Ralph_S

Thanks for being understanding of a different point of view. It's obvious we all look at this from our personal perspective. I can understand that some people find it useful for what they do, but it seems hard to understand for others why I don't. We do different things, like different things and this may mean that different tools are appropriate for what we do. Right now, LDD would have to be lightyears ahead of LDRaw/MLCad in user-friendliness before I might seriously consider using it as a design tool in addition or as a replacement for making a little sketch. But who knows, if I am away from my bricks too long, I might feel like having a non-alcoholic beer I wonder how much of this thread you have read before pitching in, because with the exception of stop-motion animation, everything you mention has already been covered, including the engineer using CAD. Cheers, Ralph

I imagine that most people using LDD do enjoy it, why do it otherwise? And for me using LDD is almost exactly the same as working - luckily, I love my job. Although... there does seem to be a theme running through this thread suggesting that many of us LDD users don't own too many bricks, at least not as many as you. So perhaps if we did, we would skip LDD and get building, after-all that IS the point of Lego. People do plenty of things they don't actually like all that much, simply because they dislike them less than the alternatives. Most of the arguments I've heard for LDD centre on supposed practical advantages rather than on what we as individuals like, while I think that certainly for a hobby the latter is more important. Don't get me wrong, I like my job too, but sitting behind a computer isn't nearly as relaxing as building with actual bricks. I still can't understand why you would make that comment without even using the software? And if memory serves me correctly, weren't you recently working away without your bricks? - In which case wouldn't LDD be the perfect solution? You seem to have missed part of that comment: "I have been using MLCAD and LDraw very extensively in the last few weeks." as well as "It's not so much the software as such. " in one of my later posts. Instead of using real bricks, some of what I actually have been doing is using CAD software. I know there are some differences is the way how LDraw and LDD work, but in essence they do pretty much the same thing. I couldn't and still can't see myself using a CAD program as an intermediate step between thinking of a model and actually building it, even if LDD were a lot easier and friendly than LDraw/ MLCad. If I have to chose between designing things in CAD software (because my bricks are hundreds of kilometers away) and doing something else instead of building, I choose the latter. The only reason why I did use CAD in the last few weeks is because I needed instructions of several of my models, so that a friend of mine in the UK could build multiple copies of each for his aircraft carrier. I recently used the following analogy elsewhere: Comparing using virtual LEGO to building with real bricks is like comparing drinking non-alcoholic beer to drinking the real stuff. I'll add that: You can try to make the non-alcoholic beer taste better, but it still doesn't give you the same buzz. 'nuff said. Ralph

I'm afraid not. They did on an earlier version of this model, but it made the undercarriage very clunky and I considered looks as more important than playability. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. Whenever I start thinking about building something new I always try to make a little mental list of what the difficult bits will be and I think about how to work out how to make them in advance. The roof and doors were definitely on that list. The sides of the roof are tapered and I felt I had to include that taper in my model as well. I did build a Testarossa about two years ago and that experience came in very handy now. It too has the taper, but was a bit easier because its engine cover opens in a different way. I considered setting the doors at an angle, as I did on the Testarossa, but I saw all kinds of issues. It's not just the doors that get wider further aft; the body continues to get wider all the way to the rear wheel. I realised that a combination of SNOT work and half-stud offsets might be able to give small enough steps to look decent and decided that was the way to go. Some parts of the side still look a bit messy, I think, but I am reasonably happy with the result. BTW, after writing my post about illegal moves this morning, I realised that I overlooked an obvious one: rear-view mirrors (1x1 tile clipped attached to a clip. I have also stuck bits of flex tube into headlight brick, which if it isn't considered an illegal move, probably should be Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. I know this isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I like to use a mix of tiles and studded plates to smooth out curves a bit. Thank you. Thank you. That is very flattering. I'm not quite sure which of the things I've done would technically qualify as illegal, but I think this would make a pretty terrible set, however. It looks nice sitting on my shelf and I am very happy with how it turned out, but it is complicated and fragile. I suspect most 8-year-olds wouldn't be happy. Cheers, Ralph

