Aanchir

A 3.2 mm bar of any kind (in this case, part 48729) cannot fit into the bottom cavity of the headlight brick (4070) as is needed to build the toilet from set 10218 Pet Shop.

Hmmm... that's odd. So there's a chimney for the town house and a fireplace for the pet shop? That confuses me a bit. Perhaps the designers designed the fireplace for the town house but ended up moving it when they didn't have enough interesting contents for the pet shop (forgetting to move the chimney)? Alternatively, since the two buildings are conjoined, perhaps the chimney on the roof of one building connects to the fireplace of the other. It'd be weird as heck, but on the back of the box since the buildings are switched the chimney of the town house is directly up against the roof of the pet shop, making at least slightly more plausible. Love that toilet, and it's built kind of like how I suspected. However, I'm disappointed to find that this build does not work on LDD. I'll have to report that so it gets fixed in a future update.

Flat Silver parts in 2011 sets should actually be 315 Silver Metallic. This is the new pearl silver color that debuted during summer 2010. Bricklink is very inconsistent with what they call it (in some instances I've seen it called Pearl Dark Grey, despite an entirely separate color existing that also gets that label), but thankfully this year they've somewhat standardized it so that Flat Silver is used for most parts in 315 Silver Metallic. The two brown slopes should be 308 Dark Brown rather than 192 Reddish Brown. Barbossa's hands should be 1 White rather than 283 Light Nougat. The prints for the white horse's face are actually available. To access them, click View>New Themes>LEGO DesignByMe to switch to DesignByMe mode where you can generate the printed horse from the brick tray, or download my LDD Decorations file which includes all decorated parts that function on LDD (including many others that can't be applied with the decoration tool). Technically, the 1x1 plates with clips are a version of part 60897 rather than a version of part 4085. The appearance of part 60897 on LDD is misleading and depicts an older version of this piece, but the underside of the part labeled as 4085d on Bricklink actually confirms its part number as 60897. The 1x2x2 panel pieces should be part 87552 rather than 4864. There is a 308 Dark Brown 1x2 plate (3023) that should probably be 192 Reddish Brown. The coachman's waist should be 26 Black, not 199 Dark Stone Grey. Just a single error with this one: the button on the back of the light brick should be 194 Dark Stone Grey rather than 199 Dark Stone Grey

The reason would seem to be, as I said, the same problem that causes an "offset" in clip-and-handle connections. Basically, LDD has only a certain level of precision with Technic axles and 3.2mm bar pieces. To be specific, LDD can only connect pieces along these bars or axles at 1.6mm intervals. The problem emerges with a lot of handle pieces (and evidently, with this four-way hub piece) when the "starting point" of the pieces isn't centered correctly for certain types of connection. Thus, there will be a <1.6mm offset in either direction from the ideal point of connection. The hinge tool can compensate for this because the parts can be aligned in ways other than a direct connection before they are finally attached to one another. Of course, certain clip parts like the now-removed Mars Mission alien parts from version 3.0 were mind-bogglingly frustrating when trying to build a scaffold. Whether or not this qualifies as a bug is a matter of opinion. After all, there may be connections between certain pieces that would require a different alignment on the pieces, where the current "offset" would be ideal. The way to solve this problem completely would be to increase the precision of LDD's connections, allowing for a smaller interval between automatic attachment points. But even this would come with a cost, as the smaller interval between attachment points would make it harder to judge whether or not a part is in fact aligned as you intend it to be. It's definitely a problem which I think should be addressed in some way, though, particularly in the case of clip-and-handle hinges. In the case of some, like 48336, it seems as though TLG may have actually fixed the problem during the last update, as there is no longer an offset, but the offset problem is still visible in other parts like 60478.

I know, right? Same with the LEGO parrots. Or horses. Or minifigures. Or tiles. Come to think of it, LEGO hasn't been true LEGO since they stopped making everything out of basic bricks.[/sarcasm] Really, I see absolutely nothing wrong with the chickens, and no reason they're any less like LEGO than any other LEGO animals. After all, when you think about it, it's simply illogical that the most specialized LEGO animals should be larger ones like horses and cows, when those would also be the easiest to replicate from existing parts. These new chickens may be more specialized than brick-built ones, but they simply look more appropriate among LEGO animals and minifigures. Plus, they're smaller than the brick-built ones and easier to fit in a chicken coop.

