Ghidul neoficial al constructorului de LEGO

by Allan Bedford

What exactly is a slope? What's the difference between a tile and a plate? Why is it bad to simply stack bricks in columns to make a wall? The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide is here to answer your questions.

Focusing on building actual models with real bricks, The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide comes with complete instructions to build several cool models but also encourages you to use your imagination to create your own fantastic creations.

Inside, you'll

The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide also includes the Brickopedia, a visual guide to nearly 300 of the most useful and reusable elements of the LEGO system, with historical notes, common uses, part numbers, and the year each piece first appeared in a LEGO set.

The firm foundation for your LEGO hobby starts here!

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Childrens, How To, Games, Ebooks

326 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Krystelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great handbook for anyone even remotely interested in building with LEGO on their own terms. I only wish there were a few more guides for projects and ideas, because the few included in this book were rather simple yet fantastic looking.

[Erica Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always, always loved LEGO sets-- but it was my brothers who knew how to step beyond the established creations to make new and exciting worlds. I tended to stick to the basics.

Now I'm feeling that I have a tool that can help me take the next step in my LEGO creations-- a guidebook of the basics and an introduction to the general engineering behind LEGO sets. I'm anxious to break out the free-built pile and try my hand at something more creative!

[Ebookwormy1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a curious little academician's dream. From terminology to basic building/ engineering, to exploring how to create artwork, the author effectively covers all things Lego in a way that sparks excitement about returning to a wonderful toy.

[Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun basic book on how to design your own creations from whatever Lego materials you have at hand. The author starts by explaining very basic concepts - the different pieces - and moves on to modeling, sculpting, designing mosaics and more. A fun, quick read.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was hoping this would have a lot more pictures and show things to build with LEGOs. I'm not sure whether I'll ever really "read" it since it seems pretty dry on the surface.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review a book on Lego? Ser­i­ously? Not that I would make a secret of my con­tinu­ing fas­cin­a­tion with those funky little pieces of plastic and all that you can do with them, but I am con­stantly amazed by the vast eco­sys­tem that sur­rounds this Dan­ish won­der. I use the term won­der quite deliberately…it is won­der­ment, it is won­der­ful and it is this innate sense of curi­os­ity, of invent­ive­ness, of cre­ativ­ity, yet in a struc­tured, and deeply thought­ful, sys­tem­atic engage­ment that Lego has uniquely tapped into.

What amazes, and con­tin­ues to amaze, is where Lego pops up, both as the fun, phys­ical doodle play­let, but in inform­a­tion sys­tems as we explore open innov­a­tion, or when vis­it­ing a school of design and see­ing the great col­lec­tion of themed Lego sets of great archi­tec­ture that have recently been mar­keted by the geni­uses from Bil­lund. Lego is every­where and it should come us no sur­prise, but does, when I find O“Reilly offer­ing a couple books on Lego tech­niques along the same shelf as Begin­ning Java or Enabling Mongo Db. The amazement arises from real­ising the vast armada of books and other sup­port mater­i­als that are out there to stim­u­late the Lego practice.

