@joshhall
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Wait…
Good now?
What makes you say that? Let me know what you’re experiencing or seeing and I can see if I can fix it
No Pete, but yes Dan E.
Around the table clockwise, @philmatt24 in the red flanel behind Paul Boratko standing, Chris something from PennLUG, The illustrious and IKEA extraordinaire Doug, I think it was Dan from PennLUG (They came over to play LEGO Settlers of Catan), Jordan Otto, my brother in law, Julia Morley, and then Dan Efran. Tim and Greg talking behind the bridge.
throwback thursday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1au4h1Z-Qo
just stumbled on that last night. I didn’t remember that existed. our first display at LEGO’s Kidsfest 2012! OG represent!
You can recreate it now? Send me a screen shot with the error and include the url?
I’m going to get higher resolution videos…but this was an exercise in curiosity.
I did ZERO script writing or video editing or manual effort. Just told AI to create some tutorial videos and away it went. I got to pick voices, but since it was so easy, I just plan to do videos with all 4 voices and put them on youtube playlists for each voice.
lots of updates since last we talked. shared layouts now work between different installs, meaning any other lug can have their own install and start a ‘shared’ layout that will generate invites for other lugs and then the other lug’s layers will show.
renlug updated their documentation page – https://renlug.org/maps-modular-graveyard-standard/
Important update from this weekend! We’re changing the standard to be 6×12 base so that it’s more uniform to be 12×12 when you double it. This gets rid of the 3 stud borders and helps ensure a 4 stud path between baseplates. REM lug is going to update their site with documentation.
Here are a few graves that came together at brick Erie this weekend that can make their way to trolley too. I’ll build some more blanks to fill spots.
Quote from Denny at RenLUG:
One of our members pointed out the graveyard doubles as a garden if you put vegetables & flowers in it instead of people. Instead of grave plots, you just make garden beds.
community garden!!
RenLUG out in some effort for documenting the standard. https://renlug.org/modular-graveyard-standard/
Ooooo! Good point! I saw what frost just did for his haunted house, so maybe I will try to do the same. I actually remember seeing a big bag of olive green 2×4 somewhere…either my stuff or lug stuff…maybe I can locate that.
@schu54321 – I swear you once posted about having the bbcode show up at the top of the event thread all the time, so that it doesn’t have to get reposted…but I can’t find that post. Maybe it wasn’t you.
Either way, it’s done now, with a few other tweaks.
there’s a form at the bottom of the badges to make suggestions for new badges. Anyone is able to suggest new badges and I’ll get to it eventually, or I can give permission to anyone who is interested in managing badges. for icon suggestion, either a link to a graphic or a text describing it will do. I’ve just been putting prompts in chatgpt to generate the images. Some are BAD…but you should have seen what claude proposed. I was like, “create some icons based on lego themes” and it was all “and risk copyright infridgement? I’ll pass.”
there’s also a tag cloud that will highlight the most popular badges that people have selected.
Thanks for the question! I may accidentally tucked that ability behind an admin curtain (codex and Claude are like super paranoid about security and I hate it). Fixed it now, I think.
How to delete a mosaic you created
Sign in to the Steel City LUG website, then visit your Saved mosaics.
Find the mosaic you created and select Delete mosaic. The button is only shown for mosaics you own. Deletion is permanent, so you’ll be asked to confirm first.
You can also start from the Brick by Numbers creator[/url] and select Saved mosaics from the navigation.
OK, I think I fixed it @playingwithechoes. I also think a contributing factor was that a lot of your baseplates were not snapped to grid, so they were creating collisions that rejected placement. I went in the layout and adjusted all of them and filled it in.
and Claude took your feedback, Gabe. Thanks for that. Here’s a generated release announcement:
Layout Designer — New Update, Feedback Wanted
We’ve pushed a batch of fixes and improvements to the live site and would love for folks to give it a shot.
Big thanks to Gabe for the detailed feedback and bug reports that drove several of these — the baseplate placement fix especially came straight from what he ran into and helped pin down.
What’s new
[*] New track parts: RC (Dark Bluish Gray), Dark Bluish Gray straights, and BrickTracks R104/R120 curves — alongside the existing 9V lineup. The track palette is now searchable (try typing “rc”, “dbg”, or a part number).
[*] Fixed a bug where baseplates could refuse to sit flush next to a neighbor and would snap back with no explanation.
[*] Mobile: you can now press and hold an object to pick it up and drag it — previously touch devices could only nudge things with on-screen buttons.
[*] A few keyboard shortcuts that existed but were never documented are now listed in the in-app help panel (press ? while editing): the rotate handle, Shift+drag for stepped rotation, Shift+R to reverse, and Shift+click to place the other way.
[*] Rotating an object now settles on a clean angle when it snaps to the grid, instead of possibly landing a fraction of a degree off.
[*] Blocked-move messages (like “overlaps existing object”) are now easier to see and stick around longer.
What we’d love help testing
[*] Building a track loop — mixing 9V, RC, dark bluish gray, and BrickTracks pieces to make sure everything lines up and snaps together cleanly.
[*] Placing and dragging baseplates around, especially right up against each other.
[*] If you’re on a phone or tablet, try dragging objects around (press and hold, then drag) and let us know how it feels.
[*] General poking around — if something looks off or behaves unexpectedly, we want to hear about it.
Reply here or DM with anything you run into — screenshots or a quick description of what you were doing helps a ton.
Thanks for helping make this better!
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still working on some other bugs and the multi-lug shared layout functionality. I’ll let you know when that’s done.