The problem with doing Space the way LEGO does City is that nowadays single-faction themes are just a no-no. Yes, there are different sub-themes to City, most of which don't include any other sub-themes in their sets. However, in the Police sub-theme it's long been the standard that you don't have sets that have crooks and no police officers to pursue them. Any theme that deals with conflict between opposing factions has to have both factions in all sets (besides, of course, impulse sets which tend to include only one minifigure at most). And civilian factions probably wouldn't exist independent of "good-vs.-evil" factions, since most sci-fi stories people are familiar with tend to have a strong focus on space warfare or at least these sorts of good-vs.-evil conflicts. The old Space theme that dealt with interaction between factions was certainly intriguing. But unfortunately, it lacked one thing Space Police III had: immediate, out-of-the-box play. Besides the Space Police sets which tended to have one Blacktron minifigure for each prison pod, all the sets included only a single faction. This means that you can't role-play a conflict between the two factions unless you've bought more than one set. And unfortunately, people aren't as likely to buy a second set unless they've already had fun playing with the first. My own personal hope for Space Police III was a new "sub-theme" of it similar to Agents 2.0 which would deal with the Blacktron faction. Some of my brainstorms for this theme can be seen here, here, and here. Overall, I missed most of the classic Space themes. I caught the tail end of Space Police II, Ice Planet, and Spyrius as a kid, and Spyrius in particular has a special place in my heart with its classic flying-saucer- and robot-based fleet. However, I have a deep-seated respect for Blacktron as the quintessential Space villain faction, and the most iconic rival of Space Police. I do not expect a return of the Blacktron theme anytime soon (probably not unless Space Police, Classic Space, or Futuron makes a re-appearance in some form), but I'm glad that through Rench and the Space Villain collectible minifigure LEGO has acknowledged the faction's importance to AFOLs and to the history of LEGO Space.

It's not actually totally clear whether Alien Conquest takes place in space-- it seems to be an Earth-based alien invasion theme, so a helicopter isn't too out of place for Alien Conquest's human forces. M:Tron, on the other hand...

9348 Community Minifigures has it. The set's price-per-piece is dreadful, but that's to be expected of any set that's pretty much all minifigures. And there's a lot of useful City pieces in that set. I've never seen it in stores, but it's available on LEGOshop.com.

It's Sand Blue, not Maersk Blue. If I'm correct, LEGO isn't actually allowed to use Maersk Blue in non-licensed sets since the color is trademarked by Maersk. Also, there is a fireplace, according to the lower-left image here. Perhaps it's just not added until the house is furnished?

The gamestop minifigure is a wooden Jack Sparrow voodoo doll-- basically a full-sized minifig version of this one from the set Queen Anne's Revenge. I have a feeling it plays an integral role in the plot of the upcoming Pirates movie. See the Brickset page for this set, or the Eurobricks review.

That is a problem. I'm personally not very knowledgeable when it comes to the technical aspects of LDD, but I'm sure plenty of people will be willing to help you if you start a topic in the LDD subforum here on Eurobricks. Chances are the members there will want a detailed description of what happens when you try to open LDD, and possibly some of your computer's specifications (I know some of them could walk you through how to get the necessary details; I certainly can't). But if LDD doesn't run at all, then that's a problem that ought to be addressed.

Out of curiosity, can anyone tell me if one of this theme's helmets (same ones from second-wave Space Police III and Collectible Minifigures) can fit on a minifigure wearing one of these? LEGO Digital Designer lets me do it, but there's a very visible overlap between the two pieces and I'm not sure whether that means the parts genuinely don't fit together in real life or one of the two parts is just rendered badly on LDD.

In some cases, the printed parts that can't easily be reused are ones like Lightning McQueen's windscreen-- parts which would be hard to apply stickers to due to their curved contours. Personally the specialized prints of some parts don't bother me much, since the cars are basically this theme's equivalent to minifigures. As for having too many specialized pieces, as I said before I've observed only 9 new molds in the cars from this theme, and of those not too many seem overspecialized. The main one I'd consider overspecialized is the part with Lightning's face on it-- most of the others have very useful curves or shapes without much besides the prints keeping them from being used in other sets and themes.

The dog is in fact the new style, even though he appears to be in a new color (possibly even with a new face print). And I don't think anyone was expecting new molds in a D2C set, particularly not a modular building (where the emphasis is usually on reusing old parts in creative ways). Different colors for the birds would have been nice, though. And as unrealistic as it might be, I really hope printed parrots return someday... Keep in mind that if it isn't tan, it would have to be Cool Yellow (BL's Bright Light Yellow). The original Light Yellow was discontinued years ago. And I don't think the color in the pictures resembles Cool Yellow. I could be wrong, of course.

Well, I would expect the sticker designs to be based on stills from the movie. But whoever was responsible for it, yeah, that seems to be a genuine mistake.

