Lego Digital Designer 2

Publisher's description of Lego Digital Designer

Welcome to Lego Digital Designer, also known as LDD. With the free Digital Designer software you can build absolutely anything with virtual LEGO bricks right on your computer. Then you can buy the real bricks to build your creation online in Lego Factory, or you can print out an inventory of bricks and take it to any Legoland theme park or Lego Store.

New in Version 2: Improved building experience, quicker brick selection, easier to connect bricks when building, new brick palette tool, more bricks, partly built models for easy start, new backgrounds, new UI, and more.

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Editor's review of Lego Digital Designer

Lego Digital Designer gives users the chance to play with Legos without paying for Legos. Loaded with features, the drawbacks are minor and this program is a lot of fun to use.

The program links to the Lego online store, but there's more going on here than corporate shilling. The graphics-intensive program seamlessly zooms in and out, rotates your point-of-view 360 degrees, connects bricks to each other, rotates them, and moves any hinges they might have so you can explore how your pieces fit together. Parts include basic bricks, model jet engines, and infrared sensors. The Brick Palette puts all your bricks in one basket, so to speak, so that managing them is no more difficult than keeping track of more than two dozen subpalettes that catalogue the variations.

Seventeen prebuilt models are included to help beginners. You can place your model against a cheesy 3D background, save it, take a screenshot, explode it only to have it reassembled on the next mouse click. There's an option to watch an animated guide on how to recreate whatever complex design you just built. In addition to all this, you can send your model to Lego.com to share with other Lego builders.

The user interface for Version 2 is a big improvement, although some controls could be more intuitive. The app chows on RAM, so those with older machines should be prepared for serious slow-downs if they can get the program to run at all. Still, it's a great facsimile for replicating the fun of Lego bricks digitally, and since its free, it's the cheapest Lego experience you'll ever have.

User reviews of Lego Digital Designer

• Average user rating: out of 38 votes
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  Lego Digital Designer

  Brought back memories...

  by: Kevy_MT on 04-May-2008 07:09:11 PM

  Pros: Lego Digital Designer is a very exciting application for both young and old. Installation is easy, and the program does not have any adverse effects on a system (at least not on my system)

  Cons: Lego Digital Designer does require QuickTime to play sounds. I found this out once I installed LDD. Thankfully QuickTime is free as well! I also had problems figuring out how to rotate a piece to fit where I wanted it to go. Also, it would seem that there are some missing pieces, like the roof tiles, I was making a grey roof 25 degree slant, and once I finally got to the top, I could not locate any top pieces in the grey 25 degree slant. These are the only reasons I chose 4 out of 5 stars.

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  Lego Digital Designer

  All the fun none of the mess

  by: jravery_61 on 08-May-2008 12:59:51 AM

  Pros: All the fun none of the mess, It's like being a kid again.

  Cons: none

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  Lego Digital Designer

  fun lego modeling

  by: underoathpaco on 02-Mar-2008 11:02:43 AM

  Pros: free, not as slow as one review says, they need a better computer, fast on mine

  Cons: just a little time to get used to it

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  Lego Digital Designer

  too slow, unusable

  by: domenicofavotto on 03-May-2008 02:11:46 AM

  Pros: nothing

  Cons: this program is so slow and so difficult to use.

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  Lego Digital Designer

  Disappointing!

  by: margie77099 on 15-May-2008 05:47:09 AM

  Cons: I found it hard to use.

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