Tag Archives: Lego Digital Designer

LEGO fully discontinuing LEGO Digital Designer in favor of BrickLink Studio

Today LEGO has announced that it is finally and completely sunsetting LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), the company’s digital building program that was first introduced in 2004 as a consumer version of LEGO’s internal design software. While LEGO says it will continue to use a version of LDD internally, it is putting forward BrickLink’s Studio software as the officially supported digital building program, which LEGO acquired in 2019 when it purchased BrickLink. Studio supports most files created in LDD, LDRAW, and some other formats, and supports features such as automatically populating a BrickLink wanted list. Although LEGO announced way back in 2016 that LDD would no longer be supported, over the past few years it has continued to receive infrequent updates and even a selection of newer elements. However, the company now says it plans to remove the download page altogether. Users who have installed the program already will be able to continue to use it, and LDD will continue to be available unofficially from third-party download sites.

Click to read the full press release from LEGO

A different sort of digital LEGO build

These days, we come across a lot of digital LEGO builds, and it’s easy to see why. Through several free programs, the world of virtual building offers anyone access to infinite quantities of bricks in any type and color you need. But despite having seen thousands of digital creations, builder Tong Xin Jun still managed to create something I’ve never before seen: LEGO Digital Designer. The interface of LEGO’s now-retired free building software will be familiar to many of you, but look closely, because I promise you’ve never seen it like this before. That’s right, this is the LDD interface built out of bricks within LDD! It’s an absolutely brilliant piece of design that I’d love to see rendered with physical bricks, and I actually think the majority of it could be.

LEGO Digital Designer updated [News]

LEGO has released an update for LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), the company’s proprietary virtual building program. Update 4.3.9 is available for free on both OSX and Windows operating platforms. If you already have LDD, the latest update will install automatically when connected to the internet. The update is approximately 275MB in size and includes over 300 new parts such as CMF Series 15 minifigure parts, Speed Champions, Elves, Jurassic Park, Nexo Knights and so on. The new parts are available by opening a project using LDD’s Extended tab.

LEGO Digital Designer Update

After bringing you the news that LEGO Digital Designer was officially defunded and unsupported back in January, it’s safe to say that this latest update was unexpected. It is hard not to believe that the huge backlash in response to that sudden announcement of LDD’s demise was a factor in the decision to now release a long awaited update.

Since the LDD community has waited over 2 years since the previous update, there is no doubt that the new one will be well received. Enjoy the update, there’s no knowing when/if another update will be released in the future. Flickr user Nachapon S. has put together an image showing all the new pieces.

LEGO Digital Designer officially defunded and unsupported [News]

LEGO has announced that LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), the company’s proprietary virtual building program, will no longer be updated. New parts may occasionally be added, but LEGO is officially defunding the platform.

LDD Welcome Screen

Read more about this announcement