Erik Leppen

Many studded Technic sets have a lot of System (Many of the "good olds" like 8460, 8880, 8480, 8479). Are they not to be called Technic because they have many bricks, plates, tiles and slopes? I think the part distribution isn't really a good measure for what should be called Technic and what should not. I'd say the amount of functionality (techniques) would be a better defining factor.

In my opinion, nothing beats parallel beams braced by 2x4 plates stud-inwards.

I think black is the most "neutral" colour, and therefore, goes well together with every color. It's the perfect "secondary" colour. White has this feature too, but is much rarer for parts. I often use white as a color for interiors for this reason. Also black is easiest to "hide" - if a body is e.g. yellow, a black frame beneath it won't be as visible as a gray frame beneath it. That's why I'd like to see the 5x7 and 5x11 liftarms (and the new 3x5 dog-bone beam) in black. But yes, black is hard to use when there's no daylight. So I usually throw some light-gray into the mix as well.

3: 10 9: 6 15: 4 6: 3 21: 2 27: 1

Wouldn't it be a matter of placed sideways? (Stud facing forward)? Edit: or placed sidewards? A lot of such stuff is best done with SNOT (studs not on top) techniques.

While it doesn't count as a mechanism, many shapes, mainly curved shapes/surfaces, are very hard to recreate in Lego because of the rectangular grid that Lego works best in. One notable example is the hull construction of a car. In real cars the columns that form the windscreen help give a car a lot of strength. In Lego, all the strength has to come from the chassis alone. Building a strong hull was one of the design principles behind my hypercar model. That brings to the second example: building a strong rigid frame is much harder in Lego than in real life. In reality it's a few beams. In Lego it's an intricate network of interlocking beams with the right connections in the right place, so that it's both strong and doesn't take up too much space.

By the way, when's the voting deadline? Might have overseen it, but couldn't find it anywhere.

Good to see a good number of entries. And the quality is great as always, some lovely work has been done on this by all the builders. Congratulations to all participants! You made an alternative model, which is challenging enough in itself :) I couldn't think of a good model to build so I skipped this one. But I'll surely be voting :)

Yes, I never liked the multiple books idea. One book per model is just much more organized. Glad they're going back.

I want this, badly :D This is wonderfully done, and looks to be really close to the original.

TLG is looking with a view to make a profit. If the people who pay for Technic sets pay more for sets which are easier, then sets will become easier. That said, comparing new sets like 8043 or 8258 to old sets like 8865 or 8868, I think that in general, sets are not becoming easier. I hope the new gearbox system will open up more possibilities (and I think having done away with that half-stud offset will indeed bring more possibilities witin reach of TLG's target audience - children).

I believe TLG actually researched this for 8070 and found out kids prefered the function switcher rather than a piston engine that can be set to slow or fast using an intricate gear system. I think that, to a kid, the latter seems kind of pointless, which could leave him wondering what all the fuss of gears eventually all leading to the same function (the pistons moving), would even be about. Also I hope the new 3L driving ring is an improvement. I think I'd rather have seen some extra parts that would make half-stud offsets easier. I think 1 x 1 x 1 is too large of a unit to be the smallest unit in almost all of Technic. I understand it's easier in sets for kids, but I think it makes things a bit less compact.

I have never needed them once in the ~15 years I now own them.

I really oike this building, and I also really love the fact that they come with the standard smiley faces on the minifigs. Let me tell why I like that so much. I view advanced lego building as art. And art is meant to suggest things, rather than replicate them. Art is sketchy - it provides the outline, you fill in the details with your own ideas. That's why art is interesting, and many people see different things in the same piece of art. The smiley face represents "human head" the same way the minifig torso represents "human body". Also there is some discussion about interior/exterior. To be honest, one of the things I always hated about the first modulars was their lack of interior. Those sets were simply incomplete. The Café Corner is not a café - it's a café building. Secondly, I think all those interior elements provide tons of creative part usages, and tons of neat ideas for people to learn from. Who would have thought about using the Technic pin joiner as a rolling pin, or ski pieces as fan blades, or the way the pool table or barber chair have been set up? To me that's as imaginative as using Technic axle joiners and Mixel joints to form columns or the use of Bionicle fists and Unikitty tails to create the roof ridges. It also makes the sets a lot cuter. (Which, IMO, adds to the default smiley face effect - I think it's cute, somehow.) In fact, I wish more themes would use the default smiley face. (That said, I don't care for minifigs anyway. For me it's purely a budget argument. Only one face print = cheaper = more budget left for other details = a more detailed building/interior).

