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LEGO Building Instructions

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Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#111

Post by nuancebydefault »

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”.

The fun of building new sets off instructions is the satisfying-ness. You know the instructions are correct, that no pieces are missing and all pieces click together satisfyingly into the result, that looks and feels nice. Each click is satisfying.

It is a whole lot different from tinkering with arduino hats/sw, as frustration can creep in if things don't work as expected.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#112

Post by JNRowe »

internetter wrote: post #3
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...

Yes, we archived the entire thing in 2020[0] (~100gb). Maybe it's worth running again. [0]: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/avlad Edit: What this means is you can open any* link to lego.brickinstructions.com and see it in the wayback machine (IA ingests these archives) *maybe not the mobile view you linked, not links after the job ran, not pages that couldn't be found in a crawl

That is great. I could see a lot it was in the wayback machine, but I have no idea what the pipeline for that is. Poking around from your link was informative, thanks!

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#113

Post by xp84 »

sxp wrote: post #27

For modern sets, you can also get a PDF from the official site: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions/7622... One of these days, I want to learn enough computer vision to write an LEGO instruction booklet to LCAD convertor that could be fed old instructions and generate a 3D model of the set. An archive of the instructions is nice, but a virtual archive of sets would be nicer.

Then feed that model into a 3d printer and archive your built sets immutably in meatspace! :D

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#114

Post by swayvil »

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 agree.

It's like painting by numbers. Or drawing from one of those "how to draw a pirate" instructional guides.

It's a completely different thing.

I know a guy who prefers the instructions. He builds them and then keeps them on display, on shelves and such.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#115

Post by fluxinflex »

davely wrote: post #74
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…

> Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know My friend, let me introduce you to this Spotify playlist: LEGO White Noise [1] [1] https://open.spotify.com/album/6qZUya0mkucuxvoIp4akVT?si=RgH...

That made my day! That's soooo incredibly unbelievably mindnumbingly stupid that I love it :+1:

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#116

Post by semi-extrinsic »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #25
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…

There's someone who's really into knolling ( https://knolling.org/what-is-knolling ) and hates this comment.

Always Be Knolling.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#117

Post by mcphage »

photonerd wrote: post #99
mcphage wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of ways. It's parts that you can do whatever with, and it has instructions for one or more models that you can make. Some people like the sheer possibilities of making things up, and some people find that daunting. Lego supports both, and anything in between. Following the i…

> The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of ways. Indeed: the exact opposite of a set of instructions & specific, custom produced, build pieces.

> specific, custom produced, build pieces

How they reuse molds in Lego models is crazy. I have a model with a pagoda, that uses bananas for the points on the eaves. My favorite is the orchid model, where the smaller orchid blossoms are demigorgon heads from the Stranger Things sets.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#118

Post by usefulcat »

samstave wrote: post #61
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.

>>* half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.* Are you NUTS? Are you trying to shame my 1980s values with LEGO? "I KNOW that FN piece is in here!!!! I JUST SAW IT!!!!" You're robbing your kids of a life lesson. and better image recognition, memory, sorting processing thoughts, etc. There are so many lessons embedded in working with LEGO that can o…

I get what you're saying, but in a large pile, finding the right piece is easily 10x harder now because the number of unique LEGO parts is much, much higher than when you and I were kids.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#119

Post by marceldegraaf »

gleenn wrote: post #64

I was sad not to see the original Technic Super Car. It had a working V8, 4 wheel drive with 4 wheel steering and 3 way differential, and even an actual gear box with shifter. You could see the pistons pump when you pushed it around. One of the best birthday presents I ever asked for.

That was an amazing set. The first one I bought from my own hard-saved cash as a kid. Really fun to build and amazing (and informative) to see the working steering, differential, suspension, and gear train assemblies.

I have this set laying around, mostly complete. Should really rebuild it someday!

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#120

Post by samstave »

usefulcat wrote: post #118
samstave wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>* half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.* Are you NUTS? Are you trying to shame my 1980s values with LEGO? "I KNOW that FN piece is in here!!!! I JUST SAW IT!!!!" You're robbing your kids of a life lesson. and better image recognition, memory, sorting processing thoughts, etc. There are so many lessons embedded in working with LEGO that can o…

I get what you're saying, but in a large pile, finding the right piece is easily 10x harder now because the number of unique LEGO parts is much, much higher than when you and I were kids.

Ah, I mis-interpreted that.. and I agree. I hate the custom/uniques that lego builds with some lame co-branding like a movie with DC/Marvel....

Lego is by default the foundationaly builing block.

I HATE custom pieces to a lego set.

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