This began as a bit of a speed drill for myself.  I wanted to see just how fast I could build something in LDD that represented a real life structure.  Because I have been watching the "John Adams" series on HBO I decided to give one of the houses on the homestead a try.  I used the photo below to come up with the model in approximately 45 minutes.


View the Gallery here.

Generally I would not post this as a story but I was a bit annoyed with how the submission and approval process went.  When submitting this model I assigned the following attributes to it.

• Name:  John Adams Home
• Category:  Famous Places
• Description:  President John Adams home in Quincy Massachusetts

After approval the model had the following values.

• Name:  House
• Category:  Family Houses
• Description:  House

I felt that my entries were appropriate and descriptive.  I was not giving away the location of someones private residence, this is a historic landmark that is open to the public.  What is the purpose of a "Famous Places" category if you can't describe the famous place that you are modeling?

Call me frustrated.

The Trains-n-Town shop is now open for business.  This shop will offer products in return for set "Donations" that will directly support the Trains-n-Town website.  In general products are marked up to a point where the proceeds from that item will pay for one month of the hosting fees for this site.

The theory behind this shop is that some people might be more willing to donate to the site if they recieved something in return.  If you would prefer just a straight donation where 100% of the proceeds go towards the operations of the site please use the Donate button in the upper right corner of the Home Page.

From: "Jan Beyer"
To: "undisclosed-recipients:"
Subject: New Ambassador Cycle - Start of Nomination Process
Date: 2008. április 30. 19:01

Hi all, for your information - we are now starting the Nomination process for the next Ambassador cycle. So please look into the new rules and decide together with your community who you would like to nominate according to the rules. Please find one spokesperson or head of the club to submit the nominations to us.

Now Accepting Nominations for 08/09 LEGO Ambassadors

Hello LEGO Enthusiasts,

You may have noticed already that the selection process for the LEGO Ambassador Program will be slightly different this year. In the past we've selected LEGO Ambassadors based on individual applications, which meant that the program was built on a very individual basis. Now we would like to make the process more broad reaching and transparent for all members of the AFOL community. Therefore the selection of LEGO Ambassadors will be based on nominations from your clubs. In this way we give more people an opportunity to have a say in who's name gets put in the pot for the selection process.

Who's allowed to nominate?

Well this has yet to happen so I decided to see what I could do with what was available in LDD.  Black was the most complete color but it lacked the 2x2 concave slope and any peeks.  This presented many challenges in LDD as it forced me to use the gable connector in place of the 2x2 concave slope.  Because this part lacks studs on top it presented challenges, especially along the peek.

After a lot of playing with the parts I finally came up with this... 


While obviously not ideal it does work and gives the designer the flexibility of a complex roof without the full complement of parts.  It does currently limit you to Black however as that is the only color the Gable connector comes in.

Using this technique I came up with this new Victorian which also uses 33 Degree slopes which do seem to have a full complement of parts in Black.



This model can be seen in the LEGO Factory Galleries for purchase.  I still have mixed feelings about the price.  While it is high when compaired to mass produced LEGO sets it is a custom model that requires more labor so the price increase is probably justified.

Discuss this topic here.

The new buffers that were briefly available on PAB at http://shop.lego.com are now showing up in LDD. The good part about this is you can zoom in on the parts but getting good images is still tough. None-the-less I have uploaded several images. Large images can be found here.

LDD allows you to rotate the coupler but there is still no obvious axis on which the magnet spins.  We assume the magnet must spin as it would not work otherwise.



Also the old Buffers and Magnets have disappeared from LDD and PAB.

Discuss here.