- This topic has 73 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 7 months ago by
.
Home › Forums › All Things LEGO! › First-Time Builder, So Many Questions
Nancy Flury Carlson.Trans green is so Simpsons! I like the trans purple. I actually thought it was weird to make any of the pieces a transparent color but that’s what the designer did and I do like it.
Here is a view of what I have so far. The Reactor Vessel is just balancing on top of its Dragon Egg. The Steam Generators, once they get their Dragon Egg bottoms, will be installed closer to center and up higher above the gray bases on either side of the Reactor Vessel.
Hmm, I don’t have the faceted dome bottom piece. Maybe this piece will connect the two parts …
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?id=1546#T=C
… or contact the guy who created the instructions?
The one end goes into the Plate OK, and I can stabilize it with a little spacer. But the end next to the Dragon Egg hole doesn’t fit unless I can attach something that ends in a small round peg.
Nancy Flury Carlson.
What’s the etiquette anyway for using someone’s design? I have been wondering if I should reach out to the designer, just in general, to let him know I am building his design. I just haven’t done it yet.
They would probably be thrilled that someone is interested enough in their design to build it in real life. I would definitely contact the designer.
Can you post a pic of the inside of the dragon egg? The pics on BL are predictably terrible, and I might have to do some serious searching in my collection to find that part. I think I’m picturing it correctly based on your description, but I want to be sure before I come up with anything. I think we can come up with something, although it might only be sturdy as long as nobody touches it, or looks at it funny, or thinks too hard about gravity in its vicinity.
Another option is to use this part. Flipping your 4×4 round plate so that it’s studs down would be easy, and then this would click right on, but the drawback would be that trans-purple is no longer an option. You’d have to switch to light bley, or pick a different transparent color, and I’m not sure how easy all of those parts are to get. You seem pretty attached to both the trans-purple and the dragon egg, but I’ll list it here anyway as a last resort:
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=86500#T=C&C=86
>> … or contact the guy who created the instructions?
I’m skeptical that he had anything in mind. As I mentioned before, despite his mention of the estimated cost of building it on the webpage, it’s clear that he really gave zero consideration to whether or not a part exists in a given color, and so there’s no reason to believe he gave any consideration to connections that wouldn’t actually hold up under gravity, which I’m aware is a frequent problem in digital-only builds. I’d say if there’s a solution that doesn’t involve incredibly obscure parts, we should be able to figure it out.
>> What’s the etiquette anyway for using someone’s design? I have been wondering if I should reach out to the designer, just in general, to let him know I am building his design. I just haven’t done it yet.
I agree with Greg, I think he’d be glad to know, and might even be interested in your progress, and certainly would want to see the final result. (And if he’s not, well, his loss. The Lego community does have plenty of… unusual people, so it’s certainly possible.)
As far as I know, the etiquette is pretty much just don’t pass it off as your own, and don’t make money off of it, neither of which I see being a problem here. If you post pics to Flickr or elsewhere, you’ll want to put his name and a link to the LDD file if you can in the credits. If I were putting it on public display, I’d want some kind of MOC card that includes his name as the designer. (I did both those things when I used Chris Giddens’ space computer avatar tile design for my Space Computer Station builds.)
As far as money goes, this clearly isn’t the kind of project where you’re going to crank out hundreds or even dozens of them and sell them at a massive profit. And I’m guessing any other conversation on this topic is either premature, or won’t ever be relevant. The only thing I can think of is if, years from now, you decide you’re tired of putting it on display, and there’s an interested buyer, and you want to recoup some of the cost of what you paid for the parts to build it. If you’re selling it for the same amount you spent on it, I wouldn’t feel any need to divert any money to the designer. If you’re selling it for four times what you paid in parts, I don’t know what the protocol is, and I hesitate to speculate on how I’d handle it, because I don’t ever expect to be in that situation, but my time as a salesman is suggesting that you split the overage 50-50.
This has gotten a bit off-topic, but IMHO when you pay for directions (for anything) it’s legit to sell the thing you made using the directions, you just can’t sell the directions themself because they are intellectual property.
