Archive for the 'CAD' Category

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CGI Train

Ben Beneke is one of the greats of LEGO train building, with even his old steamers still standing out as some of the best. I’d been wondering what had happened to Ben recently (he usually posts at least one new train a year) but apparently he’s been spending time making excellent animations using LDraw and Continue reading →

Lego Flying Dutchman for the Lego Pirates of the Caribbean video game

Carl Greatrix is a designer for the official Lego games, and his design of the Flying Dutchman for the Lego Pirates of the Caribbean video game shows why he’s the man for the job. Even though this is a render, just about all the parts used are official Lego elements.

Not the castles you’re used to

Not only was it really difficult to choose a `lead’ shot for this amazing collection of castles, it’s quite hard to quite describe the bizzarre form of creative genius RoxYourBlox has used for them. They’re casles, but not as you’ve ever seen them. Making tidy work of both LDD and excel for the trigonometry he Continue reading →

Cars Roundup

There are too many fantastic entries this month into LUGNut‘s Cars, Too theme, so I do believe I’m just going to list my favorites here, in no particular order. We are, after all, big fans of all things Pixar here at this humble blog. So! Onto the cars. Tim Inman, with Giselle Grocery Getter: Peter Continue reading →

Fish and Chips

Doing good posing in LDraw is really challenging so this diorama by Chris Becheman is a rarity. I’m particularly fond of the damaged road surface and washed out render style.

LEGO Catan?

Settlers of Catan is, by all accounts, a rather fun German board game. LEGO is, by all accounts, a rather fun toy. So it makes sense to combine the two. Except Michael (suparMacho) hasn’t actually built this. He’s use SR3D builder (an LDraw editor) and POVray to render it. Aside from those people lucky enough Continue reading →

LEGO 3D scanner used to generate 3D LDraw parts

Did you know you can make a 3D laser scanner out of LEGO bricks and a few custom parts? No? Nor did I until today. Did you know you can then use your LEGO model to scan LEGO parts and turn them into 3D CAD LDraw parts to make virtual LEGO models out of? Amazing Continue reading →

Virtual Insanity

I always get very excited about finding a new model from Andreas Weissenburg (grubaluk) because he is a) an excellent builder and b) an excellent renderer. Which means his CGI BR 55 gets to give a big tick to both our Trains and CAD categories.

Getting started with LDraw

The ever helpful Willy Tschager has just released an excellent tutorial on getting started with MLCAD and LDraw. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to use virtual LEGO to create your own virtual masterpieces from nothing but your imagination and a computer this is an excellent way to cross the first hurdle.

Show some backbone!

I was going to delay posting this to leave the 5th birthday post at the top of the page for longer but decided that we are here because we highlight cool LEGO models. Marco Tagliaferri (Tagl) demonstrates a lovely addition to the popular moonbase standard in the form of this transit spine standard. It feels Continue reading →

LEGO LDD contest at Eurobricks

Eurobricks are hosting a contest for models made in LEGO Digital Designer. It has some cool prizes donated by TLG so if you like using the software it’s time to start it running and get building. EDIT: References to DesignByMe removed for clarity.

Caveat Emptor

If you look on eBay at any time you may see people selling custom instructions or custom LEGO sets. While it’s generally not for me I can understand that some people might want to make some money out of their hobby and this is one way to do so. What you may not realise is Continue reading →

Klingon Bird of Prey, made from 274,350 virtual bricks

We’ve hardly blogged digitally constructed and rendered creations, but Kevin Walter‘s Klingon Bird of Prey needs no explanation to be featured. This 13’5″ X 11′ X 5’1″ mega sculpture is the culmination of two years of work. You should check out the large image on Flickr, on which it is still difficult to identify a Continue reading →

Volunteering for LDraw

According to my Future of LDraw? post there are a bunch of readers of this blog who use LDraw. But LDraw can only work with a steady stream of volunteers to make and review parts for use in new parts releases. (I also forgot to pimp the Flickr group for LDraw) Reviewing parts is a Continue reading →

The future of LDraw?

A recent discussion at LUGNET raised questions about the future of LDraw in the fan community. Oddly enough I feel I’ve seen a resurgence in LDraw work recently but of course like all of us I tend to see what I want to see so I figured I’d throw some questions out to a wider Continue reading →