I'm normally not a huge fan of 4-wide trucks, but for this purpose it makes a big difference. It makes the shuttle look a lot bigger. Very nice. Cheers, Ralph

I normally do this sort of thing in a little sketch, but I can see this being useful, certainly if you use it with proper blueprints. Cheers, Ralph

NASA apparently have a new truck to carry the Orbiter: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/round_trip_with_endeavour.html Further towards the bottom of the page you'll also find some spectacular shots of the Orbiter on top the 747 Shuttle Transport Aircraft. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. I posted the first two on Eurobricks a few weeks ago and was going to post the third as well. You beat me to it Thanks. It probably seems like a fairly straightforward aircraft model at a first glance, but out of the aircraft I built for this project it probably was the most difficult. The first version of it had a lot of problems. It took a rebuild of much of the central wing section to sort it out. I think the instructions show that there's some pretty funky stuff going on there Cheers, Ralph

There are some impressive Technic models in this thread, but is that what you are looking for or is it a more Model team style type of vehicle? Shelby Mustang GT 350 (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr I don't have instructions, but I do have an MLCad file of this. Cheers, Ralph

That analogy doesn't work, at least not for the sort of most of us do. It's an entirely different scale in more ways than one. I build little models of cars and planes out of plastic parts that can be easily pulled apart if the idea somehow doesn't work. Not real bridges and buildings out of steel, bricks and concrete and with structural loads that need to be calculated etc. (Studless technic building may be an exception. ) Most of us also don't have customers who want to see a design before they commit money to a project. I can work out most of the complicated bits I do in my mind or with a quick sketch and usually my ideas work straight away when I turn to building the actual model. For the ones where it doesn't, a lot of faffing about is required and I'm pretty sure I would never figure those out if I hadn't tried them with real bricks. The easy bits don't require planning beyond an estimate of what parts I'll need and how big certain things need to be. You have a fair point with your studless technic building. That is getting closer to building, say, a real bridge and from what little Technic building I've done I know it can be a pain to change something -probably part of the reason why I don't really like it. It's not because I look down on LDD or because I feel people who do use it are wasting their time or anything like that, but because I personally don't see the benefit for what I do. Rather than building a physical model based on a virtual model based on a model in my mind, I just go straight from the model in my mind to the physical model. There is an entirely different element to this, and one that I haven't really seen in most of the replies in this thread. I can imagine that some of you actually enjoy the process of sitting behind your computers and fiddling around with CAD software working out how to do things. For me that is too similar to what I do for a living. Cheers, Ralph

I too found several pictures of toy trucks with shuttles, but they too tend to have shuttles that are too small compared to the size of the shuttle. The truck that dr_spock found a picture of is the one I had in mind. How odd. The link is correct, but somehow the page itself links you to that map. It didn't yesterday. This is the site: http://www.lakeregiontrailers.com/ if you click 'low boy trailers' you see several examples. Anyway, I don't know what the things are called, but there's an extra set of wheels between the tractor and the trailer. I'd expect the real trucks to be dwarfed by the shuttle. It is about the size of a small airliner (say a Boeing 737) after all. Cheers, Ralph

That would make one hell of a MOC. Lego is way ahead of us, though.

I've been to one meeting of De Bouwsteen before and had a great time. Unfortunately I can't make it to this one. Cheers, Ralph

This is a pretty neat idea and a nice truck. I'm pretty sure NASA used to have trucks for this, but can't find a picture. The only pictures I did find are a series of Buran (The Russian space shuttle) being carted into a museum. This does show that the shuttle model -even though it is intended for minifigs, is built to a much smaller scale than most of LEGO's city vehicles. This is for understandable reasons, but I reckon that it needs to be at least 50% longer to be proportional to the truck. Short of building yourself a bigger Shuttle or building a much smaller truck, there's really nothing you can do about this. One thing that you might want to consider is adding a few more wheels. Many heavy-duty flatbed trailers have an extra wheel bogey between them and the truck that pulls them. Check out this one for instance. It would make your truck look yet a bit more rugged. Cheers, Ralph

