woolie

It's not as smooth, and it is more difficult to use. But I find it's actually usable. And it doesn't delete bricks from release to release.

Great set, good review. I'm about halfway done building mine. But you should check your white balance settings :)

The Western Town will never make it past review phase, even if it had a million votes. It would probably cost $500 or $1000 per set.

I was thinking about doing this pretty soon.. I want to do a high speed run across my living room, with a turnaround like this at each end. My cats *HATE* the trains. It's wonderful.

I tried large models like this using LDD but gave up, because the group system was too clunky and awful to use. I use BrickSmith, which is an MLCad/LDraw compatible designer for Mac. I put each major component into a sub model, and can view/edit that section independently from the rest of the model. Also, can use multiple references to submodels, so items that are repetitive I can design once and then clone.

When my desk was at a different window, it looked out over the helipad of a major trauma hospital. The helicopters would come and go all day long. As in your design, the helipad is on the roof.

Well... I told myself I was going to wait. But my wife called me on the way home, and said "2x VIP points." That was enough to knock down any willpower I had left.

I was planning on picking it up when it comes out, but spent all my Lego funds on a lot from Craigslist So it will have to wait a couple more weeks...

Sterilite 5 drawer containers on caster wheels are on sale at Target for $18, down from $22. I picked up 2 more (now have 5) and may still get 2 more if they're on sale next week. As mentioned upthread, these are going to be used for "basic brick" storage. So, it took 4 people working for 2 hours, but we did the first pass on sorting about 1/2 of the bulk lot I bought last week. I made a list of about 16 categories. Each person picked 4 categories and got a plastic bin for each category. I'd grab a large pile of bricks from the tub, place in the center of the table, and we'd each pick out our categories. Worked pretty well -- definitely much faster than I could have sorted 30lbs of bricks on my own. I'll be doing the second pass sorting (usually down to individual molds, or very specific categories) over the next couple weeks. I'll post pics when it's all said and done.

More Paradisa type sets. Lego City seems to exist only for the transportation of goods and protection of property. But no goods are actually consumed, and no additional services are actually rendered

Unlikely you would lose money, but probable that the returns are far more pedestrian than you'd imagine from the asking prices. Look at completed transactions and stock levels to get an idea of how quickly they move. Also, the AFOL fanbase is much larger now than it was in the past. You will be just one of thousands of people buying these sets as an "investment," which is a very different situation than several years ago.

This sounds like a particularly challenging contest. I look forward to entering.

My names weren't too far off "today's" names. I did refer to "plates" as "flats," though, and think it's a bit softer word than "plate." So, I still tend to use it.

Haha, well, since you're bringing a thread back from the dead, I might post some pictures of my sorting progress as well. Currently in the process of making space in my loft area :)

One final idea/question. I frequently deal with ontologies in my work -- how things are organized, hierarchies, "this-is-a-" relationships, etc. So I've been dwelling a bit on this: When I present you with a random element, you're going to immediately mentally put it into some category. And if you were going to sort it, it'd go into a bin. Do you rely on any of the "established" systems, or just what feels right based on your experience? I personally feel that BrickLink has the most "natural" grouping, also with an attempt to have second level groups like "brick, modified" and "technic, liftarm." And sorting to their system is advantageous if I am buying/selling bricks. But the tool that I use most often is BrickSmith/LDraw. I doesn't feel quite as natural, and it has too many useless top level categories, but if it's the tool that I'm using........ And finally, of course, LDD's grouping has the imprimatur of TLG. It is also largely based on functional categories, which is very useful and a natural way of thinking about building.