph

Eurobricks Member: Ralph_S Town/City name: Brickston Borough Topic Link: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=38967 Link: I had to edit one of my pictures to make it 800x600, but you can find it here: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/RalphS/minifigscale/Brickston/brickston.jpg It's really just a street with buildings right now, rather than a city, but I have plans for a few additions in the future. All of the buildings, vehicles, street elements are still in one piece, but currently stored in boxes. It is completely modular, because I intended to take it to public LEGO events. However, so far the only time I had the whole thing set up was when I took the pictures. Cheers, Ralph

We've done other collaborative projects in the past, back when I still was living in the UK. Now that I'm back in the Netherlands collaborative projects require a different way of working. He'd seen my FM1 Hellcat and liked it, so when we started discussing him building an aircraft carrier, I suppose it seemed natural that I'd design the planes and make instructions for them. I was happy to be able to contribute to this project. It takes a special kind of crazy to do that. I didn't build the ship, obviously, but the five different designs were already a lot of work. The 42 aircraft built for this required about 30,000 parts alone. Hi Teddy. I indeed know about HMS Victory. I also know how writing PhD thesis can interfere with hobbies. I've been there. I started a new job as an assistant professor about five months ago and also have virtually no time left to do any building. I normally build my my models for minifigs slightly smaller. Most of my city stuff is 1/45 and the few 'minifig scale' planes I built that weren't for this project are about 1/43. Ed's main reasons for choosing 1/40 are that the Yamato built by JunLego is 1/40 as well and people back in the 'forties were smaller than they are now, on average . For my aircraft it worked out quite well. The difference between 1/40 and 1/43 might not seem like much, but space inside for a figure in these planes really is at a premium and being able to make a canopy one plate taller or half a brick wider really helped with some of them. I have a collection that is large enough to build some pretty big things, but I couldn't work on the same project for months at a time without going potty, so I don't build big ships. Most of the big things that I've done are also really collections of multiple smaller MOCs built as separate projects. A scale of 1/40 seems very reasonable. The inside of the ship is mostly filled with a techic beam structure to give the modules that the hull consists of sufficient strength to be able to lift them relatively easily. That doesn't leave much room for a detailed interior. It does have a fully-built hangar deck under the flight deck, however. You can see it here (after the arrival of a special guest STEAM_2010_Day_2_060 by Doctor Sinister, on Flickr Apparently it's impossible to hang out with British AFOLs without the Doctor showing up . Anyway, it makes for a nice picture! Cheers, Ralph

It's a bit dubious whether it actually is the biggest LEGO ship ever built, but I think it is the biggest built by AFOLs using their own LEGO-collection. The ship has been making the rounds on the internet, with a blog post on The Brothers Brick and Gizmodo It's also been posted on EB before, as I just found out. The real ship was about 266 m long, which at a scale of 1/40 means the model is about 830 studs. It's bigger than the Harry S. Truman built by Malle Hawking (even though that is also intended for minifigs and a real Nimitz class carrier is considerably longer than an Essex class carrier such as Intrepid), or the fantastic Yamato by JunLego. Ed started it about 9 months ago, after taking apart his model of HMS Hood. I was one of the people who tried to convince him to build an aircraft carrier rather than yet another battleship and in return he asked me to design the aircraft to go on it. He built the ship together with his wife Annie. She also built most of the planes using instructions I made. I posted several topics here on eurobricks about the aircraft while I was working on them and you can download instructions for some of them. The ship looks great in the pictures, but they still don't quite do it justice. We hadn't seen the whole thing together, with all the planes and guns until we finished setting it up at the Great Western LEGO Show and we were pretty much gobsmacked by it. I've spent much of my weekend walking circles around it and answering hundreds of questions by the public, all with a big happy grin on my face I'm sure. I can also tell you it's a heavy piece of kit. It is modular so that it can be moved in a van. I loaded it with Ed on Friday morning before the show and unloaded it together with him on Sunday evening after we got back. Fortunately at the event itself there were a lot of people who helped us out with the heavy lifting. Both of us were absolutely knackered afterwards. I still intend to write a blog post about the thing and the event on my own blog, but have been insanely busy at work since I came back from the UK. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. I try Thank you. It would be no fun if it wouldn't be flush when closed. In fact, that really was the whole point. Cheers, Ralph

Hi Kaz, Welcome to EB. I am not particularly active on brickshelf any more and hadn't seen you vehicles. However, your post got me interested, so I took a look and found your folder. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=274867 I think your LEGO models will probably interest EB's readers more than pictures of the real vehicles. Cheers, Ralph

Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner. I didn't see it sooner. Yes it does. Courier van (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

