Who needs LDD when you have LEGO

[Asterios]

Sorry but I find LDD designs rather mundane since can you feel them, play with them or anything? no so here is my little store to show off plus others:

LEGO store:




Coffee/Book shop:


Temple under construction:




Trojan Army:


Outpost Fort:


Crusaders:


What can I say but "Ain't nothing like the real thing baby".

[possum]

I like how you're using the fort as the coffee table since there's no room on the coffee table. :)

[Asterios]

I like how you're using the fort as the coffee table since there's no room on the coffee table. :)

Actually that is the dining room table.

My Western troops and English colonial troops:

[vynsane]

Sorry but I find LDD designs rather mundane since can you feel them, play with them or anything? no[...]

I can't feel or play with your pictures, so it's six of one, half a dozen of another at this point.

Did you mean for this to be a debate over the benefits and drawbacks of LDD vs. real bricks? Or did you just want to display some of your MOCs? If the former, I think this topic should be moved to the LEGO General Discussion forum... the latter, it should remain here.

I think we can all agree that there's nothing like real bricks, but some of us don't have the means to have all the bricks we may need at our disposal - I mean, I have a mortgage, a kid, expenses, and a small house that wouldn't support dozens of huge LEGO buildings laying around. LEGO Digital Designer affords us the ability to build things in the 'virtual world' that we couldn't in real life, giving us a blueprint for the pieces that we would need to realize it in plastic when and if we have the desire/means to do so.

[Asterios]

well when can anyone have enough LEGO? I could own LEGOLand and still not have enough LEGO, and I too have a mortgage and bills and have had ever increasing costs with the refurbishing of my new LEGO room (Pergo is expensive):

Before:




Almost done:







And I've been doing all the work, in fact today gonna work on base boards and finish pergo up on end.

[vynsane]

You obviously have more disposable income than I do. It seems the biggest expense is my daughter (unless you have kids and didn't mention it), since we're basically in the same boat everywhere else (house renovation, bills, etc).

I'm just saying - don't be so disparaging of LDD. It's like saying "Why play driving videogames when you can drive a real car?"

[Asterios]

You obviously have more disposable income than I do. It seems the biggest expense is my daughter (unless you have kids and didn't mention it), since we're basically in the same boat everywhere else (house renovation, bills, etc).

I'm just saying - don't be so disparaging of LDD. It's like saying "Why play driving videogames when you can drive a real car?"

True, I'm just saying for me, its not as good as having real LEGO you can feel in your hands and such.

[natelite]

i don't think that's your lego room. first rule about lego is no sunlight and yet you gave the room plenty of windows. i would just build in the basement. that looks more like a sunroom to me. :D or maybe things are diff in CA. i'm in the northeast where there's winter and a room like that is not practical. or we use it as a 3 season room.

[Asterios]

i don't think that's your lego room. first rule about lego is no sunlight and yet you gave the room plenty of windows. i would just build in the basement. that looks more like a sunroom to me. :D or maybe things are diff in CA. i'm in the northeast where there's winter and a room like that is not practical. or we use it as a 3 season room.

well thats how many windows the room had when I bought this place a couple of months ago, as it goes the rumour of keeping LEGO out of direct sun is just that a rumnour, you can do almost as much damage to LEGO with artificial lights too, but regardless of that, you will notice the blinds now added to room and the windows have a northward facing so they avoid direct sunlight and such, also I've started filling the room up now with LEGO since work is done on it.

[BobaFett2]

Well, I for one just can't use LDD. It makes things too simple, too easy to procrastinate on real techniques when you have infinite bricks at your disposal. I prefer the fun challenge of real bricks, but many people (such as I) do not have these huge amounts of money to spend. YFOLs never do, TFOLs MIGHT (probably the best time for buying it is when you get a job as a TFOL-you have food, housing, etc, provided-so all the pay is YOURS. Unfortunately, I don't know where to get a job...), and not all AFOLs have large amounts of money to spend.

[vynsane]

I've moved this here, as it became more of a discussion on the merits/detractions of LDD than it was one about Asterios' LEGO room and MOCs, and it served my purpose to do so.

I was browsing Flickr the other day and noticed a comment on a a screenshot of a digital MOC (not mine) that took me aback. It was to the effect of "I usually hate LDD MOCs, but this is impressive".

First of all, 'hate' is the worst four-letter-word one could use in my house. The only purpose of that word is to hurt, whereas other words don't necessarily have the same sole purpose (they can be used in such a way, but generally speaking are used as frustration relievers and in my estimation are forgivable as such).