Plenty has landed since the June 15 update. Here’s what’s new to try:
🚂 Track is here
- Lay out actual track. 16 official LEGO parts are built in — 9V straight, curve, left and right points, crossing, the RC double crossing, plus the full monorail set (straights, curves, ramps, monoswitch, and left/right points).
- Drag a piece near another and the ends snap together, clicking into a real connection.
- Bring the end you want up to the end you want and it mates that way — smooth curves or S-bends, both work, just like real track.
- Track shows up in your printouts and exports, including part quantities, so you can total up what a layout actually needs.
✋ Working faster
- Group objects and move, rotate, or duplicate them as one unit.
- Copy and paste within a layout.
- Free rotation with a rotate handle — plus you can set the rotation step per layer, so track turns in 22.5° clicks while tables stay on 90°.
- A shortcut help panel so the keyboard commands are actually discoverable.
- A selected-object action strip — the common actions right where the object is.
📱 Better on a phone or tablet
- Compact editor controls that fit a small screen.
- Canvas gestures no longer fight with normal page scrolling and navigation.
- Landscape mode and the drawers behave properly now.
🖨️ Printing and exports
- Custom layers now print — previously they could be silently dropped from the page.
- Layer visibility and item counts are correct in print output.
- Exports follow your real layer setup instead of a fixed built-in list.
💾 Reliability fixes
- Objects no longer snap back to where they started mid-drag.
- Autosave won’t save a half-finished drag position.
- Clearer save-button feedback, and saving pauses safely if your login expires instead of failing silently.
- The editor no longer freezes if an image fails to load.
Please try it and tell us what breaks. Track snapping especially — it’s brand new and we’d like to hear how it holds up on a real layout.
@playingwithechoes – still working on the multilug functionality. I just won’t be able to test it before I leave for a week or so.
I’m going to do it live tomorrow at the cultural trust family fest. I built a little stand for a 64×64 mosaic, which will result in 64 8×8 sections. I figure that’s a good number to go with since I’m only there for 4 hours.
The only problem is that I’m going to use our 1×1 plates.
@watchwmarcella – what’s the latest with project support? is it on hold with the colab transition? I can see us needing 10k 1×1 bricks of MANY colors for a couple thousand dollars worth of parts to support us being able to do 6’x4′ mosaics at large events.
still working on studs up mosaics, which will open the door for parts optimization work for both orientations.
took a swift pass at this today, might have broken some things, but fixed a lot.
The general idea:
Locations (Bam north, lego store, bam zelie, etc) have
Displays (party room, back shelf, front display case, etc) which have
Reservations (everyone’s temporary builds that fill the display).
Everyone has access to edit the names, descriptions, pictures, etc.
I know a lot displays have been coordinated without the system, and that’s fine, but I wanted to make the system more useful if people start seeing a need. Looks like no libraries have been added, and I know we do rotating displays there – the point is not to make an admin burden, so if it’s fine not being there, I’m fine with it. I think we anticipated more conflict with wanting to display something at BAMs that didn’t come to fruition.
Well, I got all excited at 8p friday night to sit down and let claude fable 5 go to town on layout designer. Claude had never seen layout designer, so I was eager for it to do some design passes…and then I saw the gov’t shut down fable 5 around 5p. That’s gotta be more serious than a PR campaign, right?? AI is scary.
Tail slightly between my legs, I went ahead and let the opus model do some review passes and suggestions.
I think we’ve implemented all feature requests (print table button, custom/unlimited layers, etc) and fixed a lot of bugs and added a bunch of features, like enhanced exporting, light/dark mode, and split apart the toolbar header design to portable docks for layers and objects.
I still need to go through lug inventory and add more things like stanchions, tables, table cloths, etc, but we’ve got some good progress, I think.
I have to say, with codex having the ability to log into the website and move things around (it does its own QA now) it’s kind of wild to ALSO be in the session and watch it work. it was pretty funny to read its thoughts where it missed the click for the buttons and had to move the windows around to get back to testing the annotations.
also, it looks like bricklayouts has shifted to a pay model, despite originally having text on the page that said “we will never charge for this” or something like that. I wish I took screenshots. I plan to continue work on this and release it to other lugs who use wordpress. I’m aware most lugs just run on a basic gatorhost or basic webhost, so I’m not sure how usuable it will be, but worth offering. I know Jessica may see this post, but i at least hope it becomes a source of collaboration to improve both offerings, because I’ll have zero interest in adding non-lego components or details like trees and scenery. If it’s not on a moc or baseplate, I’m not really interested in working on it because it doesn’t directly benefit Steel City LUG at this point. /soapbox I’m all for progress and good natured competition.
mobile functionality still needs some work after the dock design. let me know if there are other requests/bugs to be aware of. if nothing glaring comes up, I’ll probably switch over and let claude take a crack at the inventory stuff and especially the custom icon piece where i was having a tough time getting track connections to be intelligent.
so…I met 2 new members tonight on discord. They were born in February. I had no clue, but I guess other people knew!
If I leave it vague like that, will their parents reveal themselves???
https://www.facebook.com/groups/870165375413028/permalink/944028744693357/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v
Related. Mostly neutral, but some good experiences I think
Hey Benny, the supreme leader said “no comparisons.” Anyway, I had a ten year head start.
By some cosmic coincidence, I became the owner of this latch hook rug last weekend.
That is wild!
park place is on the otherside of the hill of the literal ‘park’ of south park, so lots of space, trails, etc. the apartments themsselves certainly look dated from the outside – i’ve dropped people off there before. did you try https://www.lindenbrookeapartments.com/
Stumbled on this- did we already see this? https://www.facebook.com/reel/183595981140676/?mibextid=ZZyLBr
