This time I’ll tell you how you can design your Lego creation in Bricklink Studio 2.0 in a way that makes it easier to order it either from Lego or BrickLink, and pitfalls that I noticed with the software.
I recommend assigning the colors for the parts early.
What that has to do with ordering? Well, it is kinda obvious but parts are not available in all colors. When you pick the parts in the list the software doesn’t tell you if those are old parts or new parts, and they are all of a grey color.
The good news is: Studio (usually) knows which colors exist for a part. So if you pick a part and assign a color, then the color validator will immediately tell you when a part doesn’t exist with that color, and recommend other colors that you can then choose from.
Of course you might then notice that other parts next to the one that you just changed don’t exist in that color, and you have to choose new colors there as well.
Sometimes something weird happens there. You pick a color that seems to exist, but for some reason it isn’t available. It might be an error in the database of the software, but you might have picked the wrong part. There are a few that look very similar, usually one supersedes the other in production.
Compare these two:
Lego discontinued one of them (the thin ring one) in 1986, you won’t find it in new colors. It is available (on bricklink) in the old blue, gray, black and white for example, but you should not use it for something new.
Thankfully the new part is usually right next to the old one in the list, and/or shares a number. The replace function of Studio also lets you easily replace all of those parts.
Another thing about colors is that some parts are VERY expensive in certain colors, because only very few were ever made. I ran into that recently, when I searched for spare parts to complete two Spyrius sets from 1994: The whip antenna 8H in transparent blue costs 5€ per piece. The one in transparent neon green was used in far more sets and is only 6 cents when used. I went for the green one then, because it is a color used in Spyrius sets so it fits, no need to spend 20 bucks on antennas and the space ship will still look good. If you are a collector and need the original parts, things can occasionally get expensive.
Btw, Studio can be configured to tell you those prices as they are displayed on Bricklink, which is pretty nice. But if you are unsure about a part and/or color you can just use it’s number and check at bricklink yourself.
- Rare variants.
This is similar to the thin ring example above, but a tad more severe.
Sometimes you encounter a part that looks very similar but isn’t the same. You think it should not matter, but it does. A common example is “open stud” vs. “solid stud” on top. For most things it doesn’t matter and just might increase the cost, but if you have to stick something into that hole then you need that variant.
The good news is: the more compatible open stud variant is usually the newer part. Sometimes you have to pick the older part for color reasons though, as explained above.
Here is an example for a part with three variants (listed on the site under “related items”).
- Combined parts.
This is another small pitfall, but usually easily avoided. I’ll take a hinge as an example: Studio might allow you to place a part that itself consists of two parts.
For example these two combined:
That makes sense within the program, and usually gets exported nicely, but occasionally it fails. You can then either place the parts manually or ungroup the part.
- Submodel names
This is a bug that caused me a few gray hairs.
Like in other CAD software you can make groups, called “Submodels” in Studio.
That’s a cool thing because you can then go in and out of those groups to make changes, and otherwise use them as if they were parts. Changes in one submodel even change the other ones. Really useful.
The software allows you to use almost anything as a submodel name, not only ASCII characters, BUT it might break the file. And you wont notice until you load the file again and things are missing. It happened to me with parentheses (brackets), and I am not sure what else breaks the format.
I think all ascii letters, numbers, whitespaces, commas, dashes and underscores are fine (and probably umlauts as well although I haven’t tried that yet), but best practice is probably to stick to those.
Those are the main problems I encountered so far. The other ones are minor stuff like the software sometimes not doing what you want. But usually that can be fixed easily by using one of its other tools. (For example the connect tool instead of the move or place tools).
I’ll tell you how to spot further errors before ordering in the next post.
