NathanR

Alternate builds on the back of the box was a standard feature of all Lego sets, at least in the 1990s. It was a neat way of suggesting that you could build other things with the bricks in the box. However, they disappeared in the early 2000s because Lego kept getting so many requests for instructions to these models - no one could work out how to recreate them!

@Scrubs This looks fun. Will we be able to use the render farm to output final animation sequences?

Hmmm.... time to fire up LDD then. I have a vision of a Classic Space astronaut, fishing in the Moon's Sea of Tranquility, while standing on a tensegrity-floating platform that hovers over Della Duck trying to repair her crashed Spear of Selene. Definitely gonna have fun running that through the Lego Ideas IP filter...

Wow, that was impressive. I actually want to get hold of this movie and watch it now.... and I'm not even a Bionicle fan!

I wish I knew how those guys were doing it. It's one thing to have a good idea, and quite another to market it - what's the secret to successfully promoting a project and whipping up support for it?

For storage bags, I originally used resealable sandwich bags but this seemed to affect the pieces (the Lego started going a bit sticky). So I switched to museum quality archival storage bags made from LDPE: https://www.preservationequipment.com/Catalogue/Archival-Storage/Photographic-Storage/Polyethylene-Zipper-Bags The high grade versions of LDPE are supposed to be completely inert and won't affect the contents. I've been using them for a while now, and the bricks seem fine. I still have issues with the bricks coming out a little sticky, but I think that may just be residual oils from my skin left on the bricks after handling. Best results seem to be had from leaving the bricks loose in a cardboard box.

The 1967 Doctor Who story "The Evil of the Daleks" introduced the malevolent ruler of the Dalek empire. Its bloated brain occupied a casing that was over three times the size of a normal Dalek, incapable of movement and hardwired into all of Skaro's control systems and battle computers. However, the Emperor met his match when he ensnared the second Doctor and his companion, Jamie, in a devious plot to turn the Daleks into an unstoppable fighting force. The Doctor instead imbued the Daleks with the "Human Factor", which made them start questioning their orders and turn on their Emperor. The story climaxed with a massive firefight within the Emperor's throne room, as the elite black Daleks tried to exterminate all the humanised daleks. The Emperor Dalek, unable to move and having lost all control over its empire, could only look on and helplessly scream "Do not fight in here!" This playset includes the 2nd Doctor, his companion Jamie, a silver dalek, an elite black dalek, an exterminated dalek, and the Emperor Dalek (with hinged front panel to reveal the mutant inside). It was an older MOC I discovered in my archives, and it seems that several years ago I uploaded it to Lego Cuusoo, but never got round to sharing here. I've updated the dalek mini figures to follow the designs from my recent chess set, made the Emperor's plinth dark blue, and given the Emperor a slightly more secure connection to the plinth. I'm quite proud of the cylindrical construction used for the Emperor's head, but it relies on a 3mm bar that has a slightly flimsy connection to the central column of 2x2 round bricks inside the Emperor's base section.

60264 doesn't do much for me but I love the new undersea base! It's way better than the 60096 Deep Sea Operations base from the 2015 line up. I love the inclusion of the sea bed, this will definitely be a day one purchase :)

After 7 years, I'm not surprised... If you run LDD 4.3.11, you can place two copies of 44359 inside 44358 to form a sphere inside the holder. Do the upside-down one (i.e. the half of the sphere that goes right into the cup holder) first. You can then rotate the entire sphere by clicking on either 44359 with the hinge tool, and the sphere will spin in the holder.

