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LEGO Building Instructions

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Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#41

Post by mirkules »

kroltan wrote: post #10
Waterluvian wrote: post #4

My kids being 4 and 6 means we’re full into Lego. I grew up with two brothers so we have like three hundred pounds of it. But lost most of the instructions. It’s been amazing to go online and find any instruction and re-assemble these kits. It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

> It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack. What! That is the best part! Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know, the clatter of a bajillion pieces of precision plastic, each with their different cavities and sonority, moving around each handful you scrape off to the side…

> no kids yet

You will know no fury as when your kids intentionally mix up all the pieces for fun. We have hundreds of LEGO people, and my kids intentionally dismembered them into their individual pieces (including HANDS!). But how can you get angry at kids playing??? twitch

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#42

Post by gumby »

It wasn't until I started buying Lego for myself (in my 20s) that I learned that Lego came with instructions. When I was a kid my parents would open the box and discard the instructions before giving it to me.

Back then (60s/70s) the sets were quite general and open ended. Modern day Lego has the thinking done ahead of time, and has too many specialised pieces.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#43

Post by kroltan »

epiccoleman wrote: post #37
Waterluvian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looooove that sound. But with young kids there’s no point trying to sort. And without sorting, every piece takes a while to find.

One of my "core memories" wrt Lego is meticulously spending days sorting small parts into some of those Sterilite multi-drawer things and then knocking it over, spilling all my hard work onto the floor and undoing it. I was probably 8 or 9. From that point on, fuck it, they all go in one big box. My brothers and I would compete to see who could find the most valuable pieces. Mostly treasure chest coins, little gems,…

Ha! That was a common competition between me and my friend around that age too.

He is very fortunate to be part of a reasonably affluent family, so he had like 6 60-liter boxes full of assorted Lego.

We would spill a couple at a time (who am I kidding we spilled all of them) on the floor, when the flow of pieces stopped, the game was on! So many arguments about the nature of the simple shapes, like "oh no this isn't a blue lightsaber, it is a cylinder of pure diamond!"

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#44

Post by el_benhameen »

JNRowe wrote: post #2

I sincerely applaud everything ending up on IA. However, if you're searching for specific instructions brickinstructions is excellent as it is far more navigable. For a random example see Starguider¹. I wonder if someone has already scraped that site for IA, beyond simply praying to the Wayback Machine. ¹ https://lego.brickinstructions.com/m/lego_instructions/set/6...

Thank you for sharing this. I’m going to show it to my 6 year old and he’s going to lose his mind. Great way to make use of my massive box of childhood legos and empty summer hours.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#45

Post by stinkytaco »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I like both. I think Lego sets are in many ways my first experience of technical documentation and I still use those skills. It also helped me learn about how sets went together so I could design my own. Finally, I wanted to play with what was on the box.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#46

Post by rhplus »

I'm surprised there's no copyright notice on these instruction booklets. Has LEGO ever stated that their booklets are freely reproducible or is this a gray area?

Note: I'm talking about the layout and graphics of the booklets themselves, not the logical instructions (i.e. recipe book versus recipes).

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#47

Post by dsr_ »

jjkaczor wrote: post #15
kroltan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack. What! That is the best part! Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know, the clatter of a bajillion pieces of precision plastic, each with their different cavities and sonority, moving around each handful you scrape off to the side…

The sound of swishing through a mound/box/bin of LEGO has to be the most relaxing thing for me ever...

My wife says that sound means that I'm happy and relaxed.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#48

Post by dsr_ »

epiccoleman wrote: post #39
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I love all those detail bits. I love to make tiny, intricate models that say a lot in a small space. I love grabbing a couple of random gribbly bits, sticking them together, deciding they look like the beginning of something, then sticking on more bits to make it more like the thing. The "voxel sculpture" style where you just stack (mostly) rectangular bricks into a shape is perfectly valid, but it's less intere…

What I'd really like to see is a "brick bucket" that contains mostly large bricks and maybe a few doors, windows, and slanted tiles. I'm all for gribbly bits, but it seems harder to accumulate a good collection of the basics these days - because the big "brick buckets" you describe are probably half gribbly bits. In my experience as a kid, what we really wanted was enough mass to build walls and houses and forts, and…

Set 10698. 790 pieces, $35 at amazon.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-large-creative-brick...

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#49

Post by bluetomcat »

rkangel wrote: post #40
bluetomcat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In recent years, there is a general drift towards "collectible display models". This means that the piece count in most sets is inflated by a majority of small "finishing" pieces. The models are finicky to build with lots of unusual building techniques (attaching bricks on sidewalls, for example) and are not easy to repurpose into something else in a reasonable amount of time. In the 1990s, it was a "construction toy…

> In recent years, there is a general drift towards "collectible display models" I think there is an actually an "addition" here rather than a change. You're an adult conversing with adults (I assume) and therefore the discussions you have and the marketing you see are more about sets targeted to AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego). The classic Lego childhood lines (Lego City) still exist and still work just as well for play…

Even the vehicles in 5+ City sets are affected by this trend. It takes about 50 parts stacked in intricate ways just to build the base chassis structure of a van, for example.

In the 1990s, Town vehicles were 4-stud wide and didn't focus on the small detailing. The instructions for the original vehicle were just a single sheet of paper with less than 20 steps. You could build the original vehicle by memory after having built it a couple of times with instructions. The back of the box suggested alternative builds, which, although looking "imperfect" were a solid base for imagination.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#50

Post by lapetitejort »

gaazoh wrote: post #35
mrweasel wrote: post #7

Now if someone would just make an app that can figure out which set my bricks belong to. I have at least two sets that I can't find the instructions for, because I have no idea what they're called or which number they have. The bricks are fairly unique, they can't be in more than 10 sets.

You can try to find the parts that stand out on bricklink[0], which will point you to the sets they were used in. It's pretty quick, once you figure out what the part can be called or what category it fits in. If you can't figure it out, you can ask for help on the "bricks" StackExchange site[1]. [0] https://www.bricklink.com [1] https://bricks.stackexchange.com/

I've attempted to find some sets based on a single complicated brick and it can be challenging. How do I find the "official" name of the brick based on my own vague description [0]? What is the true color? How do I find special printed bricks? I'm sure with practice it gets easier. How open is bricks stack exchange to posting just an image of a brick with not much more to go on?

[0]: As an example, here the description of a brick I struggled to name. I've since figured it out, but you are welcome to guess: flat 4x1 with bumps only on the ends (yes, "bumps", because I don't know what the technical term is. Again, I'm sure there's a guide or glossary I could find.)

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