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Layout Planning with BlueBrick

Mike Walsh — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:24:10 +0000

I have been using TrackDraw for layout planning for years. My friend and former NCLTC member Cary Clark wrote TrackDraw and I authored many of the parts in the TrackDraw library so I had a vested interest in using it. Compared to TrackDesigner, TrackDraw was a huge improvement particularly if you were planning a large layout.

But times change and Cary has phased out of the LEGO hobby and TrackDraw, while it still works, hasn’t been updated in years. At one point I could build it from source myself but about a year ago I tried to build it and was unable to. So the version I have running is from the RailBricks site and includes some custom parts in the library. TrackDraw still has some oddities and will crash from time to time.

Recently while working on the 2010 LEGOPalooza track plan I couldn’t get text to work correctly so on a whim I decided to try BlueBrick. I had looked at BlueBrick about a year ago and dismissed it as it had some real limitations. However when I looked at it again, most of my issues had been addressed and it works pretty well.

I have not tried to create my own parts yet but probably will soon but I do like the layering model in particular. I recaptured the NCLTC layout I am doing for 2010 LEGOPalooza in BlueBrick and did a couple more iterations using it. I really wish the layout area had scroll bars and I really miss the TrackDraw feature to add a bunch of elements using the numbers on the keyboard followed by clicking on the part you want to place but other than that, I don’t have any real complaints.

LEGOPalooza in the N&O

Mike Walsh — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:11:50 +0000

The News and Observer had a brief write up on Friday’s (1/30) edition letting people know that LEGOPalooza was being held at Morehead Planetarium over the weekend. The article featured a picture from the 2005 LEGOPalooza.

Monday morning’s (2/2) edition of the N&O didn’t have an article but did have this picture from the show. As you can see in the picture, the crowd was pretty heavy. Unfortunately the image didn’t appear on the N&O web site so the best available is a newspaper scan.

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LEGOPalooza Photos

Mike Walsh — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:54:42 +0000

A plethora of photos taken at LEGOPalooza last weekend have been uploaded to various photo sharing sites. To make it easier to keep track of them all, here is a list of links in no particular order.

Photos

Gareth Bowler’s photos on Brickshelf
Joe Meno’s photos on Flickr
Mike Walsh’s photos on Flickr (set #1)
Mike Walsh’s photos on Flickr (set #2)
Dan Larson’s photos (some good set up photos)
Will Stroh’s photos (also has some setup photos)
Richard Bryan’s photos on Flickr
David Eash’s photos on Picasa
Thomas Main’s photos on Brickshelf

Videos

We were also covered by some traditional media outlets.
Daily Tarheel’s report

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Sunday was busy too!

Mike Walsh — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:02:54 +0000

I got to Morehead just before the doors opened on Sunday afternoon to find a long line of people waiting to get in. The word was out! The crowd was heavy all day long until an announcement was made that the Chapel Hill Police were towing cars on Franklin Street! From that point on the crowd was still large but wasn’t overwhelming. At one point on Sunday it was so crowded we literally had gridlock.

We had a couple incidents on the train layout – people feel the need to reach in a touch something or more often, point to something and don’t realize their arm is in the way of an oncoming train. My monorail was knocked off the track a couple times but fortunately didn’t sustain any damage.

Tom Hohman’s train was knocked off the track twice but both times I was able to get the train cars put back together without any problems. The only real casualty was Tom’s freight loading crane which a child felt compelled to touch for some reason and knocked it completely over. The look on his face was terror and his mother was mortified. By the time I got to the other side of the layout they were gone. I wasn’t going to say anything to them but it would have been nice if they stuck around and at least apologized. I couldn’t fix the crane so it spent the remainder of the show in a pile.

Breakdown was slow – it took me 2+ hours to get everything taken down,boxed up, and packed in the truck. I was really happy with my packing job until i realized I had never packed the box of train track (which is a plastic wrapping paper storage container). It should be on the bottom of the pile but nope – had to stick it in the backseat with the kids!

I should have taken my big camera, my little Nikon is fine for close up but it doesn’t take very good pictures at a distance. I have a bunch of pictures but a lot of them are a little fuzzy.

More pictures are on Flickr.

LEGOPalooza was Crazy Busy

Mike Walsh — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:40:38 +0000

My scheduled worked out and I was able to be at Morehead when the doors opened yesterday and the flood of people was overwhelming. It was packed – so packed it was difficult to move around.

The train layout looks great, we had a bit of trouble getting the outer loop to run (it is really long) but everything worked for the most part. The room is very crowded so there isn’t a lot of buffer space between the crowd and the layout which means lots of hands in it. For some reason people feel the need to touch something (it is LEGO) but are then surprised when a train derails! Oh well, it is part of the fun of exhibiting.

I’ll post some pictures later today. The event has outgrown the space at Morehead. If it happens next year (there seems to be some contention about this with the Planetarium, I am not sure why), we’ll either need the whole room (there is a section blocked off for some reason) or need to limit exhibits. As it is now, it is hard to move around the room, particularly around the west end of the train layout.

Hopefully today I will have a chance to look at the other exhibits – I didn’t even try yesterday with the crowd.