ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Cool CAD animation of the Roberta Ant included in  Roberta Series 1 - NXT . 158 parts to make this ant d esigned by A. Green  I: /. 7.

The new major version 4 of LEGO®'s official CAD tool   LEGO Digital Designer  is out! Amongst other things, LDD now features an improved user interface, a new tool for designing flexible parts and enhanced features for creating building instructions. Download it from the LDD site and give it a try. LDD is available for Windows and Mac OSX.

I consider myself a happy person and this news makes me even happier. I like LEGO and I also like re-creating and saving LEGO contraptions with a CAD setup. You might have seen products of such a setup in the form of building instructions shared on the web or in several MINDSTORMS books available on the shelves. My setup of choice is LDraw and MLCad and both have inhabited my PCs for over 12 years. These are excellent free programs and are supported by a fantastic group of developers that work with an impeccable attention to the details. Their work really shows in the building instructions that can be created. Updates and new versions are always big news...maybe this is one of the bigger times things are coming together. MLCad version 3.30 is released to the world and the LDraw 2010-02 Parts Update is now available containing a great number of new finely-crafted official CAD parts. Installing the software can be a bit tricky sometimes but help can be found in a few books (inc...

On the eurobricks forum, I detected a useful tip on how to make use of a new feature in the LEGO® Digital Designer 3 , called LEGO Universe Mode . It's a new theme that allows you access to all the 1400+ bricks in the LDD database. Read about the details here .

The LEGO Group™ has released the new major version 3.0 of the LEGO Digital Designer® , the official software to create LEGO® models virtually on the computer. The new version includes an online panel an improved user interface a new building guide grouping of elements an improved hinge tool and a hinge align tool a hide tool improved performance a buyability tool Try it out (you can download it from here for free), inspect the Get Started guide and tell us about your experiences.

MCP Philo , well known for a lot of exciting robots, deep insight into the NXT internal electronics and as author of many LDraw parts and of a NXT book (just to name a few things), has published a new fascinating device: a NXT-based 3D scanner . It scans small objects using a needle mounted on a LEGO® linear actuator and reports the data to a computer where they can be used to generate a related 3D CAD model: Intriguing! Note that the scanner has been programmed with pbLua , the NXT programming language based on Lua. A lot of more information can be found on the associated web page .

Remember this little robotic dog? I took the time to build the robot in Google SketchUp and rendered instructions with it. The programs, a video and the new instructions are here .

Sergio Reano has a new update for his 3D Rendering Software . I haven't used the software; however, it claims to provide support for .dat files, .ldr files and .mpd files, including non-certified parts files. Please give us your feedback on the software, if you've used it.

Recently I built one of the robots on the Website with building instructions which I did not design. I built the Support Gunner , designed by Micah, also known as CATpit contractor on this blog. It is a very unique design, and the mechanisms work very well. Good job Micah! Some of the instruction steps were not very clear, so I made new instructions in Google SketchUp . I am finally beginning to understand how it works, and how good the results can be. So if you have not tried any LEGO CAD software yet, you might want to give it a try, the installation is very simple. So, the instructions can be found Here: (click) . For more information about the robot itself, go here . If you prefer to download the instructions to your PC directly, download this archived folder .

Hi, when looking at some of the pictures from LEGO(R)'s production line, some people in the NXT STEP forum pointed out that the Billund designers obviously use Autodesk Maya as a 3D design tool for LEGO(R) models. The discussion ensuing there revealed that that product is known as something rather professional but experience with it amongst the forum members is quite limited. How about you? Can somebody from the community provide information here (best in the according forum topic thread , of course)?

I like games… Do You? Here is yet another sample preview page from - The Lego Mindstorms NXT Idea Book: Design, Invent, and Build . Unfortunately, I splattered paint all over my PDF file when I was mixing the new color for my budget space rocket. Silly Me. I’ll have to remember to keep my PC away from the shop. I apologize for the mess but this is all I can offer at this time. So, what can you figure out from reading the full-sized image? The first person to figure out the subject of the chapter AND the function of the bot wins a wonderful opportunity to be the test pilot on the maiden voyage of my rocket when I complete construction. The keenest investigators will carefully examine all of the available evidence for any clues. Be careful! Each person is limited to 1 guess. However, if a correct answer is not posted by Monday morning I will throw in a hint and allow each person one additional guess. Everyone is welcome to talk about it... But try not to give away any answers before ...

Since I reported on this blog that LPub 2.4.20.0 has not worked on my new Windows computer, it's only fair to report that I tried it again today and it now works! (Thank you to Kevin Clague, God, or whoever is responsible.) Version 3 Alpha, however, still will not allow me to set a minimum distance. (My pins appear to be the size of watermelons---or larger.) I also ran some models in ldglite, and Philo is correct---it does render faster, albeit with a different appearance than POV-Ray/Mega-POV. Publishers may not accept that quality, but it's certainly acceptable for most purposes. (This test dummy was rendered in ldglite.)

I've been working with the new LPub 3 Alpha and the newest LDGLite to (CAD) document some new NXT robots I'm building. When I select Min Camera Distance from Utilities, it it responds with "Fixme!" Does anyone know where I can go for help with this---a forum of some kind? Or, better yet, does anyone know how to fix it? Has anyone else been working with these new versions of Lego CAD software---or do you know of something else that works well these days? Fay