Doctor Who and the Daleks prepare to do battle... on the chess board! The board itself uses a 48x48 baseplate with 6x6 squares that alternate between light and dark tan. Each square has a 2x2 plate in the middle of it to help anchor the chess pieces to the board, either for display purposes or during gameplay. All the chess pieces have a base made up of 3x6 wedge plates, with the cutouts making great finger holds. For the light pieces we have all the elements of classic Doctor Who, from the time lord himself down to his faithful robotic dog K-9: Against him is quite literally an army of Daleks! This was an old MOC I decided to spruce up after discovering the excellent range of custom printed Doctor Who figures available from minifigs.me. For the Doctor's pieces, the King and Queen are represented by the 7th Doctor (armed with his umbrella) and companion Ace (as seen in the classic story Remembrance of the Daleks, armed with the baseball bat from the Hand of Omega). The bases pay homage to the classic roundels on the Tardis walls, and to the transparent column in the original Tardis console. The figures shown here are just placeholders and will be swapped out for the minifigs.me versions when built in real life. The bishop is the Doctor's vintage roadster Bessie - this small car was used extensively by 3rd Doctor Jon Pertwee, but made a brief return in the 7th Doctor's story "Battlefield". I've always been proud of the fact that I got to sit in the driving seat of the real one. The knight is the TARDIS console, and it was an absolute nightmare to design a hexagon that fit within a 6x6 footprint! Lastly, the rook is the TARDIS itself - I've got some custom printed 1x4 tiles labelled "Police Box" to add in, though I can't remember who the manufacturer was. For the black pieces, the king is none other than the creator of the Daleks - Davros! Shown here in his original black-and-silver wheelchair, I'm still working on a version of him as he appeared in Remembrance of the Daleks, which would probably fit better with the 7th Doctor opposite him. The Queen is the black Dalek from the 1965 movie with Peter Cushing, which ruled the dalek city - this piece features a 2x2 swivel tile that lets the dome and eyestalk spin freely, as a reminder that the queen can move in any direction. The bishop is the red Dalek from the 1965 movie, and includes the claw that was the movie alternative to the sink plunger. The knight can hop over other pieces, so in this case it's a white Dalek hovering up a flight of stairs (another homage to Remembrance of the Daleks). And lastly, the rook is the tank-like "Special Weapons Dalek". A better look at the Dalek hovering up the stairs It only took them 25 years to learn how to do that! The chess set is quite fun to play with - just remember that the Daleks can be sore losers....

@ArkitektoLI Wow, that dragon looks amazing. I'm not convinced that it's light enough to be mounted on a wall by just one bracket, but the sculpture, texture, and detailing is absolutely stunning.

Bricklink's autobuy feature doesn't take into account shipping costs, PayPal fees, lot limits, etc, and you have to check this yourself under the terms and conditions of each selected store. To stop the auto-buy selecting a specific store, you can add stores to a list of "stores I don't like" and tell Bricklink to exclude these. You can help steer the auto-buy in the right direction by setting a maximum price for a few of the parts on your wanted list - only three or four parts, if you set too many then the auto buy will return dozens of shopping carts with only one or two bricks each. Sometimes it helps to set a price limit on the rarest parts, other times it helps to set price limits on the parts with highest required quantity. Don't pay more than the price shown on Lego's customer service "Bricks and Pieces", this can sometimes be cheaper than bricklink (and has a cheap flat rate postage no matter what you order!). After running the auto-buy, I then start "pruning" unnecessary stores. Start with the cart with fewest lots in it, then see if any of those bricks can be added to other carts - you may pay a little more for each bricks, but save a lot on postage by removing a cart completely. Keep repeating until you're down to three or four stores (or however many is reasonable for a project of this scale) Also, keep an eye out for parts you will need for later instruction books. If you find something you will need later on (especially a rare part), buy it now to save having to place a special order later.

Safety is another criteria they mentioned after JK Brickworks got his particle accelerator to 10k votes. The model had a small Lego ball continually accelerating round a circular track, but it could get up to insane speeds. It also seems to help if one of the official Lego designers volunteers for the project. The designers who brought the Saturn V and Voltron to the shelves were incredibly passionate about making the sets a reality.

A relatively painless way to get these models into blender is to do the following:Use stud.io to export your model as an LDraw file. Upload the LDraw file to the mecabricks website (it doesn't use the LDraw parts library, so a very small number of bricks may go missing). Export as a .zmbx file. Use the mecabricks blender plugin (lite version available for free, paid for version is way more powerful) to import the .zmbx file. Light the scene and render! The Mecabricks blender plugin gives fantastic results, @Scrubs has done truly amazing work in preparing the brick geometries and the materials.

Which program are you using? Which part IDs are you trying to connect? In LDD I am able to connect the trapdoor parts 30041 and 30042.

Great model, and fantastic work on the smoke at the base. It looks amazing!

I just moved house and now that I have a little more living space, I'm looking for a display cabinet so I can show off some of my larger technic sets like 42009 Mobile Crane, 42066 Air Race Jet and (my all time favourite) 42042 Mercedes-Benz Arocs. I was wondering what kind of solutions you've found for displaying your collections, do you have any suggestions/recommendations for display cases that will keep the dust off the models and won't break the bank?