There isn't really all that much to go on yet, but I do like what I see so far I built an LAFD E350 ambulance several years ago (also 12 studs wide) and still have pictures of it on brickshelf. The picture quality isn't great, but the pictures may still be useful. I also had a model of a slightly larger E450 Ambulance. Cheers, Ralph

Excellent. I've been using the older version ever since you released it, and so far it has resulted in two models. The most recent is my Toyota Prius. prius grid by Mad physicist, on Flickr Anyway, here is the result Toyota Prius (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr I also used it for my VW Passat. I currently have very little time to do any building, but I am doing some design work for a few new projects and griddy is coming in very handy for those too. I shall definitely be downloading the new version! Cheers, Ralph

Thanks for your comments. they are much appreciated. I have seen many fancy ways of making sliding doors, but I'd like to think that simple ideas are often the best Cheers, Ralph

I'm not a train builder, normally, but I did build a train a while ago and struggled with this question. Cars in my world are 5/6 studs wide, trucks are generally 7 studs wide (including the mudguards and tyres) and trains ought to be slightly wider than trucks, which makes 8-wide just about perfect. However, I'm a bit surprised that nobody so far has mentioned what I see is the biggest problem with 8-wide trains. It has nothing to do with trackside buildings or what is easier. It has to do with curves. If you build an 8-wide train, you'll end up with fairly long carriages. Mine are about 50 studs long. This creates problems on standard curves, because the radius of curvature of the standard curves is much too small compared to the length of the carriages. An 8-wide training running can look terrible. If you want the train to look decent in a curve you need shorter carriages, in which case it makes sense for them to be narrower as well, which makes 6 studs wide more attractive. (The alternative is to use flexible curves to create larger radius curves.) My train was only supposed to sit still on a viaduct that forms the backdrop of my city display, so curves weren't an issue. That is why I did choose to go for 8-wide. If I would want to run it on a track, however, I would have had to make it narrower. Cheers, Ralph

I always like the reaction I get from people when I demonstrate one of these doors at events. They can't work out out how it works from pictures, but when they see it in action, it's usually immediately clear and they are surprised at how simple it is. Because I keep getting questions about how I make the sliding doors, I decided to give them their own topic. Cheers, Ralph

In a thread on Metroid's excellent four wide VW vans, he has been getting questions about the technique he used to create sliding doors. It's a particularly nice application of an idea I've used many years and that I also keep getting questions about whenever I produce a new vehicle that uses it (which is why I decided to give it its own thread). MetroiD has managed to figure it out, but I'll post the pictures here. The door has two little arms attached to its front, the bottom one with a 1x1 plate that sticks out below and the top one with a 1x1 tile on top. sliding door (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The plate slides through an L-shaped groove on the bottom of the van and the tile on top slides through a matching L-shaped groove in the roof. sliding door (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr To open the door you first slide it out one stud (moving the 1x1 plate and tile along the short arm of the L). sliding door by Mad physicist, on Flickr Then you can slide the door aft. sliding door (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr It's a little three-dimensional puzzle, but the construction is nothing particularly complicated once you've figured out how to do it! There is no fancy SNOT work. Just tiles and plate. I've been using it for years. The pictures above were of my 6-wide Courier van Courier van (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr I've also used it on several five-wide vehicles (including a Volkswagen) and this UK police van. Police van (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The doors work best when they are fairly small. On larger vehicles it becomes easier to twist the door from its mountings. Still, with a few modifications the idea can be applied to larger doors as well. I used it for my much larger ambulance van as well, where the door gets extra support when open by a ridge (of half a stud wide) along the side of the vehicle. Dutch Ambulance (9) by Mad physicist, on Flickr I've used it on several helicopters as well, including my Sea King. Here I've used a version that pops out half a stud. UH-3H Sea King (13) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

There is already a thread about the event. I've been there the previous three years and even though I am no longer in the UK, I will be going this year as well. USS Intrepid is being built by a friend of mine (Lego Monster) and I've designed all the aircraft. Mass production was done by Lego Monster and his wife based on instructions I made for them. All in all we'll have about 50 planes. The planes and the ship are designed for minifigs, so I wouldn't characterise them as 'Model Team'. I'm taking my four prototype aircraft along, as well as a number of minifig scale cars for another display. The dragster race is a very nice idea and I've seen pictures of a few of the contraptions members of Brickish are working on. I myself haven't had the time/opportunity to bodge something together, I'm not much of a Technic builder anyway, and my suitcase is already going to be pretty full. Cheers, Ralph

Add a first glance I thought this was far bigger than it is. Impressive detail for such a small vehicle. I'd love to see you build a pit crew, as lightningtiger suggested. Cheers, Ralph