Mind bog­gling, but test­a­ment to both the endur­ing fas­cin­a­tion with the Lego sys­tem and with this tap­ping of some­thing deep inside that com­pels one to start con­nect­ing bricks, and plates and all the other ever evolving bits into weird, wild and won­der­ful per­sonal cre­ations. Ahhh. So, to the mat­ter at hand. The Unof­fi­cial Lego Builder’s Guide by Allan Bed­ford has just been released in its second iter­a­tion from No Starch Press. At just over 200 pages its is not a hefty volume — but this one is so chock full of great stuff that you’ll both feel full at the end and want more! I read this one in B&W on the Kindle and also on an iPad to truly appre­ci­ate the col­our aspects. This is a found­a­tional book that explores the nature of indi­vidual pieces in a sys­tem­atic way and then looks to the meth­ods that can be employed to bring them together and includes as purely ref­er­ence source the ‘Brick­o­pe­dia’. All of this is truly approach­ing what many see as a child’s plaything from a very sci­entific / engin­eer­ing per­spect­ive — quite rightly. Bed­ford is hav­ing fun when he writes the nar­rat­ive accom­pa­ny­ing the strategy and this is an easy read…directed clearly at an audi­ence bey­ond the 4+ or 8+ age denoted on the retail boxes of this product. This is fas­cin­at­ing in itself. There must be such a mature audi­ence out there — and I am def­in­itely part of it. I now have license to come out of the Lego closet ;-) The inter­est­ing thing about writ­ing to this mature audi­ence is that it rein­forces how Lego is in fact a toy for all ages. It can be appre­ci­ated at some many dif­fer­ent levels and enjoyed in so many dif­fer­ent ways. Very early on in the meth­od­o­lo­gies sec­tion, Bed­ford dis­cusses how internal beams can be con­struc­ted and deployed and not vis­ible to someone see­ing the fin­ished Lego product. Not neces­sary but all part of the think­ing pro­cess behind the engage­ment with the bricks. He is tap­ping into some­thing bey­ond the pure phys­ic­ally of the bricks them­selves and into the nature of the psy­cho­lo­gical engage­ment with the pro­cess — some­thing that is deeply indi­vidu­al­istic and speaks to the beauty of the Lego concept. He touches briefly on the nature of the pre­ci­sion milling pro­cess of the bricks and emphas­ises how micro­milli­metre accur­acy is delivered — if only because of how any slight anom­alies in the pro­duc­tion pro­cess could be eas­ily amp­li­fies due to the gran­u­lar nature of the build­ing and assembly pro­cess. Hope­fully what you may take from this is that the author has given ser­i­ous thought to the deeper aspects of the sys­tem and yet con­ceived it hol­ist­ic­ally. This book reflects this bring­ing together of the fun, play­ful, ser­i­ous and engin­eered that all come together to make Lego, well, Lego.

One of the inter­est­ing and laud­able aspects that I feel obliged to point out is that Bed­ford affirms the Lego belief that human lego fig­ures are essen­tial to the mini­land world. This is an inter­est­ing one to me as it has emerged in many of the ser­i­ous VR and AR aca­demic mod­el­ing efforts in the past few years. Many pro­jects have attemp­ted to recre­ate past worlds for explor­at­ory research pur­poses and they have oft lacked the human ele­ment that we are really attempt­ing to model for. I think that this small sec­tion in Bedford’s book reaf­firms the thought­ful approach that he has adop­ted to the Lego ecosystem.

The sys­tem­atic nature of explor­a­tion and dis­cov­ery in this volume pro­poses design strategies, not just from engin­eer­ing prin­ciples, but also from rep­res­ent­a­tional prin­ciples. Bed­ford pro­poses ways to trans­late the cre­at­ive vis­ion into the built object by employ­ing prin­ciples that bridge the phys­ical lim­it­a­tions of the mater­i­als (and I see far fewer lim­it­a­tions after read­ing this book) with gran­di­ose ima­gin­ing. In his sec­tion on ‘micro scale build­ing’ he out­lines a think­ing pro­cess that makes a dir­ect sci­entific rep­res­ent­a­tion of the real world in a micro scale and then lends unique tech­niques and advice on how to start by ingnor­ing details in the ini­tial con­cep­tion, make the trans­la­tion into pieces from the brick­pile and then how to employ spe­cialty pieces when neces­sary to recre­ate the real world object.

I had no idea that that funny look­ing piece of plastic was a brick sep­ar­ator Or that there was a bur­geon­ing Lego mosaic world … these two little enlight­en­ments alone leave me in the author’s debt, but it is much big­ger than this. This super book re-ingnites my engage­ment with Lego on new levels that I hadn’t paused to con­sider. When you are engaged in con­struc­tion, you are immersed. As I have said before it taps the innate. What this book does is extends then, by build­ing (and rein­for­cing) in a very sys­tem­atic way approaches to Lego con­struc­tion. It takes you through the basics and gradu­ally extends this through prin­cipled illus­tra­tions of how you might build bet­ter through mind­ful­ness of engin­eer­ing prin­ciples, through aware­ness of the way spe­cific pieces inter­act and through great hon­est hands-on examples that you can play along with.

