NathanR

If all you want is set 10022 (passenger cars, no locomotive), then most of the parts look doable. Keep in mind that around 2000, Lego changed the light and dark grey to the more modern light bluish/dark bluish grey. If you swap the entire set to modern greys, then some bricks such as 4181 train door become impossible to obtain (unless you use spray paint). On a quick inspection of set 10022 inventory, the rare parts seem to be the old-style train couplings and magnets (modern style couplings may not fit, I would check with LDD or bricks you have to hand), 30357 round corner plate 3x3 dark grey (4 sets only), 4093a dark grey 6x28 train base (rare even used... try dark bluish grey maybe?). 2878c01 train wheels (common in black, rare in light grey, never made ion light bluish grey I think), 4181 and 4182 train doors, 6936 tap with handles white. Each one of these would set you back several euros. Since each kit includes extra parts to make one of three different coaches, you may not need all the parts to complete a specific coach. Hope this helps!

Nothing so complicated. For the main arms, you pull the blue axles away from the tower, the pivot points force the pink axle (right) to rotate, making the arms turn. The crew access arm is even simpler - no cogs, just manually rotate the axle that the arm is mounted on (green parts): You can also see my take on the damper arm, which relies on mixel ball joints. The real Damper Arm was raised and lowered using a cable running from the pincers at the S5 end to the top of the tower - maybe add a Lego string, or a winch system? It would at least stop the arm falling too far.

Actually, over the last few years there have been some trans-blue minifigure parts, a leg (one of the Chima figures) and an arm (JEK14 clone trooper, Lego Star Wars spin off). Fully transparent minifigures haven't been done because a polycarbonate torso would crack when an arm was inserted, whereas the ABS plastic on normal torsos has a bit of a flex to it so can accept the connection. Two polycarbonate parts together have very high friction between them, so some connections of transparent parts become impossible to pull apart: http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf I do have them (appear in one of the Winter Village sets for an ice rink). As far as I can remember, the part looked physically identical to a regular 8x8 plate. I'm not sure if new moulds are needed for the different plastics, but I imagine the stiffness of the part is a factor in whether it can be made in transparent or not. Most large Lego plates can warp or twist quite a lot, but I expect the polycarbonate could easily crack if not reinforced, which would require a new mould.

Actually in the gameplay video, that looks like a custom part for Luxo Juniors lamp. It's like 15395 but a little bit more stretched out. Maybe a sign that we could get a Luxo Junior poly bag in the future? Also... You get to play as Luxo Junior in the Incredibles game?? They cannot release a Mac version quick enough for me...

Fascinating list! I believe Lego sets can be in developmnent for a couple of years before they hit the shelves, so some of these tie-ins may well be pure coincidence. But maybe there is some insider info being exchanged between Lego and Hollywood. I would imagine this line was done to get some more milage out of the specialised dinosaur body part moulds that were needed for the Jurassic Park 3/Lego Studios cross-over sets. It would also serve as a tie-in to the existing Johnny Thunder adventure on dinosaur island series of set from the year before. The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), The Scorpion King (2002), these were all major hits at the time I believe (I've not actually seen any of them). These films did evoke memories of classic horror movies, Vampire Crypt (Dracula), Scary Laboratory (Frankenstein), Curse of the Pharaoh (The Mummy). Not so much a "coincidence", more a Licensed theme. There was a surge of excitement with NASA attempting to put the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars. Only three rovers had previously gone to Mars, two by the Russians (one crash landed, one landed in a sandstorm and had its electronics fried by an electrostatic discharge, like a mini-lightning bolt) and one by NASA (the toy-car sized Sojourner). From the UK there was also excitement over the Beagle 2 Lander which was travelling with an ESA space probe. Everyone was taking advantage of the Mars launch window that year. The Discovery channel was running loads of shows about the missions, and Lego went into partnership with the TV channel to release tie-in sets. Hence each of these sets came with an information booklet in multiple languages. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers were the centerpiece of the series though, hence a dedicated system scale set (rocket, satellite and rover) and a technic rover. I vaguely remember a life-size lego rover outside Nasa's mission control (I think... All I remember for sure is a photo of it in a Lego club magazine of the time, and the fact that it had to be built around a steel frame to stop it collapsing). No. If I recall, Lego was flirting with bankruptcy at the time and they were trying to break into the action figure market. They had already experimented with Slizers, and Robo-Rider sets, which were interesting precursors to Bionicle. A lot of Lego's own designers hated the concept of Bionicle, feeling it wasn't true Lego, but Bionicle and the Star Wars license basically saved Lego. You'll probably get way more info on this over on the Action figure board, I was never overly interested in the series.