That's why people get so many premature replacement separators :) Anyhow, I'm quite happy. My bro had a bunch of those, and I had none. So he happily gave me two, so I could get separating :D By the way, it's very well possible to damage parts when trying to separate them - if you do it the wrong way. I tried to remove a 2 x 4 plate by grabbing it at the short end - the only place I could reach. Doesn't work, and could damage the studs. Now a 2 x 4 plate in an ordinary color is nothing special, but still... But...but... there is a reason they're orange. How can you not find an orange part in a Lego room? :P

If you want the most parts for the buck, buy relatively large sets that don't rely heavily on Power Functions. 8258 and 42009 are good for that. 42030 isn't. You pay premium prices for the electrics. (Of course, the above advice doesn't hold if you want the electrics :) Also, you know best what parts you are looking for. So, check the set's Bricklink inventories so you know what parts are in each set. You do that by going to bricklink.com, then in the topc bar selecting "Catalog items" and type the number of the set, e.g. 42008, and click Go. Then you will land on a page that has a list, with your set usually on top with the left column sayin "42008 [inv]". The Inv is a link to the inventory. By the way, getting your parts via sets is a good way to build up a collection, but once your collection reaches what I call the "critical mass", i.e. that you have plenty of all common parts like pins and gears, then I'd say get the specific parts you want on Bricklink.

I could look at this for hours. In fact I just spent the last 30 minutes going through some of those pictures. Especially the "mechanical" pictures. These could teach me a thing or two about how people did things. I wonder how you create them. First I thought it was just two images superimposed, but a closer look shows it probably isn't quite that simple. I also noticed that the wireframe renderer acts out a bit on transparent parts :P I could only imagine the work that goes into this. I have made some LDraw files myself, but with nowhere near the detail of these ones, especially including all the flexible parts like wiring, pneumatic hoses, strings. I reckon the braiding machine was a nightmare to digitize. Anyhow, great work :D

The problem with the old handles was that it required your other hand to hold the model. The 12t gears for knobs don't have that problem. I guess that's the reason for the switch - it's easier to control. And if the function requires some torque, a child can get a much stronger rotation force out of the 12t gear then out of the old cranks, without bending the axle that the knob is on. So I don't expect a return of those part as handles. I am curious how TLG thought of using this part though. Anyhow, I think the bright green is good news - the more colors for Technic the better :) Now I hope that, over time, they will make the colors a bit more complete. The change in gearbox is an interesting one too, and long overdue. I have thought about this for years, it surprises me it took so long before they changed this. Curious how this will work - and what they used a gearbox for in that set.

I went there. And to be honest, I am still using my inventory system quite intensively. However, my inventory system is nothing more than a huge spreadsheet that only contains the parts I'm actually using frequently. I don't list parts that I need once a year - that's a waste of time. But I do list the bricks, plates and slopes - those I actually use. And it's incredibly handy to have a large list of all common parts and see at a single glance which colour scheme is the best for my upcoming idea. I don't use the online systems. They might have the benefits of using set inventories, but I'm not helped by that because every set contains parts I seldom use and that I don't want to clutter my list. So I keep the list by hand - and I consider it part of the fun, because I get to see which new part-color combinations I have with every purchase. Interestingly, none of the online systems I know of, allow me to have the part type on one axis and the color on the other, and being able to reorder them the way I want it. All online systems I have seen can maybe put 20 part-color combinations on the screen at once - which is nothing. With my huge table I can get 60 rows and 30 columns on one screen at once. That's an overview :). Also, the parts in the list are sorted the same way as those in my part bins - not using name or ID (who ever thought of sorting by ID? IDs are meaningless numbers), but using the same way I actually sorted my parts. All those shiny online systems may look nice and have a lot of options for editing data, but they are usually very bad at presenting the data. They just aren't very flexible. (That's probably because they have been designed by programmers - not by designers.) I'm using this for a few years now, and it has about 40,000 parts in it (althought I might throw out the black pins, I never run short of those so these have no use of being in there). So my advice - take some time to reall think about what information you expet to get out of such a system, how it will help you, what time will it save, which system will work for you, and whether the time saved by having this info, is worth the time invested in keeping the info up-to-date. After all, it has no use collecting info you won't be using. In fact, it only distracts.

Wow, this has to be the worst set in history. At least the other Minecraft sets (The Micro Worlds) had some sort of artistic value to people not interested in Minecraft (in my opinion), but this just looks like what a five year old put together. I'm surprised even when Minecraft fans would want to buy this (also given the price). That said, the review is excellent. Clear pictures, and a detailed description of what's there. Good job on that :D

This is really a great model. All the forms work vey well together to create a very strong and "brutal" appearance. Great job! Also I like your style of building - it doesn't seem to use an excessive number of parts. One question though. Why are the two differentials in the axles connected to the main diff with different gear ratios (after all, the rear axle has the 1:3 reduction in the hubs)? Or does it only seem that way?

This is what I think people mean to explain. Blue is the platform.

It's interesting how the driver has no steering wheel but the passenger has a gear stick. :D

I think the hard part of the competition is to get an idea what to build as a C-model. I have a set in mind that I happen to own, but I haven't yet come up with a good idea of what to build from it using a reasonable fraction of the parts. So I might take another set.