{"id":717,"date":"2014-06-12T09:22:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T09:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/?p=717"},"modified":"2020-07-24T13:27:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T12:27:23","slug":"lego-digital-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/2014\/06\/lego-digital-designer\/","title":{"rendered":"Lego Digital Designer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re the Lego type (and we are in spades in this house), then this is a nifty tool that might appeal, although it has a lot of bells and whistles and takes some patience, so not ideally suited to the younger or less patient\u00a0aficionados out there. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Lego have a free <a title=\"Lego Digital Designer\" href=\"http:\/\/ldd.lego.com\/en-us\/default.aspx?icmp=COUSCreateShareSL100LDD\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Digital Designer tool<\/a> that lets you design your own model and generate build instructions at the end to make it yourself and share your design with the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Design Mode<\/strong> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/designModeIcon.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-718\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/designModeIcon.gif\" alt=\"Design Mode icon\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/><\/a>) gives you a panel of brick options to select from on the left, and a building area on the right where you can arrange them and stick them together.<\/p>\n<p><strong>View Mode<\/strong> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/ViewMode.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-719\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/ViewMode.gif\" alt=\"View Mode icon\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/><\/a>) lets you inspect your creation from all angles to see how it&#8217;s working out.<\/p>\n<p>And when you&#8217;re done, <strong>Build Mode<\/strong> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/BuildModeIcon.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-721\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/BuildModeIcon.gif\" alt=\"Build Mode icon\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/><\/a>) generates build instructions for your model and gives you a few different options for how to view them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To follow them in the Lego Digital Designer, click the <strong>Next brick<\/strong> icon (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/NextBrick.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-720\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/NextBrick.gif\" alt=\"Next Brick icon\" width=\"20\" height=\"19\" \/><\/a>) at the top of the screen each time you want to proceed, and you&#8217;ll see a little animation of the bricks fitting together.<\/li>\n<li>To generate HTML instructions that walk you through static images of each stage, click the <strong>HTML<\/strong> icon (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/HTMLicon.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-722\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/HTMLicon.gif\" alt=\"HTML icon\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/><\/a>), specify where to save the instructions, and they should automatically open in a browser once downloaded. Again, keep clicking the <strong>Next<\/strong> icon (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/HTMLnextIcon.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-724\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/HTMLnextIcon.png\" alt=\"Next icon\" width=\"17\" height=\"24\" \/><\/a>) to walk through the stages.<\/li>\n<li>To print out the sequence of static images, along with an inventory sheet at the end that tells you how many of what brick type you&#8217;re going to need to make your creation, first generate the HTML instructions, then click the <strong>Print<\/strong> icon (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/PrintIcon.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-723\" src=\"\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/PrintIcon.png\" alt=\"Print icon\" width=\"20\" height=\"19\" \/><\/a>) from within them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t have the patience to design a model from scratch yourself, there&#8217;s a <a title=\"Lego Gallery\" href=\"http:\/\/ldd.lego.com\/en-us\/gallery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gallery<\/a> of builds other folks have already shared, so you can have a rummage and look for something you&#8217;d like to build\/emulate there. (Note that you only get a <strong>Download<\/strong> link for a model in the overview page &#8211; once you&#8217;ve clicked through to view it in more detail, you&#8217;ll need to click the <strong>Back<\/strong> link at the top left of the build image to get back to the overview.) Once you download a design, open it in the Lego Digital Designer and follow the build in one of the three ways described above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re the Lego type (and we are in spades in this house), then this is a nifty tool that might appeal, although it has a lot of bells and whistles and takes some patience, so not ideally suited to the younger or less patient\u00a0aficionados out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,31],"tags":[25,34],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-tech","tag-lego","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/1471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}