Oh dear, that is definitely a no for me then. My previous laptop was a 2012 MacBook Air and at one point when I was looking for some entertainment, I got some old computer games from the App Store that I figured would run ok, but they all had very high CPU usage and left the fan screaming. Indeed, one demo game I played for ~30 minutes left me with a permanent "service battery" warning, and the laptop battery life was reduced from ~5hrs to ~90 minutes per charge. So I am very very cautious about putting too much strain on my current laptop.

Wow, that is impressive! The instruction generator seems just about perfect. I've never actually tried Stud.io, can it be run without an internet connection? And does it save LDraw files, or use it's own format? Edit: After some googling I have one more question which is really important to have answered before I risk downloading Stud.io. The brickset review (admittedly from over a year ago) said a MacBook Pro would have a heavy CPU load, cooling fans running loudly and battery draining fast... Is this still the case?

@Mrlegonut Hi! I'm not sure what you're trying to do exactly... are you looking to order multiple copies of a custom printed Lego figure? You could try talking to minifigs.me, ask what they would charge for a large run of identical figures. You'd maybe get a discounted rate, but custom printing of Lego bricks is always going to be expensive. Or are you just looking for a way to get about 50 Lego figures? You can buy individual parts via bricklink, such as torsos, legs and heads. The choice is overwhelming, bricklink lists every part ever made, and some are rarer than others. My favourite "designer" type figure came with a speed champions car: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=sc052&#T=I Note that if you know which set a minifigure part comes from, you can sometimes order direct from Lego via their customer service "Lego Bricks and Pieces". Just curious, but what does the minifigs.me figure you ordered look like? I know some professions have stereotypical outfits, e.g. Scientists in lab coats, divers in wet suits, but what does an architect look like?

@roland Hehehe. Indeed it is! But about ten years ago I dabbled with computer game programming language "Dark Basic", even going to some low-level DirectX 9 programming. Manipulating objects in a 3D environment is pretty straightforward for me... Setting up a user interface is going to be the tough part.

Oh, I forgot that the WhatsUpToday model had all the arms move at once. I split the movement up, so the crew access arm moves on it's own. I got rid of all the gearing in the crew access arm, there's just a knob to spin the axle. For the lever: Pulling back the lever on the back of the tower pulls the arms inwards to the tower wall. When the lever is fully pushed in, the arms become "locked" in place at the correct angle to "connect" to the rocket. I thought this beat using cogs, which would allow the service arms to flop around too easily. I think if you want the machinery, you're going to have to just make the machine room big enough to hold it all. I chickened out of putting a winch mechanism in my one. I wasn't sure if the crane would be strong enough to support any load, or if it might pop the crane off the 4x4 turntable.

I am loving those staircases. For my design I didn't punch a hole through each level for the stairway, I was trying to keep parts down and wasn't sure how it would affect the strength of the model. I kind of regret that now, it's a bit late for me to change it. For the gearing, do you need the swing arm control knobs at the back of the top level? For the crew access arm, you could just move the large tan bevel gear above the 2x3 coupling plate and remove the small tan gear. For the main arms, could you drop the control knob to a lower level? Or replace the gearing with a push-pull lever system? That might free up enough space for gears to operate the crane.