It's not so much the software as such. Perhaps it could be useful for designing details, although I can't imagine it being any quicker or easier than opening a few drawers and physically putting the bricks together. Normally things I work out in my mind work straight away when I put them into bricks and if I can't figure out how to build something beforehand and do need to resort to trial-and-error, I doubt LDD is much more useful than going for the real bricks either or going for some graph paper and a pencil. If the end product is supposed to be a physical model, I have a really hard time seeing what using LDD (or MLCad) adds. Perhaps trying out bricks I don't own is one thing, but, then again, I tend to have the stuff I need and if I don't I'll probably end up buying it anyway. Of course, we all have our own way of doing things and what works for me might not work for you or vice versa. Cheers, Ralph

Interesting topic. In all honesty, I've not used LDD myself. I have been using MLCAD and LDraw very extensively in the last few weeks (to make instructions) and while that process was less painful than I feared and I can understand that people build virtually if they don't have bricks available, but I can't see myself designing anything in a CAD program. I either design the difficult bits of my models in my head, before sticking bricks together, or via trial-and-error with physical bricks. The overall size and dimensions are things I work out using quick sketches on paper. Using a computer as an intermediate step seems unnecessarily awkward and clunky. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. One of my most-prized possessions as a teenager was a 1/18 Bburago die-cast model of an F40. I didn't use it as a reference for building this model (as it's currently stored in a box somewhere), but my memories of it did play a big role in deciding to build an F40 rather than another Ferrari, the opening bits in particular. I always loved how the large rear section hinged up. The relatively small scale, compared to LEGO's Ferrari sets for instance, did cause a few problems. Specifically, I'm not too happy about the windshield/windscreen. It seems too narrow, while the A-pillars seem to wide. I fiddled with that for a few hours, but couldn't come up with a way of making it look nicer. I'm not sure what I'll build next. It's likely going to be another European truck or car, but I haven't decided yet and it may be a while before I have the time and opportunity to build again. It just had to be red. I know that Ferrari GT cars, such as the 456 or 612 Scaglietti, sometimes look great in dark blue, but when I think of F40s I think of red ones. I spent a lot of time making it look like a Ferrari, but I'm sure that it's the colour that makes people who don't know much about particular models of Ferrari still recognise it as one. Cheers, Ralph

At first I wasn't, as we only intended to have a few of them. Ed is building Intrepid as she appeared in early 1945, at which time she only carried a few Hellcats -most had been replaced by Corsairs. However, I've learned a lot making instructions for the Corsair and Helldiver, which means that making instructions takes me far less time now. We're still talking about on the order of ten hours for a roughly 600 part model, but that is a big improvement over how much time it took to do the Corsair. I have been working on instructions for the Hellcat and hope to finish them in a few days time. Cheers, Ralph

My crazy two weeks of building have sadly ended (I have to work again), but after my recovery truck and motor cycle I did manage to crank out one more model. Unlike the other two, which I posted in the Technic/Mindstors/Model Team forum, I decided that this one probably best fits the Racers theme. After all, LEGO had a Ferrari License. One of the truly great Ferraris of all time has to be the Ferrari F40. It isn't pretty, but it did and still does offer blistering performance. I'm not normally a fan of super cars, but back in the 'eighties when I was a teenager, I loved the F40 and after seeing Jeremy Clarkson drive a Ferrari in the last episode of Top Gear, decided it was what I was going to build. Part of the fun for me was making everything I could open. The F40 is basically a street-legal race-car and like most racecars that means large sections of the car's body can be removed or raised to give mechanics decent access to the mechanical bits. One of the things I didn't give my model, at first, was three exhaust pipes. I knew the F40 had them, but chose to keep things simple and just add two. I don't know whether it's the result of high expectations, but several people on flickr commented that it should really have three. So, I gave it a bit more thought and managed to come up with a reasonably straightforward way of making that work. Cheers, Ralph

