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Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

brickit.app

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Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#61

Post by eesmith »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #60
samingrassia wrote: post #59

I had a similar idea, but swapped the Legos for the ikea replacement parts catalog. What’s the cheapest standing desk you can build with these cheap and easily available parts?

They have a replacement parts catalogue?

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/spare-parts/

> Missing a leg for your sofa? Need an extra hinge? Spare parts big or small, we’ve got you covered. Repairing rather than replacing your furniture is great for the environment and great for your wallet!

> You can order smaller spare parts such as screws, knobs or hinges at no cost using our self-service tool. Small spare parts will be delivered directly to your address in approximately 7 to 10 business days.

> To purchase spare parts for your appliance, contact the authorized service center as listed in the user manual provided with the product.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#62

Post by bartvk »

mongol wrote: post #43

What I remember from childhood was that you were often looking for a particular piece you knew you had, but could not find it. This app could be useful for that.

It's gotten worse, too. There used to be a limited amount of colors. My daughter now has a lot of of the Lego Friends series. It's very difficult, because there's pink, light pink, purple, light purple, and some sort of lilac. So if you want to perfectly build a piece, it takes a whole lot of searching. But then again, it's kinda fun too because you're forced to substitute.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#63

Post by regularfry »

mongol wrote: post #43

What I remember from childhood was that you were often looking for a particular piece you knew you had, but could not find it. This app could be useful for that.

Having recently done some moderately frustrating builds for the first time since my age was in single digits, I discovered that a small amount of pre-sorting radically improved this situation. And it doesn't seem to matter what parameter you index on: colour, size, type - anything to reduce the search space seems to work. Nor does the sort need to be complete. Just reducing the size of the unsorted pile also helps.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#64

Post by Severian »

neilpa wrote: post #56
dustractor wrote: post #37

I've been wishing there was an app where you could point your phone at a pile of scrap lumber and it would tell you things you could make with them. This is a step in that direction even if it's just for lego bricks right now.

I have a literal pile of bricks in my backyard. I thought this was going to be an app that I could scan them with and tell me how to build a pizza oven.

It would be helpful in Argentina... sorry.. couldn't help it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794597

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#66

Post by ezconnect »

robbrown451 wrote: post #57

Very cool. Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of rocks and tell me how to put them together to build a wall with minimal space between them. https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stone-wall-texture-pict... Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.

There's lots of papers about that algorithm used on warehouse box stocking.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#67

Post by dr_dshiv »

regularfry wrote: post #63
mongol wrote: post #43

What I remember from childhood was that you were often looking for a particular piece you knew you had, but could not find it. This app could be useful for that.

Having recently done some moderately frustrating builds for the first time since my age was in single digits, I discovered that a small amount of pre-sorting radically improved this situation. And it doesn't seem to matter what parameter you index on: colour, size, type - anything to reduce the search space seems to work. Nor does the sort need to be complete. Just reducing the size of the unsorted pile also helps.

Oh man, nowadays, presorting is one of my main ways of Lego play. I never knew I had such ocd tendencies. But if I can change maximal entropy into neat stacks of color and shape, I feel like god.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#68

Post by ezconnect »

tamrix wrote: post #44
makeitdouble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This takes the same position as the building instructions you get with a Lego set. To me the interesting part is you can buy brick buckets and still allow unexperienced kids to build something cool following instructions. They’ll still do modifications and evolutions from there, the important part being that they know how it was built and can break it and rebuild again.

When you were a kid wasn't the funniest part modifying the design or building your own? Isn't that kind of the point of Lego? It's in small blocks so you can create something with your imagination?

When I was a kid imagination filled in all the missing details of my lego build and it look awesome and amazing. Now that I am older I just look at them as a low resolution approximation of the real world and not as exciting it was before.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#69

Post by makeitdouble »

tamrix wrote: post #44
makeitdouble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This takes the same position as the building instructions you get with a Lego set. To me the interesting part is you can buy brick buckets and still allow unexperienced kids to build something cool following instructions. They’ll still do modifications and evolutions from there, the important part being that they know how it was built and can break it and rebuild again.

When you were a kid wasn't the funniest part modifying the design or building your own? Isn't that kind of the point of Lego? It's in small blocks so you can create something with your imagination?

A lot of kids fall into that bucket yes.

There’s also kids who need a bit of push at the start, and/or will go through a full build following the directives to see what they want to change, or how they’d build it better.

TBH I fall in the latter category, and take that approach for a lot of things. I.e. I’ll follow a coffee brewing recipe to the letter to see what it gives, and infinitely iterate from there, including taking completely different approaches to compare.

Re: Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions

#70

Post by weinzierl »

robbrown451 wrote: post #57

Very cool. Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of rocks and tell me how to put them together to build a wall with minimal space between them. https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stone-wall-texture-pict... Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.

Very cool idea, but what I'd need way more often:

Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of socks and tell me how to put them together to have a perfect match.

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/socks-pile-texture-pict...

Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.

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