Not quite. They both point to the same LDraw library. The problem is that the LDView that comes bundled inside the LPub3D application doesn't work. @Hinckley I think there was a fix for LPub3D on MacOS, it involves updating a png library (as described here), but I'm not familiar with all the software that has to be installed to do this. I'm very nervous of something breaking on my Mac, so I'd prefer not to mess with it. LPub3D does work with the LDGLite renderer out of the box, but every time an image is generated you get a warning dialogue. Also, it seems impossible to rotate the 3D view of the model and have the new view angle update the RotStep command. The older LPub does work fine, and even on my 4k piece model it loaded it (eventually). I think the problem I had was just trying to generate so many images for the part callout *at the same time*. That said, it will be difficult to mask the view, and reposition the model to focus the view on what I want to see... True. Ok, my mind is made up. After I finish with my launch tower, I am taking a break from Lego design to teach myself how to program on the Mac. I've been toying with Swift for a while and I already use C++ for my day job, so it shouldn't be too difficult. [Famous Last Words!]. The only major hurdle will be getting an LDraw brick to load, I've never understood why the bricks are still maintained as text files instead of 3D object files, and I've never managed to figure out how to compute the polygon normals from the vertex data. It will certainly be an interesting experience. [Also, famous last words]

Yeah, this used to happen to me quite a bit. I never figured out exactly why it happened, but it is a bug in the Mac version of the game... I don't think it is ever going to be fixed.

I prefer black for even, grey for odd, and red for the 2L. I remember one technic set from years ago where all axles were black (including a few odd-length ones) and it was really tricky to tell them apart. Once they made the odd axles grey, I ended up being able to tell what length an axle was just by looking at it, without the need to use the 1:1 pictures on the manuals. I appreciate the need to use red and yellow colours for axles, to simplify or clarify the building process. But personally, I'm not a fan, I feel the level of colour coding of parts in recent technic sets make them look a bit like k'nex.

Wow! Got to say I'm impressed with what you've done. I love your design for the staircases, way better than what I came up with (will have to see if I can fit it into my one...). The lower staircases do indeed stick out from the support column. Have you seen this site? http://www.savethelut.org/weeks/. There are tons of schematic drawings showing virtually every aspect of the LUT. For the tapered structure at the base of the tower, have you considered replacing the slope bricks with technic beams? Where the slope bricks get set back, there is only one stud connection. I would expect this to be pretty fragile, considering it has to hold the weight of the tower above. You also use click hinges for some of the struts, you should keep in mind that these only work at 22.5 degree intervals (plus or minus about 2 degrees at most, any other angles may not work properly without damaging the part).

Oh, that's a disappointment. Though from the reference images I got, it looked like the artist was spot on for the upper levels... At least on the plus side, if there are no reference images, no one can say we've built it wrong!

If only it were that simple... It's a launch pad for 21309 Apollo Saturn V. The main platform is one "sub-model", but the first three tower levels are integrated into this platform. So the first problem is having a program that lets you focus the instruction manual viewport on that part of the build. The rest of the tower should be a separate model, but there are many fuel pipes that run from the platform right to the top of the model. To highlight these connections I think I need the model as a complete file. Maybe I can get clever with LPub's ability to show and hide groups of bricks, but I don't think LPub will even be able to parse the file... at least, not with the computer I've got.

Thanks for the info, I was afraid my options would be limited. My model is 56x46 studs and about 1.5m tall (I don't have a brick height), but I'm not sure it would be possible to split the file into smaller chunks due to some very large support struts. Oh well. I guess my next project will be writing a native Mac LDraw editor/instruction manual program. Always wanted to learn Swift...

I'm looking to create an instruction manual for a large (~8000 piece) model, but I only have access to MacOS... which seems terribly neglected when it comes to Lego software. So far I am aware of the following: LDD: Well it produces something that passes for a manual... LPub4: Works fine for small models. I just loaded a 3500 piece model with only one step, the app froze and spawned an LDView process running on 360% cpu as it tried to parse and render one image of the full thing (and I really hope I managed to kill this completely. MacOS runs so many processes I'm never sure what's system or really being run by me). LPub3D: Renderer won't work properly. LDView won't create any images, LDGLite creates images but "crashes" after each render (log says an unset pointer was freed). Trying to update RotStep commands using the built-in 3d viewer has no effect at all. Blueprint: I haven't used this in a long time, I found the interface a little clunky/fiddly. Should I give it a second chance, does it work on large models? Is there any other software for creating instructions that would run natively on a Mac?

