SCALING TUTORIAL FOR BUILDINGS or LEGO ARCHITECTURE MINIFIGURES SCALE

Hi all.

First of all, I’m an Italian architect / Lego collector, so my English is not so good and it can happen that something is not correctly written. I apologize for this.

Second: I don’t know if a similar tutorial already exists. I searched for it because I needed it but I couldn’t find anything, so I started drawing things trying to learn how to scale “real” buildings to rebuild them in minifigures scale. Now that the thing is done I thought that there could have been someone interested in it, so I decided to post it here.

If it is a duplicate of another thread any mod feel free to remove it. If not, feel free to edit the post, while correcting the English form.

Anyway...

I’ve always been in love with Pierre Koening’s Case Study House # 22 (“Stahl House”) – I strongly suggest you to Google it, because it is a real masterpiece of the 20th century – and I wanted to rebuild it with Lego bricks. Unfortunately I don’t really like the “Lego Architecture” theme because minifigures cannot be displayed in those buildings (well, realistically talking it is not possible to make an Eiffel Tower in a minifig scale, but we’re going OT here).

I was looking for a way to resize architectural blueprints, making it possible for a moc to be as realistic as possible in terms of sizes.

The only tutorial I could find was a very nice tutorial for scaling vehicles, (It’s somewhere in Eurobricks) but it was not what I was looking for. So I started drawing…

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

1 - I used the metrical system for all the calculations. Sorry for British and American people, you need to re-rescale things.

2 – A minifigure with standard legs (not the short ones) stands for a person who is tall 1,80 m (5,91 ft), the medium size for a person.

3 – I use comma for decimal point.

4 – Lego minifigures are largest and flattest than real people, so there’s a noticeable approximation of the whole system. The basic parameter for scaling I used is height and not length. Starting from length you could end up having different results. This is also due to the fact that a 1x1 Lego brick is taller than larger.

5 – The method is used to “read” 1:100 blueprints in “Lego terms”. Considering the scaling methods there’s a lot we could talk about, but I’ll explain only the things I’m interested in. I did this for 1:100 blueprints because here in Italy they are the most common ones. (and I think in the whole Europe, too).

HERE IT IS, OUR DOWNLOADED DRAWING

We start with a blueprint found on the Internet or in books or whatever.

I usually redraw it with a CAD software, it’s plenty of them and there are many that are freeware. Anyway this is not needed.

Here it is the basic drawing I used:

And this is the one I did starting from that one and comparing it to the many photos I downloaded:

For the sake of knowledge, here is a photo of the building:

Then we need to scale it in Lego Minifigures Scale:

As a general rule, you can consider that a plan 1:100 has to be scaled 2,28 X before being printed. (If you photocopy it you have to do a 228% zoom). Here it is, so simple!

You can see in this image the proportions between a regular drawing and a scaled one.

Please notice that the height and weight of a 1x1 Lego bricks are different, so this method is not 100% accurate, anyway I find it is one of the best working.

THE RULERS

I did a UNI A4 sheet (21 x 29,7 cm) with a useful ruler that converts inches to meters to bricks. If you have a drawing in front of you just print it and use it. Be sure you print it in the right scale.

I hope you found this guide useful, here is a photo where you can see a real use of all the things I said: Lego Bricks fits perfectly into the printed blue grid, so you can now build in a very accurate way.

Side Note.

It’s been VERY difficult for me to write this guide, and there are a tons more things to say but I’m not good enough in English to say them (and I think that they are a little too much technical to be interesting for an average reader), so if you have any questions just reply to this topic and I see if I can help you!

Comments & flames are strongly welcome!

Great guide. You've clearly put a lot of work into this, and I'm sure many people will find it useful.

Great guide. You've clearly put a lot of work into this, and I'm sure many people will find it useful.

Thanks!

Very nice tutorial! The most useful for me is the scaling factor (so minifig scale is in fact 1:~44 (100/2,28) and 1 stud equals ~34cm in that scale). It might come handy if I want to build something from real live in scale. Good job!

I've always wanted to make a lifelike model of my own home in Lego, but was always too lazy to do the measuring and calculations.

This should help me with that. Thanks for the guide.

Hi

to do iit in you way: I will start with numbers ;)

1 welcome to EB :)

2 an ITALIAN tall person is 1,80m, others are 2,00m ;)

3 just kidding!

4 do not care that much about your english. It is very good understandable! There are many non native english speaker here right now.

5 i like your combination: beeing an anchitect and Lego fan. That must be a great source for ideas!

Dino

Wow! This is great, jedi1984, I can tell that this must have been a labour of love. I'll keep this in mind for future reference.

Also, I can see why you fell in love with that building!

2 an ITALIAN tall person is 1,80m, others are 2,00m ;)

3 just kidding!

ROTFL, you're right, I didn't consider nothern Europe people :-)

Anyway to bypass this, I always approximate in excess, scaling all measurements to the next plate (or brick). This can be seen in the last image: when I'm going to build the kitchen it will be 11 studs wide and not 10, even if 10 should be the right number.

This is also due to the fact that the first things to be build are the walls (interior and exterior) and they cannot be less than 1 brick wide. (this is not true if you build SNOT, but for standard techniques it is).

To kciR: yes it's roughly a 1:44 scale but as Dino pointed out the taller you consider a minifigure to be, the higher is the scale, so I'd say it can be a 1:44 to 1:48 scale, then it depends on how you prefer your model to look. It's a subjective scaling system, different people could end up having different results.

To all: Thank you very much for your support!

This is a great idea and leads to much to think about, Thanks.

To kciR: yes it's roughly a 1:44 scale but as Dino pointed out the taller you consider a minifigure to be, the higher is the scale, so I'd say it can be a 1:44 to 1:48 scale, then it depends on how you prefer your model to look. It's a subjective scaling system, different people could end up having different results.

This is very good advice, and since the minifig is quite a different shape than a human, the taller you consiser them to be, the more problematic thier width becomes. At 1:48 the width of doorways might become too narrow for a minifig. Many vehicle builders treat minifigs as short and fat and build to 1:38 for this reason.

2 – A minifigure with standard legs (not the short ones) stands for a person who is tall 1,80 m (5,91 ft), the medium size for a person.

Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed scaling tutorial. I find it very informative and will apply it to my future MOC in trying to visualize the real building vs. mini figure scale.

Also, 180cm = 5 ft 11 inches or commonly written as 5'11.

"5.91ft" doesn't make any sense because it is not metric... 1 ft does not divide into 10x 0.1 ft - it is divided into 12 inches. I know I know... crazy Americans with our non-metric system

Edited June 28, 201212 yr by bzcat

Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed scaling tutorial. I find it very informative and will apply it to my future MOC in trying to visualize the real building vs. mini figure scale.

Also, 180cm = 5 ft 11 inches or commonly written as 5'11.

"5.91ft" doesn't make any sense because it is not metric... 1 ft does not divide into 10x 0.1 ft - it is divided into 12 inches. I know I know... crazy Americans with our non-metric system

Thank you, the conversion between differente systems is always a pain...