Por exemplo, Ben and Jerry took a five dollar correspondence course from Penn State on how to make ice cream, but I don’t think the Berkey Creamery is getting royalties from sales of Cherry Garcia.
Greg Schubert.
@bengood921 Thanks for your detailed response. Here is a picture of the inside of the Dragon Egg. I agree the Cylinder Hemisphere might be a better choice and actually does make more sense but if I can use the Dragon Egg with some type of connection scheme, I’d like to. If I switch to the Cylinder Hemisphere you suggested, I would probably switch out the trans purple umbrellas on top for a grey umbrella if available. I would lose some of the fun of the design but it would actually be much more realistic.
It’s also very clear that the designer did NOT design for physical stability. A good example is the Steam Generator bodies – I built them as designed but for stability the pieces should be alternating instead of stacked right on top of each other. The only stability for the Steam Generator comes from the middle, top, and bottom round plates that hold everything together.
Thanks again for your comments and help!
I guess if I have to bail on the trans purple umbrellas and Dragon Eggs, I can set up an employee cafe next to the plant and use the Umbrellas for the tables and use the Dragon Eggs for planters.
Thanks for the pic. I did go to get my eggs out of their respective containers, and then I remembered the trans-orange one came as part of a set that’s still in one of six large containers of unsorted sets dating back to spring of 2018, and the others are probably in the attic in containers that used to be organized but have deteriorated as I’ve raided them for parts over the years.
I have an idea for how to do it. You will, of course, be able to see the parts through the egg if you look closely enough, and as mentioned it won’t rank high on the sturdiness scale, but I think it will work. I’m gonna create a Studio file, and I can either post it here, or I can create some screen shots of it.
Attaching a screen shot from Studio of the way the Steam Generator is attached to the base. It looks like the Dragon Egg has two things stuck into it – 1/ a chrome silver round brick (71075), 2/ a black Technic 1×1 brick with hole (6541). That brick sits on top of a red 1×2 plate which appears to be resting on top of a tile and not attached. The Technic brick is attached to some of the piping so that will help with stability. The silver brick and the Technic brick fit into the round area of the outside bottom of the Dragon Egg around its central hole. There’s not a whole lot of clutch there, but at least they fit.
I thought of an easier way. I still have a Studio screen shot of it (attached), but it’s so simple that I can describe it. Stack five round 1×1 plates (color of your choosing, I used light bley in Studio, although trans-purple or trans-clear will probably be the least noticeable) on the center stud of the egg. The stud of the top round plate should then clutch into the hole in the middle of your 4×4 plate. That’s it. You can replace three of the five round plates with a 1×1 round brick if you want, and really you could use square bricks and plates if you think it’ll look better or if it turns out to be sturdier. You could also use the round 1×1 plates with holes (although this part does not come in trans-purple or trans-clear; it does come in trans-light blue, which maaaaybe would work well) and then put a lightsaber bar through them if you think that will make it sturdier, and have any extra length stick up through the 4×4 plate, since there’s nothing directly above the center of it. Again, I don’t think it’s gonna win any awards for sturdiness, but I think it’s likely that it wil be good enough. There’s a slight gap between the egg and the 4×4 plate, but I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that, or least not in any way that wouldn’t be very convoluted and/or very unstable.
I think I would try that first and see if it’s to your satisfaction. My initial plan was to put a 1×1 round plate or brick with a hole in the egg, to grip a lightsaber bar sticking vertically out of that hole. That bar would be gripped on the other end by some kind of Technic pin plugged into the hole in the 4×4 plate. To keep it from simply falling, the pin would probably have to be pin on one end (which will grip a bar), and axle on the other, so that round plates or bricks with an axle hole could be put on top of the 4×4 plate to grip it. I think it would probably work, but I don’t really have any reason to believe that it will be any sturdier than the first plan described above, and it will probably look worse and involves parts that may or may not be easily available to you (whereas I’m pretty sure most AFOL’s these days can’t swing their arm without hitting round 1×1 plates of all colors) so I’m only gonna create a file and post it if you ask.