That said, what struck me was the blanket statement of 'hating LDD MOCs' - the implication being that, regardless of how skilled the designer, or how detailed and aesthetically pleasing the MOC, this person apparently would turn a blind eye to it JUST because it's a digital design, and not made of plastic.

It got me thinking about the perception of LDD in the LEGO community. My most recent design got a fair amount of views on Flickr, but only one comment. I posted it here, at FBTB, and at Eurobricks. I got a few pretty glowing comments here (thanks!) and one at FBTB. I got a few positive comments over at EB as well, and the design and .lxf file were added to their LDD MOC index (on the whole, they seem a bit more forward-thinking in regards to LDD at EB than anywhere else, in my experience).

This comment kind of comes into play here:

Well, I for one just can't use LDD. It makes things too simple, too easy to procrastinate on real techniques when you have infinite bricks at your disposal. I prefer the fun challenge of real bricks[...]

I don't really see a difference in the 'challenge' between real bricks and virtual ones. There are just as many techniques possible (aside from dodgy or 'illegal' connections that LDD doesn't allow). There's just as much skill involved in building virtually as there is in 'meat-space', it's not like you can just tell the program to build a cockpit and it does it for you. You have to conceptualize and line up the pieces yourself the same way you would while holding plastic. To a point I understand the caveat of 'infinite bricks' as opposed to working within the confines of your collection, but really, why should your collection confine you at all, when you can order virtually any piece you may need from Bricklink?

So, taking the 'skill' debate out of the equation, since there isn't really any difference between the skills necessary to build in reality or virtuality, it seems to me the only real difference is money. You have to buy the bricks, one way or another, in order to build a MOC - but to design it in LDD is absolutely free (aside from the cost of your computer and electricity to run it, I guess.)

Is it truly, then, a class-war - one between those who can afford to buy the pieces to build elaborate MOCs and those who can't, who are now enabled to design something conceptually on-par with the 'big builders', albeit not physically? Further, how do we transition to wide-spread acceptance of LDD as a legitimate vehicle for designing and displaying LEGO MOCS (I mean, aside from the LEGO Master Builders/Designers themselves, who already use it professionally)?

[ncbarrett]

...
Is it truly, then, a class-war - one between those who can afford to buy the pieces to build elaborate MOCs and those who can't, who are now enabled to design something conceptually on-par with the 'big builders', albeit not physically? Further, how do we transition to wide-spread acceptance of LDD as a legitimate vehicle for designing and displaying LEGO MOCS (I mean, aside from the LEGO Master Builders/Designers themselves, who already use it professionally)?

This has been my thoughts, why do people hate LDD, when you know LEGO uses it to design sets?

I don't have a lot of pieces to make MOCS with, so I enjoy the fact that I can build in LDD.
My guess is people who hate on LDD simply can't use it, for one reason or another. No other explanation makes sense.

If you want to build with virtual pieces in LDD great.
If you chose to build with physical pieces great.
Either way, enjoy it!

[Mantisking]

I like using LDD, I only have two minor problems with it. One, I can't make certain connections between bricks using the program. Which is a problem as I can make those connections in real life. Two, lately it's been crashing on me and that's no fun in the middle of a build.

[vynsane]

I like using LDD, I only have two minor problems with it. One, I can't make certain connections between bricks using the program. Which is a problem as I can make those connections in real life.

I've run into that recently while following the instructions of someone else's MOCs (I'm transferring their picture-based instructions to LDD files) - when I encounter those connections, it seems to me that they aren't all that stable "in real life", which leads me to find a more stable solution. In that respect, it's kind of forcing me to 'do better'. There are a few connection bugs in the program where actual 'legal' connections don't work, but they're constantly improving the product, so I would say they'll be taken care of in LDD ver. 4.1.

Two, lately it's been crashing on me and that's no fun in the middle of a build.

Yeah, THAT stinks. I've had the program crash before (not often, but a few times). I make sure I save my progress incrementally (but that should be standard practice with any file, frankly).

I have had instances recently where the program kind-of locked up, I could save my progress, but when I closed the program and opened the file back up, it said some bricks were incorrectly located or something, and they were removed from the build. It was annoying, but I think it was because my laptop got too hot (I was in bed, the computer on top of the down comforter.)

[themarshall]

Throw me a bone here please, LDD?

[dr_spock]

LDD is Lego Digital Designer. It is software from Lego allowing you to build with virtual bricks and order the real parts to build it in reality. It can be downloaded from Lego.com.