accio brick - the lego harry potter comm

I'm running a touch late for the occasion, but I've designed a digital lego set for milotzi: McGonagall's Quarters. (You can find it over on Mecabricks.) It converts the 76382 Hogwarts Moment: Transfiguration Classroom set into the Gryffindor Head's chambers while keeping the hallmarks of the Moment theme - all builds must be storable in the closed book format.

It's an interesting set of constraints, none of the builds can be wider than 4 studs, and a volume of no more than (roughly) 225 bricks. Unfortunately neither the stickers nor the book covers are in the Mecabricks database, so I've built the cover and simply had to do without the stickers. They'd be used just as they are in the original set.

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Anyway, I was thinking of you, M. Hope you had a nice day. 😘

... and I've put yet another build on mecabricks, Filch's Office.



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Recently I've posted a number of things I created on / using mecabricks. I thought it might be nice to share how to do that yourself, so here's everything you need to know to get started using mecabricks (and then some)... It's a practical guide, illustrated by building a little model. (You can spoil the result and look at it here, or just wait and see what takes form.)

Firstly, what is mecabricks? It's a free site on which people can view and create three dimensional virtual (digital) lego models. It stands out compared to other CAD software that lets you do this because it doesn't require you to install any software (it's strictly an online service) and because of the library / community that results from that. People aren't creating their models at home on their own computers and then looking for places to share them (and scattering them all over the internet, like IG, flickr, imgur or even livejournal, say...), that's all built in. They've provided an absolutely staggering range of pieces to work with and have a significant part of the official lego catalogue (here's the HP section) covered in their database, and then there are a wealth of MOCs (my own creations) on top of that. Have you ever wondered what a set looks like from the other side? You can see that here. For example, all of the official advertising for the 76386 Hogwarts: Polyjuice Potions Mistake only shows the set from one side. On mecabricks, you can rotate it at will and see it from any angle, including (with judicious zooming) from within the model. (It will look better if you click the gear icon at the top of the picture and select "BOUNDARIES" and "LOGO ON STUDS".) Or maybe you're looking for ideas for builds of your own; there are plenty of them here.

The journey starts at the mecabricks.com homepage, where you'll bet greeted by something like this:




If you've used CAD programmes in the past and are feeling confident, here are the basics in a nutshell:



tags: functions, tldr

And here are all the gory details... ( Read more... )

tags: functions, navigating, visibility


And to wrap things up, an overview of the keyboard shortcuts:



tags: functions, shortcuts, tldr

And I've been busy over on mecabricks again and completed another model...

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