Looking at the way Lego used these parts in sets, it’s clear that they really didn’t have any intentions for it other than the full egg. They did use it in BOOST Creative Toolbox, where it does combine with the previously mentioned 4×4 dome to make something that looks like a microphone, but as I recall, in the Pop-Up Party Bus, the bottom just clicks to four studs and the top is open, and the other five sets are all full eggs. Also, if you didn’t have them already, it’s a good thing you only need the bottom halves, because the top halves are incredibly expensive on BL, at least if you’re buying new.
>> This has gotten a bit off-topic, but IMHO when you pay for directions (for anything) it’s legit to sell the thing you made using the directions, you just can’t sell the directions themself because they are intellectual property.
I don’t think that’s true in all cases, and I don’t think the law sees it that way either. Instructions are not necessarily a license to sell, and the owner of the instructions can dictate that they’re for amateur use only. If you buy composer-approved sheet music, which is essentially instructions for how to play a piece of music, and you do a professional money-making tour where you perform that piece of music, then you owe the right-holder royalties for every performance, whether you bought the sheet music or not. If Lepin had not included instructions for the sets that they blatantly ripped off from Lego, Lego still would have had a case against them.
I’m not seeing the ice cream example as an apples-to-apples comparison here either. Ice cream is a very generic term that covers an infinite number of flavors and recipes. In this case, Nancy is following a very specific plan for which falvivsaetivis is the legal copyright holder, and her minor modifications are unlikely to make it legally distinct. Even if he didn’t put it in the fine print or register it with the copyright office, my understanding is that the law nonetheless affords him some legal protections, and he doesn’t lose any of that simply because he put it on a publicly viewable online platform. If you’re selling copies of his model, even if you sourced or made the parts yourself, I don’t see why he couldn’t send a cease-and-desist.
Maybe more importantly, Nancy asked about etiquette, not the law. I think a lot of AFOL’s would seriously look down on anybody selling models of somebody else’s design without their explicit approval, regardless of how they obtained the instructions.
>> Attaching a screen shot from Studio of the way the Steam Generator is attached to the base. It looks like the Dragon Egg has two things stuck into it – 1/ a chrome silver round brick (71075), 2/ a black Technic 1×1 brick with hole (6541). That brick sits on top of a red 1×2 plate which appears to be resting on top of a tile and not attached. The Technic brick is attached to some of the piping so that will help with stability. The silver brick and the Technic brick fit into the round area of the outside bottom of the Dragon Egg around its central hole. There’s not a whole lot of clutch there, but at least they fit.
Yahoo did this thing again where they delivered the email about this post more than two hours after you’d made it, and so I’d failed to notice it here even though it would’ve been showing up on the webpage.
Even with the screenshot, I’m not sure I’m picturing this right, especially since I’m not sure where the silver brick is, unless it’s directly behind the black Technic brick. If I’m reading this correctly, though, it means one or both of them are supporting the Dragon Egg from below, which is a big deal. All my brainstorming, suggestions, and actual submitted proposal were based on the idea that the Dragon Egg was completely unsupported from below. It does look like my ‘five round plates’ plan would help with stability, but maybe not, in which case you’re better off not including them, since they’ll be visible, even if only a little bit. It means you’re gonna have that slight but nonetheless visible gap between the egg and the 4×4 round plate, and again, I have an idea on how to eliminate it, but it would be so unstable that I think it wouldn’t be worth it.
@bengood921 genius. I had been fixated on the idea that some type of pole had to stick through the Dragon Egg and that a Technic axle had to stick in the plate. SO SIMPLE!!!!! The five round plates work perfectly. Thank you.
As to the discussion on licensing and buying designs, I’d also like to point out that I downloaded the LDD design for free. The designer Evan Schultheis had posted a link to the file in one of his posts on Twitter or maybe Imgur where he showed a lot of images of the design. My only plan for this plant is to display it with the LUG and maybe at some Westinghouse retiree event. No plans to try selling anything. Yesterday I responded to him on Twitter but I’m not sure if it worked because I haven’t used Twitter in years. I’m going to find another email address for him and touch base with him to let him know I’m working on the plant.
