Filed under: Gaming, Software, Education, Odds and ends
LEGO Digital Designer
You may have noticed that we seem to have a bit of a thing for LEGOs here at TUAW. We previously told you about the open source LEGO design program Bricksmith, but now LEGO themselves have released version 1.6 of the LEGO Digital Designer. This cool little app lets you generate HTML building instructions for your design, check the cost of your raw materials, and perhaps best of all, upload your creation to an online gallery.LEGO Digital Designer is a free download from LEGO.
[Edit: it "runs on Intel Macs" but is not a UB]
[Via FreeWareMac]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MacMental said 6:27PM on 12-31-2006
Though I haven't tried the latest release the previous release suffers from several significant flaws.
The first and most important is not all parts and colors are available. This severely limits what you can design. For example, some parts available in green but not in red, and so forth. This baffels me, because if you can get it in green why not red? And some basic pieces are missing altogether?
The other issue are bugs that prevent you from placing bricks properly; in certain situations the program doesn't allow you to place brick where you want without skewing them or putting them where you don't want. You end up fighting with the program and this leads to a very frustrating experiance. So much so, you almost don't want to use it.
However, this program is an awesome idea. I really hope they iron out the issues with it. Even my 5 year old loves playing with this. Gone are the days of digging for hours through boxes of pieces looking for the one you need.
I really like how Lego has kept their toy relevant in today's modern technological age. From this to their new Robot, they are really doing some interesting things.
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Jason said 7:56PM on 12-31-2006
It is still a PPC app, not universal binary, or am I missing something?
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Chip Warden said 9:12PM on 12-31-2006
I have to agree with Jason -- the program is NOT Universal, it is PPC. Oh, well.
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JR said 9:17PM on 12-31-2006
But I ran this version on my Macbook yesterday! I swear. Am I misunderstanding something?
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Word Diggity said 9:26PM on 12-31-2006
From the site: "Mac version runs on Intel Macs" which, sadly ≠ universal binary. It just means Rosetta compatibility. Bummer.
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JR said 11:40PM on 12-31-2006
Ahhhh...
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Jesse Donat said 6:38PM on 1-01-2007
Its very very very slow on my Intel Mac Mini... I'm talking half an hour to load.
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Jeremy said 7:19PM on 1-01-2007
Yeah, the biggest problem with this is the horribly, severely limited brick selection. I don't play with Legos for hours like I did when I was a kid, but I like building little desk decorations and the like from time to time, and this thing has real potential, almost completely destroyed by silly limitations.
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