Two ways: First way is to just click View>New Themes>LEGO Universe to switch a DesignByMe model into LEGO Universe mode, which allows you to recolor parts any color you like. Disadvantage to this is that LEGO Universe mode lacks many recent parts, including all Hero Factory parts, so you have to keep switching back and forth if you want to add new parts to your model. The second way is to unlock LDD Extended Mode. This allows access to any parts currently rendered in LDD, as well as a broader color palette.

It's definitely a voodoo doll. LEGO Customer Service lists the set's name as "Voodoo Jack". A much smaller minifig-scale version (a printed version of the trophy from the collectible minifigures) is in the set Queen Anne's Revenge.

Observations: The dog seems a darker color than the Medium Nougat (BL's Medium Dark Flesh) cat, but lighter than the Reddish Brown building. Dark Orange, perhaps? His face print also seems like it may be different than the police dog's. The residential building also seems to have Dark Orange tiles on it as accents. The pet shop has a lovely light globe and a Bright Orange fish. Best toilet I've ever seen in a LEGO set. I need to find out how that's done... Architecture is pretty great all around. I can't help but love the second-story windows of the residential building. Is that a tornado cellar behind the house? Overall, I'm very impressed and can't wait for a full review!

This is the first time I've seen the blended chest piece in real life, and dang if it doesn't look good. I wonder if there will ever be blended chest armor in regular sets, or perhaps alternate color combinations in future updates to Hero Recon Team. Nice hero design, too. Simple, but effective.

Is it a bad thing that when I saw that you were the latest commenter in this topic, I immediately began expecting pictures to have emerged? I'm looking forward to pics as much as anyone, and hope it lives up to our expectations!

Well, Disney isn't paying for the new molds. TLG is, and as far as I can tell there aren't that many new molds in this theme. I can spot 9 new molds with a quick glance. Even the Atlantis theme had more new molds than that last year, not to mention the Hero Factory theme which had about 45 new molds in the first half of this year alone.

I agree that 1:24 is highly ridiculous for most models. There's really never any point of using it for anything as large as a vehicle or building. But for smaller objects-- for instance, an armchair or desk-- it can be what's necessary for the object to look appropriate relative to a minifigure. Needless to say, you wouldn't want to furnish a house completely with 1:24 furniture or you'd be forced to use the same exaggerated scale for the house itself. For this reason, it's generally a requirement that you simplify a model which you intend to build "to scale" rather than scaling all the contents down as precisely as possible. Similarly ridiculous scales are needed for excessively large subjects. For instance, many spacecraft and large aircraft may need to be built at a scale smaller than 1:100 in order to look appropriate. I discovered this while trying to build a mobile launch platform or shuttle carrier aircraft for the Shuttle Adventure set. For personal road vehicles, I tend to favor 1:36 scale (as always, I have to point out that since I was brought up on imperial measure rather than metric, it's easier for me to use numbers based on the number 12 than numbers based on the number 10). This allows an SUV to be around 7 studs wide (the size of the vehicle in set 7635 4WD with Horse Trailer) and, if built cunningly, fit four passengers. However, just as in official sets, I use different scales for different subject matter.

Specifically, the scaffold I use for clip-and-bar hinges can be found in this topic (you may have to scroll down a bit). It involves getting the parts aligned first, and then hinging them into place. On that note, let me see if it is possible to create a scaffold to solve your problem. I probably won't put it in the LDD Reference topic because it's a very specific problem, but I'll happily share any solutions I find in this topic. EDIT: Here are the directions for getting the parts to connect: Step 1: Build this model on LDD. The axles on the ends can be any length. Step 2: Delete the two axles on the ends. Step 3: Hinge each reddish brown hub piece 90 degrees. Step 4: Delete the dark stone grey clip pieces. This is basically the function of a scaffold. It consists of temporary structures used to "line up" parts of the model correctly. Scaffolds have to be different depending on the task, so it can take some creative thought to come up with one that performs the task you need accomplished. But in general, creative use of scaffolds and the hinge tool can help you connect things that LDD tends to have difficulty aligning.

The problem with this formula, however, is that at this scale it would be hard to make buildings and vehicles with interiors that can accommodate minifigures. Realistically, a scale anywhere between 1:24 and 1:48 could be accepted as "minifig scale", and for significantly large vehicles like trains and passenger planes the scale can be even more extreme. The fact is, there is no specific standard, and it's perfectly acceptable to use a different "minifig scale" for all your models so long as they end up at a size you consider acceptable.

Nope. Any discussion of that set is in this topic, although it may end up getting its own topic when pictures do emerge.