@Lexi2014 No, no no, please do not buy anything from Vonado!!! Or any of the other websites out there that sell this kit! The design was stolen from Lego Ideas user Whatsuptoday, who had kindly released instructions for free after the project was rejected by Lego for production as an official set. The kit does not use genuine Lego parts, only clone-brand parts like Lepin. Also, the webpage shows at least three different LUT designs in the image galleries - you won't get what you think you will. If you're interested in my design, then you can download instructions for free (personal use only) from my brick safe page: https://bricksafe.com/pages/NathanR/real-space/apollo-lut Let me know if you need a parts list suitable for bricklink. Other LUT designs are available through the facebook group "Lego Saturn V, Lunar Lander and Other Space Builds", it's well worth checking out.

Lego did do a pretty good job with the five dragons in the Elves series a few years ago. They were designed to be cute and friendly, rather than the vicious and aggressive dragons that usually feature in stories. The dragons had different styles of horn for the back of the head, the ability to breath fire from the throat, moveable wings, moveable legs, a very flexible tail - to echo the point @Vindicare made, in this case the dragons had the advantage of being the main focus of the set and had the majority of the parts lavished on them.

Now this is a beauty that really does deserve to be a proper set! Super excited about the upcoming review results. I'd love it if Anatomini passed the review, I think Pursuit of Flight will as well (given the leaked prices of upcoming ideas sets, they probably want to dial back to some smaller sets) I'm also kind of expecting Thunderbirds to pass as well, which leaves me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, my inner child is squealing in delight at the thought of a Lego Thunderbirds set. But if this project passes review then all other Thunderbirds Ideas projects will be blocked, and it it fails the review then it means Lego has no interest in producing a Thunderbirds set, so either way my own Lego Ideas project is basically finished.

I'd love it if Lego did start a major program to rerelease loads of old sets, but it's never going to happen. There are a lot of Lego pieces that are not made any more, like 3934 Wedge 8x4 with the 1x1 cutout, or the magnets that appeared in so many Explorien sets (in fact I believe there's health and safety laws now preventing their inclusion in a children's toy). So Lego would either have to redesign and update the models, which defeats the purpose of reissuing a classic set, or they would have to reintroduce parts that have been long out of production. Now this can be done - the Lego Ideas Ship-in-a-bottle set reintroduced the 6002 corner wall panel after an 8 year absence, but Lego almost cancelled production of the set because this part was so critical for the model. As another example, lego train fans have spent years begging for more of the 1980s monorail track, but the moulds no longer exist, they've been buried in concrete underneath one of the Lego factories. Then of course, there are problems over what colours to use. I would love to get my hands on the first two Star Wars UCS sets, the X-Wing and the TIE Interceptor, but oddly enough I find myself wanting them in the original greys, not the current light/dark bluish grey introduced round 2002, to better tie in with my remaining childhood Lego sets. I think the best route will always be to simply bricklink the retired sets that you want. I got the Emerald Night steam engine that way, though I had to go for unprinted parts on the boiler and sacrifice the coach that came with the set. Other times, it's just a case of adjusting the design of the set a little so you remove the rare pieces - a few years ago I "refreshed" the designs of 10018 UCS Darth Maul and 7194 UCS Yoda so that they only used the currently available parts. Yoda was a huge challenge actually, and ultimately pointless given the explosion in sand green parts this last two years, but it did make for a fun project, and I guess maybe sometimes you just have to wait a few years for the rare colours to get reintroduced.

@lustoro Huh, that is very odd. You should also have more than just three cable types returned by the search. Which version of LDD are you using? Is it 4.3.11?

Hi, which parts are you trying to connect, do you have the ID numbers? Sometimes a part may have a bug, so the two ends of the cable might behave like one part only. When I add a cable, like part 55806 Cable 0,5M, I see both ends of the cable moving together. Once I place the cable on the grid, not connecting them to anything, then I can click each end of the cable like it is a single piece. You have to click the part, not the coloured triangle.

Not sure if this is the right place to mention this, but LEGO Ideas have a contest on to help choose the next UCS set! You can pick between a Republic gunship, a TIE Bomber, or a Nebulon B Frigate. https://ideas.lego.com/blogs/a4ae09b6-0d4c-4307-9da8-3ee9f3d368d6/post/6dfb7865-b545-4257-908b-36c15451029e Personally I'd like a Nebulon B, what would your favourites be?

@Nom Carver If you have the latest version of LDD (4.3.11) then the part you need is available, it's listed with the ID number 23448. When you open a project in LDD, click View -> New Themes -> LDD Extended. This activates extended mode, which gives you loads more bricks to choose from than the standard mode, and only shows the brick shapes (the default is to put everything in red, but you can change this).