What a fun MOC. I love the details on the pump and am quite fond of LEGOLand people in general. The designers of the park always manage to somehow give their figures some character, and you've managed to do the same. I'm curious to see what cars (if any) you'll be building for this. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks for the comments. The closest they came in recent times was with the Red Baron, Sopwith Camel and Wright flyer sets several years ago. They were really nice sets with great parts, but on a larger scale. Somehow I doubt they'd make WW-II aircraft though. Thanks you. If you do build one of them, I'd appreciate seeing a picture. I guess this is buried in the 'other themes' sub-forum, which generally doesn't seem to get as much action as, say, town. I too saw Baa Baa Black Sheep as a child. The main reason why I am making these is because a friend of mine (Ed Diment/ Lego Monster) in the UK is building an aircraft carrier. He asked me to design the planes for it. I've built prototypes and am making instructions of a few of the types and he and his wife are building them. I know he is also sending out parts to several other Brickish members so that they too can build Corsairs. Including my prototype we'll have 19. The whole thing should be ready for the Great Western LEGO show in Swindon in the first weekend of October. There are a few fairly rare parts in them (trans clear 2x3 plates seem to be the rarest), but it would be great to see more people building them. The application is called LPub. Making instructions, however, also requires that you play around with the LDraw files themselves. I'm not a very experienced user of any of these programs, but found it fairly easy-going once I got the hang of it. It does require a bit of thought. If you have an existing LDraw file of a largish model, making instructions will be a massive undertaking, because you need to add command to the files telling LPub where a step ought to take place in the instructions. That is obviously easier to do if you think about where to make them as you're making the LDRaw file from scratch, and it's advisable to use a lot of sub-models in small files. I also think it's easier to do it of you've got the physical model in bricks before you make the files. I found doing all this more work than having LPub make the instructions and condensing them into a decent-sized booklet. Ed's wife has built one and found an error in the F4U, by the way. The aft jumper plate in step 4 on page number 15 ought to be deleted! They also found that when printed, even on a decent Laser Printer, the dark blue is very dark, which makes the instructions hard to read. I've already been playing around with making the colour a bit lighter, so that a printed version looks better. I'm also working on instructions for the F6F Hellcat. Those ought to be done in a few days time. I still have the outer wing panels to put into LDraw and then to put them into the instructions, and add a parts list and make the front cover. Cheers, Ralph

That is a very nice feature. I posted a few small pictures of my recent MOCs on there, after reading this thread. Thanks Ralph

What a nice idea! I look forward to seeing what you'll come up with. I think there is a resemblance with the Toyota MR2 and Mazda MX5 (Miata), but the red car reminds me most of a Honda S2000. The white one doesn't really remind of of anything much except perhaps a Chevrolet Camaro (the previous model; not the current one). Since these aren't part of any license like the Ferrari or Lamborghini license, the designers are likely to have tried not to make them look too much like a particular brand or model of car because they don't. I remember reading an article in brick journal about the hot rod garage a couple of years ago where this subject was raised. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks for all the comments. Thanks. In terms of techniques used it probably is the best, but I think the trike is the most fun of the lot. Thank you. the colour scheme made this build a lot more difficult, but also more fun. Thank you. Not what you want to see in your rear-view mirror. HMMM. I have been thinking about building another European truck. I do have something else in mind for this motorcycle, but it is a nice suggestion worth thinking about. The colour of the stripes on the real cars is probably somewhere between LEGO orange and red and I happened to have more small plates in orange available at the time. It's as simple as that. I agree that the polceman is a bit faceless, but this still seemed the nicest solution. I couldn't really think of another way of making a decent helmet. Perhaps I should have bought a black visor to go with it instead of the trans clear one. Thanks. Ever since I've moved back to the Netherlands I've been having a bit of a Dutch theme with my MOCs. Being on the lookout for new ideas makes it much more fun to travel through the country. Cheers, Ralph