How to create a custom brick palette in LDD

[Superkalle]

Create a custom brick palette for use in LDD

Starting with version 4.3.5, LDD supports custom palettes. By placing one or more LXF-files in the CustomPalettes folder (more info below), you will get your own personalized brick palette in the LDD interface. You can use the LDD Managers LXF generator to create the needed LXF-files from a list of bricks, or you can just use any LXF-file and use that.

Figure 1 - A custom palette in LDD (left) and the resulting palette (right).

Step 1 – Create the CustomPalettes folder

First you need to create a new folder named "UserPalettes" in the following location:

On Windows: %APPDATA%\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\

On MAC: ~/Library/Application Support/LEGO Company/LEGO Digital Designer/

So, for example, on my Windows Seven installation:

C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\UserPalettes\

Step 2 - Create a brick list

The next step is to create a list of the bricks you want to have in your custom palette along with brick quantities. The source for this list can be for example

a) BrickLink catalog list of partID's

b) A list you made yourself in Excel

c) An exported list from some inventory management system

d) A BrickLink set inventory

NOTE: If you use an existent LXF-file, then skip to Step 4.

Step 3 - Paste data into LDD Manager and create LXF-file

Enter or paste the part list into LDD Managers “Generate LXF” window and click “Go - Generate LXF-file”

Figure 2 - Example list of bricks with specified quantities

Step 4 – Review and place file into CustomPalettes

Once the LXF file has been created, it will open in LDD. Important: Now do a File>Save As in LDD to save the LXF with a name you want for your Custom Palette into the UserPalettes folder. Exit LDD and restart. Now you should have your new palette accessible.

• You must use LDD Mode (not Extended) to see the palette
  
• Note that you can have as many LXFML-files as you want in the UserPalettes folder. Each one will be a unique palette.
  
• Also note that if you edit the file name of the LXF-file in Explorer, it will not change the Palette name. To change the palette name, open the LXF in LDD and use SaveAs.
  

Figure 3 - A generated LXFML file opened in LDD. If the quantity is more then one, bricks are stacked on top of each other.

[treeboy]

Thanks for this.

[Sjuip]

What took you so long to write this down? The feature's been there for ages now!

Seriously, I am very grateful for TLG to have given us the ol' pallettes back in LDD 4.3.

So: muchos thumbs-up for you, Superkalle, for sharing this handy LDD feature with us in such an understandable way. :thumbup:

[Superkalle]

So: muchos thumbs-up for you, Superkalle, for sharing this handy LDD feature with us in such an understandable way. :thumbup:

Thanks

(To be honest, I have to give kudos to Calabar, who has been on my megablocks about this for a long time now )

[Aanchir]

Hey, I've got a question about this. Where do I find my custom palettes on a Mac? This post described how to create a userpalettes folder on a Mac, and several months ago I did just that. Now there no longer exists a "LEGO Company" folder in my Application Data folder, but the custom palette I created back then still exists in the program. It is simply proving impossible to find just where it is saved.

The best I can figure is that there was at some point an LDD update that changed the program's file structure in the Mac version. But it is immensely frustrating not being able to create new user palettes or even find where I put my original custom palette (which is near-useless and which I might as well delete).

[Calabar]

Did you try a search for "UserPalettes"?

If your palettes are still available, then the "UserPalette" folder should be somewhere.

Once found the folder, we could update the guide.

[Aanchir]

Did you try a search for "UserPalettes"?

If your palettes are still available, then the "UserPalette" folder should be somewhere.

Once found the folder, we could update the guide.

Yes, I searched for it. It doesn't seem to exist; if it does, it must be hidden somewhere where Finder can't find it.

I also searched for LEGO Company and for the name of the file that became my custom palette. No dice.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Aanchir

[Calabar]

What a strange thing. Maybe they placed all inside the program folder?

Can't finder be forced to search inside hidden or protected folders? Maybe starting it as root user?