Just to close the loop on my noob emergency, here is a photo of the Steam Generator with the simple yet elegant 5-round-plate (in trans colors) attachment for the Dragon Egg. I also finally found an email address for the designer Evan Schultheis and I emailed him to let him know I’m working on the plant. Thanks again for your help!
Sweet! I’m glad it worked out. After I submitted that suggestion, I started to worry I’d misunderstood and that really you were looking for a way to plug that egg into something completely, to eliminate that gap. In Studio it was clear that the pattern of anti-studs on the bottom of the 4×4 round plate and 4×4 round brick will block the top rim of the egg, and it seemed unlikely that there would be any other piece that solves that. A cylinder split into two halves is never gonna work.
Let us know if you hear back from Evan Schultheis.
At one point I was thinking that there might be a tire that could go around both of these, but it looks like you have a solution. 🙂
@greg, I’m loving the tire idea! Maybe in my NEXT nuclear plant I will make “sport” steam generators with tires holding their Dragon Eggs on.
Because of the 5-stack of 1×1 rounds, I’ve had to add one plate thickness in height to the reactor shield wall on either side of the reactor, so that the piping enters the Steam Generator at the correct location. I also added a layer of tile at the top of the reactor shield, for stability. These small height differences shouldn’t affect anything else, I think there will be plenty of room above the components.
I’m gaining an immense amount of perspective and appreciation for how the whole building process goes. I naively thought it would be mostly about building, when in fact it turns out that 85% of this project is going to be data management, shopping, and inventory receiving and management. I don’t know how you guys do this all the time! I just want to build my nuclear plant and go back to sorting!!
Here is an update. I have the plant components most finished. I’m just waiting for the top of the Accumulator (the little round thing on the right-hand side of the piping). There are stability issues. The scariest so far is that each steam generator is clutching only three studs below. Between that and the precarious 5-stack of round 1x1s attaching the Dragon Egg bottoms to the steam generator, they are pretty shaky. I might be able to come up with some way to attach them to the reactor shield wall in the back, I’ll think about all that later.
Also there is one part of the piping in which the Studio design indicates a Technic, Pin with Short Friction Ridges (2780) connected to a Technic, Axle 1L with Pin without Friction Ridges (3749). I have these parts, but in my world they do not connect. I’ve temporarily replaced it with an axle.
Also I did get in touch with the designer Evan Schultheis and he was interested to know that I was building it, and he did warn that there are going to be some stability issues. He is interested to see a photo of it when I display it.
I’ve also concluded that I am going to have to move this to a 48×48 base, and so my plant will end up being a group of 4 48×48 bases, one with the containment building and one with the cooling tower, and whatever I can come up with for the other bases.
each steam generator is clutching only three studs below
That is basically how the RMBK plants at Chernobyl were built.
Ha ha very funny @greg. At least my plant will have a containment!
Well I hope the containment building contractors don’t take shortcuts and bribe the inspectors. To be safe, give your minifigs iodine pills before the plant goes critical.
DanI don’t have access to my parts to experiment with at the moment, but ensure the tabs on the egg bottom line up with the notches on the 4×4 round plate. With regards to joining the two another way a bar (BL part #30374 or #87994) will fit through both the bar-sized hole in the egg as well as the Technic axle hole in the 4×4. If you need a little additional stability a 1×1 round plate w/ open hole (BL #85861) could be used on the bar either below the 4×4 (to mate with the center hole) or inverted above (pushed down in the hold at the bottom of the cylinder halves).
I took a long break from this project, but the 2023 Q4 meeting gave me a huge boost in confidence and energy so I got back on track. Classic FOAK (First of a Kind) project! The designer of the LDD file advised me that I might encounter some stability issues – and he was right. I’ve made some adjustments for stability but the more I’m building, the more I see that some of these structures would be better with a different configuration of parts. However, I already bought the parts generated from the LDD/Studio design so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that it’s sound enough to stay together in my car when I drive it to a display venue. This past week I’ve been ordering a few more parts so that I can finish off the reactor building with a cutaway containment. Here are a couple of pictures. The long flat rectangle laying on the table is the outside containment wall, which needs a few more parts before I can stand it up and curve it around the inside containment.
