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The advantages are obvious-you can document what pieces you need and what steps you must take to build a model. There's an expectation of precision and realism.īecause LEGO fans are legion, there is a prolific community of builders creating LEGO models using CAD. CAD software replaced old-style drafting, in which specifications are created to demonstrate how something may be built, once or 100 times, in the real world.
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If you have to "cheat" what's physically possible to ensure that something looks cool, that's OK, because the thing you're building only exists in a virtual space.Ĭomputer-Aided Design (CAD) is different. How you build something is less important than whether the thing looks good. They are, like film itself, generally just for show. I'm comfortable with 3D applications, but all of the ones I've used have been specific to motion graphics and film production. I have several years working in a virtualized 3D space (even longer in actual 3D space, for what that's worth).
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I wasn't allowed to actually play D&D for a variety of reasons, but through some mental acrobatics worthy of a level 15 rogue, I determined that building AD&D characters didn't count as playing, and recreating Dragonlance in LEGO form was a pretty good approximation of the game.įor that reason, one of my favorite genres of LEGOs was the castles, and I spent hours upon hours devising gauntlet-like dungeons for my mini figurines. My childhood consisted of about 20% Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and 80% LEGOs, with a pretty strong crossover of the two.
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