Maybe Superkalle could contact the LDD team to ask them where the folder has been placed.

[hrontos]

I think, you just have to create it yourself once again. What happens if you create it once again? Will the OS let you create it again? In Windows some folders are merged from public and user folders. Is it possible that you have it also as a public folder somewhere?

Edited May 7, 2013 by hrontos

[Aanchir]

What a strange thing. Maybe they placed all inside the program folder?

Can't finder be forced to search inside hidden or protected folders? Maybe starting it as root user?

Maybe Superkalle could contact the LDD team to ask them where the folder has been placed.

Finder can look inside hidden or protected folders, yes. But it's not inside the program folder as far as I can tell. That does include things like assets.lif, preferences.ini, and the help assets, but there's no sign of the userpalettes folder or the .lxf file I had saved there.

Just to confirm that the program folder is not where the custom palettes are saved, I deleted LDD from my computer and reinstalled it. Sure enough, when I reinstalled it, my custom palette was still there. So I'm extremely puzzled.

I think, you just have to create it yourself once again. What happens if you create it once again? Will the OS let you create it again? In Windows some folders are merged from public and user folders. Is it possible that you have it also as a public folder somewhere?

The computer does have a "Shared" user account with its own "Application Data" folder, but the only subfolder there is "Adobe", so that can't be it. Creating the folder again is hard because I'd have to create all the folders it's supposed to be nested in (so to create the "userpalettes" folder where it was originally supposed to be placed, I'd have to first create a "LEGO Company" folder and a "LEGO Digital Designer" folder). If those folders don't already exist, then I highly doubt that LDD would even know to reference them, especially since the custom palette I saved before is somehow still on my computer somewhere and LDD is referencing it there.

EDIT: Turns out the folders were in fact hidden, and somehow getting them to display was not as intuitive a process as I had remembered. I've found them now. If anyone in the future has difficulty with this, a Google search for "How to view hidden folders on Mac OS X" should bring up the solution.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Aanchir

[Calabar]

EDIT: Turns out the folders were in fact hidden, and somehow getting them to display was not as intuitive a process as I had remembered. I've found them now. If anyone in the future has difficulty with this, a Google search for "How to view hidden folders on Mac OS X" should bring up the solution.

Could you report the path of the folder, so that I can update the guide?

[Nachapon Lego]

I use rebrickable.com 's my real sets list -> parts list -> LDD Manager to make this my real bricks pallette (very quick, copy & paste once only). Then got more than 80% complete pallette. Maybe it is because the LDD Manager doesn't support minifigs yet. Thanks Superkalle, for make this very useful LDD Manager!

Lego LDD my real parts pallette test by bbqqq1, on Flickr

Edited May 10, 2013 by bbqqq

[Calabar]

@bbqqq

Great work, maybe the problem is related to decorations. I notice some difficulties to manage decorations when you create a palette with LDD manager.

Besides there is the issue of almost identical parts available only in the colours of the specific DesignID.

A question: in the screenshot it seems you put there more than one part for the same brick in the same colour.

Is it correct or the parts are in different but similar colours?

[Nachapon Lego]

@bbqqq

Great work, maybe the problem is related to decorations. I notice some difficulties to manage decorations when you create a palette with LDD manager.

Besides there is the issue of almost identical parts available only in the colours of the specific DesignID.

A question: in the screenshot it seems you put there more than one part for the same brick in the same colour.

Is it correct or the parts are in different but similar colours?

Thanks Calabar. You are right, I didn't noticed that all decorations are missing. Have to manual apply decorations and missing parts/minifigs to make this pallette more sync to my real bricks collection in real world.

For "more than one part for the same brick" is beacese that I have exactry those quantity of that bricks in real world. The rebrickable auto-sum and LDD manager auto-generate them. Just input all set numbers that I own. If I delete them all then the pallette become like this. For example it show all type of plates and correct quantity I have in real world.

