| > The plastic parts are more than just generic shapes; many of them are custom and designed for the specific kit. With Lego, it's surprising how often the parts are NOT designed for a specific kit. You can look through the parts list at the end of the instruction manual. You'd be surprised how often they've re-used parts you'd think are specific to a kit. With Saturn V in particular, I was SURE the fairing must be a part specific for that kit. Turns out it's the spire from a Hogwarts castle kit. Okay, so that's the only other kit it was used, but still.. If you look at clone kits, they often have more kit-specific parts. I think this is counter-intuitively a part of a strategy based on low-cost. They spend less on extremely precise plastic molds, and designing a kit-specific part can make it easier for designers. They don't have to spend a lot of time thinking of creative ways to re-use existing parts. They don't need to have knowledge of obscure parts they could re-use either. > The documentation is extensive, high-quality and complete. And it's easy to find them online if you've lost them, and you can easily find missing parts of bricklink. So you can dump all your Lego in a box, save it for your kids, and be sure that they can still be used, and that you can rebuild the sets if you want. I saved my Lego from my childhood. I recently took them out to play with my kids and they're still perfectly good. The only thing that doesn't match with modern Lego is the electric stuff. |
OK, that is interesting.
I wonder if and or what the software used by kit designers looks like? Does Lego have a custom CAD system that references the catalog of existings parts? Are they any Lego employees here that are able to comment?