Thanks! To be honest, when I started I wasn't so sure I'd be able to pull this off. I've never designed anything so big before... I got the the service box details from the educraft paper model, I discovered someone had posted build photos of one of their kits on a scale model website, and used that as reference: http://www.scalemotorcars.com/forum/large-scale-airplanes/2853-apollo-saturn-rocket-2.html For the fuel pipe routing, I found a useful Japanese website but never actually visited it. I couldn't translate any of the text so I couldn't figure out if it would be a safe site or not, Instead, I got the images by doing a google image search for "site:ranging.exblog.jp". There are good pictures of a model kit build up, and one schematic diagram showing how the pipes are routed on each layer. The Japanese model has some errors around service arms 2-4, so you will have to consult other reference photos of the launch tower. I found various Saturn V launch photos to be quite useful, the glow from the glow from the exhaust flames of the Saturn V lights up the ceilings of various levels, which are usually hidden in shadow. Your design of the angles struts is fantastic, I wish I'd come up with that. However, I think you may have problems with the 1x4 lattice pieces you use for the railing. These parts haven't been made in red since 2005, so you may have trouble buying them in bulk. Only one bricklink seller has more than 50 of them, at about 1.60 EUR each. I'm curious, how are you doing the main lift-shaft support column? Is the opening in each floor for a working elevator, or do you plan a mass of technic bricks mounted on their side?

It's been a while since I posted an update, but I think this model is basically finished!!! I went to town on one final bit of detailing, where I tried to model the pipes suspended from the ceilings of various levels, linking the vertical pipes on the side and back of the tower to the service arms. There was surprisingly little reference material available for this, the pipes don't seem to have been photographed and they don't show up on any of the available schematics. I got lucky when I came across photos of a CAD model for an (apparently abandoned) photoetch model kit of the LUT and a super-detailed papercraft (?) model on a Japanese website. The pipes are mostly built from technic, but in a few tight spots I had to switch to regular system bricks. Some of the 90 degree axle connectors (32014) should be the new 25214 rounded corner brick, but LDD won't allow a 2L axle to slot all the way in (I assume this is possible on the real part...) One regret is that I can't find a way to put in the safety railings on each level. There are basically no red 3mm bars, or even 3mm hoses available. I know the new Technic Bugatti Chiron features a 23L red hose, but I'd need around 17 of them to put a bar on each side and level of the tower. This is a problem because bricklink only has three on sale world-wide, and Lego doesn't have them in stock yet (if they ever will). I also looked at doing a 1x2 grille tile held in a 1x1 vertical clip, but I find too many places where I would need a 1x1 grille tile to plug an unsightly gap. The LUT stands just shy of 8000 pieces. I haven't worked out a cost estimate yet using bricklink, I'm almost afraid to, but I'd expect somewhere around 750 to 800 GBP. As such, this is out of my price range and so the model will be staying a purely digital creation for the foreseeable future. I have been playing on mecabricks, and I will leave you with the first render of the tower (higher-res version on bricksafe):

This has been my go-to guide for a while now, not sure if it has all the same colours listed though: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Colour_Palette Any use?

If you start a brand new file and build a 100-200 piece model from scratch (not importing anything), does the file still take minutes to load? I have found that for large models (>5000 parts), a lot of editing will cause a slight delay in load time. But at worst this has only ever been a few seconds for me. I assume that the LDD xml file can get a little messed up with too much editing, and a complete rebuild is needed to fix it.

Ah, so that was the reason... ok, I'll take it

Huh, I wonder what I said... I'm not sure if I really like this as a title...