Lego LDD my real parts pallette test _LXF quick auto create by LDD Manager & rebrickable by bbqqq1, on Flickr

Edited May 10, 2013 by bbqqq

[Calabar]

I didn't mean that the palette was related to your collection.

I thought you have created a palette containing ALL the bricks in real colour (a sort of filtered palette, to avoid a builder uses a brick that don't exists in real).

Put more than one brick for each ElementID risks to make the file size very heavy.

[Itaria No Shintaku]

I always get the same problem: torso and legs are not printed.

Just heads.

Can someone tell me why it happens?

Steps I did:

created palette folder

placed lxf file in it

restored LDD

[Aanchir]

I always get the same problem: torso and legs are not printed.

Just heads.

Can someone tell me why it happens?

Steps I did:

created palette folder

placed lxf file in it

restored LDD

I haven't experienced this issue myself. I have a custom brick palette of Collectible Minifigure parts on my LDD, and the torsos and legs don't have any problem. I'm using a Mac, though, which might be different than the Windows version.

If I had to hazard a guess as to why torsos and legs would have this issue but heads would not, I'd say it's because torsos and legs are pre-assembled, which means their definitions on LDD are formatted somewhat differently. On LDD, a piece you can pull from the brick tray is a "brick", and any pre-assembled sections of that piece are "parts". Decorations are defined as a characteristic of the "parts", not the "bricks". So that might have something to do with it. But I don't have enough technical knowledge to even imagine why that might be an issue for LDD.

[dvsntt]

This is so useful! Thank you so much!

[James Mathis]

I am so grateful to you who are LDD experts for posting information about creating custom "theme" User Palettes.

This is fantastic! This will really assist my efforts-- and hopefully others who might participate-- in designing multiple alternate train-related models from a specific assortment of pieces-- and quantities-- that I have used to create a LEGO IDEAS project call Super Mega Steam Power Train Builder.

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102817&st=0

I'm really excited and incredible grateful for the ability to create these custom User Palettes.

I hope to find-- or create my own-- User Palette that contains only parts from the S@H Pick-a-Brick assortment. I often like to try creating models using strictly only the S@H online PaB elements. By chance, has someone already created such a PaB User Palette already?

I found the instructions to display the hidden folders and files on Mac OS very straightforward here:

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/3104/os-x-show-hidden-files-and-folders-in-mac-os-x-finder/

Thanks, again,

mahalo,

James Mathis

Edited December 8, 2014 by James Mathis

[Kalais]

Hey guys,

I am sorry for digging out old topic, but I have problem with the step 3 of this guide.

I got like 5k loose pieces on Rebricable. It is obvious I don't want to put them 1by1 into tables.

Is there any way I can auto fill it into LDD Manager?

P.S. I can export Rebricable data to those formats:

Export to Rebrickable (CSV) (include set parts)

Export to BrickLink (XML) (include set parts)

Export to BrickStore (BSX) (include set parts)

Export to Peeron (TSV) (include set parts)

Export to HTML Table (include set parts)

Export to HTML Grid (include set parts)

[Calabar]

I resume this quite old topic to ask for the present situation about creating a custom palette from a known bricklist.
I think this feature in LDD is very useful for those who want to recreate an existing set, and it would be a pity to renounce to it because of the lack of a proper tool that helps to take advantage of it.

As known, Superkalle's LDD Manager is discontinued for a long time and with the community updates of LDD brickset the list of available bricks is heavily changed.
Is there any tool able to create the lxf/lxfml file necessary to create such palettes, maybe starting from bricklists of official sets available, or importing a custom list?
If the answer is no, is there anyone that could try to approach such tool, maybe taking advantage of the work made on the custom palette and its coversion (@SylvainLS, @Stephan)?
The tool itself should be quite simple to create, maybe some extra work could be necessary to add a "missing bricks" or "replaced bricks with similar ones" list, but I don't think it would require much more.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Calabar