BrickInstructions.com: Lego booklet site | Hacker News Reader

BrickInstructions.com: Lego booklet site

lego.brickinstructions.com

73 pointsfritz_vd22 comments

On the topic of LEGO instructions, LEGO released a surprisingly sophisticated CAD tool called LEGO Digital Designer[1] way back in 2004. It contains 3D models of basically all LEGO pieces and modeling tools for creating arbitrary assemblies out of them. Users can snap pieces together, specify joints, and pose various parts. The software can also generate assembly instructions on-the-fly for any given design.

LEGO also runs a website where designs can be shared, for instance "Computer Problems"[2].

Here are some screen shots of the software in action[3] and the source of the design file[4] - ".lxf" files are just zip archives containing a preview png image and an xml file specifying the LEGO parts and their location in the assembly.

It would be interesting to know how this assembly planner was implemented: how does the 'compiler' decide on the order of operations? It seems to have heuristics for breaking the design into a series discrete of submodules that can be assembled independently, then combined at the end, as opposed to a simple linear strategy. Presumably the shape of the assembly tree is optimized for human "execution" - not too broad, nor too deep.

In particular, I wonder what kind of human the instructions are optimized for, if at all: children, or adults? In other words, are there some assembly strategies that adults prefer (more complex subassemblies for instance) that children are less successful at following?

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[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Digital_Designer

[2]: http://ldd.us.lego.com/en-us/gallery/51887f3e-1474-4411-9dcb...

[3]: http://imgur.com/a/hgeb7

[4]: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1b333df3b864c48bfa48

LEGO's official site seems a much better source: https://wwwsecure.us.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstruct...

http://brickset.com is the source I see cited most often around LEGO communities such as /r/lego.

I always liked Peeron[1]. They have a great selection of the old instructions booklets scanned in, and half the time I've lost my old instructions or my nostalgia-driven Brickset order didn't come with them.

[1] http://www.peeron.com/

Is the linked site using their scans? They seem to be about the same lowish quality

The quality for Peeron isn't always the best - it's very much still a Web 1.0 site, and so they aren't full-resolution, HD scans, just whatever was uploaded at the time.

But what I like about it is that it has pretty good coverage of what is for me "classic" Lego. The official site in the parent looks like it only goes back into the 90s, and is missing a lot of sets.

EDIT: read too fast the first time. It does kind of look like the same set of scans for the linked site, although they have coverage for newer stuff as well.

Yeah, My kids love downloading instructions from the lego site for sets they don't have, but still have almost all of the pieces.

Isn't this a pretty significant copyright infringement?

In the same way that publishing the owners manual for the Apple II is a copyright infringement.

LEGO has zero incentive to crack down on this since the only way you can buy the book is with the set itself. Allowing fans to relive old sets is in no way hindering sales. Most likely then opposite.

All (?) of these images seem to be rendered from the PDFs that are available for free download at lego.com though.

With the explosion of 3d printing I would love to see what Lego does to capture this market. I can already print lego clone pieces. My niece doesn't really know about intellectual property, she know about mashing plastic together.

They can be the leader, but the window that they can take advantage of this is closing quickly. A 300 dollar printer id not that big of an investment and once you have it you can print a big item for about a dollar in plastic.

The difference is that 3d printed piece will hold up for what, a year if that. There is a reason that Lego cost as much as they do, and it isn't because they are greedy. The tolerances on the blocks that they produce are beyond tight and their blocks are guaranteed to work basically for life. Ever try megablocks, that is what 3d printing your own pieces is going to be like...at best.

Lego is something that was passed down to me and I have passed it onto my own children and the amount of blocks we have continue to grow.

Can you give evidence to it only lasting a year? I print in PETG which is the same plastic used by Coke to create their 2 liter bottles. Even "if" it only lasts a year, the cost of the plastic is cents so I'll just print another.

I'll pass down the schematics which are more durable than even plastic.

If you print another brick, what happens to the old brick? Another piece of trash for landfill?

PLA is easy to recycle, though as I said I mostly print PET. That does seem to be recyclable though I question the cost/benefit of doing so since the recycling itself has cost and it may weaken the plastic.

Personally I have a bucket filled with the scraps till I can figure out what I want to do. But I know I've thrown away far more plastic packaging than I waste printing so I don't stress about it.

Nevertheless your point is valid and needs to be considered as 3d printing becomes mainstream.

I highly doubt you can print lego pieces at anywhere near the tolerances that the real bricks have. Getting tolerances right even on shapes that are relatively simple is a massive problem with most filaments. On most of mine, the plastic expands anywhere between .2 and .6 mm depending on all kinds of factors that are hard to predict. Duplo would probably work well, though.

There are already a few sellers of 3d printed Lego compatible pieces. They usually sell to special minifig accessories (armors, weapons, headpieces), sometime hand painted or hand finished.

These accessories command relatively high prices and cater to a market not covered by Lego itself.

You can buy instructions on bricklink.com, too, if you like paper. BL is a bit of an old beast of a site, but it's got (by far) the biggest collection of LEGO stuff on the planet - and I include LEGO Inc, in that.

I love this site. My parents saved all my early '90s pirate sets, but they eventually got pretty beat in cardboard boxes. Now, my kids get to enjoy the Black Seas Barracuda too.

Ah, phooie, no instructions for the Architecture Studio :-(

Edit: okay, they don't have a PDF, but they do have page by page scans. So that's something, at least.

What, no SW UCS kits? Lame!

They have the original Technic sets though, that's pretty awesome.

I wonder what SEO keywords they're targeting with that Welcome copy?

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