This won­der­ful book com­bines a the­ory of Lego build­ing that is presen­ted in sat­is­fy­ing detail and that I had never ima­gined, with well con­struc­ted and instruc­ted hands-on exer­cises that will spark, re-ingnite and inspire a love for Lego. Bedford’s nar­rat­ive speaks to his own love for his sub­ject and cre­ates an enga­ging and inspir­ing work. All in all a dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous book — one that will have you off adding to your Lego col­lec­tion and spend­ing an increas­ing amount of time in the vir­tual work­shop, play­ing, tinker­ing, ima­ging, and building.

All said, this is as I said a book not inten­ded for the lower age groups. They will just want to do. But at some stage, I can pic­ture the pre­co­cious young­ster that will vora­ciously con­sume the prin­ciples in this book (do I pic­ture myself say around 9 or 10?) where this book will become bible. Bey­ond that it is really aimed to appeal to adult — those will­ing to admit to their own inner yearn­ing to engage with those bricks that do tran­scend age and gender — won­der in them­selves!

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

After building a few (OK, a lot of) Lego sets with my son, I've rediscovered my love for Lego and making custom builds. When I saw Allan Bedford's Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide I decided to give it a try, hoping for some ideas and useful information to incorporate into my own creations.

The book covers some basic Lego information, including a brief history of the product, basics on dimensions and scales, etc. before launching into the more practical information. Bedford gives some good - if basic - advice on sturdier, structurally sound building methods and the way various bricks can interlock, as well as providing some detailed instructions for a few custom creations to give readers a chance to practice his advice. Some of the information was so basic that I glossed over it, but other times I'd see a tip that I immediately knew I could use later. The most useful section of the book was the appendix that listed each commonly used Lego brick with pictures and part numbers, which will make ordering individual bricks from Lego a much easier process.

The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide is a clearly written, well-illustrated resource for veteran builders and novices alike. I'd recommend it to any aspiring Adult Fan of Lego as well as to parents of children who are ready to move beyond the instructions that come with each Lego set.

[Niklas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Luin tämän Allan Bedfordin Lego-kirjan suomeksi, mutta Goodreadsista ei löytynyt omaa sivua suomennokselle. Kirja on ihan hyvin tehty mutta se liikkuu omaan makuuni ihan liian yleisellä tasolla ja rönsyilee sinne-tänne, enkä oikein saanut otetta siitä kenelle se olisi suunnattu. Bedfordin käsittelemät aiheet käydään lävitse liian nopeasti, enkä saanut oikeastaan mitään ideoita kirjan lukemisesta. Mukana on pari mallia, jotka eivät nekään ole erityisen ihmeellisiä, sekä kattava Brickopedia.

[Elie De Brauwer · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are reading this book immediately after 'The unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide' by Pawel Kmiec you're in for some disappointment. This book covers some bigger things (working on 4 different scales, mosaics, sculpting, ideation, ...) and applies this one a number of custom models throughout the book but there's really much in addition to it ... also 25% of the book is a so called 'brickopedia' resulting in about 150 actually readable pages ...

[Adam Sharman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for newbies to LEGO. Gives a good grounding in basic terms and techniques.

[Earl Truss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of interesting tips and information on how to design and build your own LEGO items.

[Martyn Lovell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide is a how-to book aimed at filling the gap for basic, comprehensive information about how to have fun and be effective while playing with LEGO.

The book includes chapters on different common LEGO building styles, with hints and tips on each of them. It includes specific plans for a small number of models to demonstrate techniques. It also includes a Brickopedia - a list of common bricks with brief details and suggestions for each. The book provides online access to design grids sized for LEGO proportions that will help with planning models.

The best part of this book are where he describes the basic mechanics compltely and crisply and passes on strategies and tips - such as use of two brick separators together. Unfortunately, this is not the majority of the content.

The writing style is quite bland and dry. The book lacks much spark. The author is obviously very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about LEGO, and writes clearly - but his text is not as exciting.

There is quite a lot of padding in the book. The brickopedia adds little value. Similarly an extensive chapter on mosaics treats in detail a relatively obvious topic. All chapters travel slowly through their topics. Perhaps the author is aiming at children, but if so the text is probably more dense than is ideal.

What I was hoping to get from this was tips, tricks and strategies from an advanced, experienced builder. There wasn't enough of that kind of material.

The book I read is in Black and White. A colour edition is now available, but I didn't find the Black and White treatment a problem at all - the author did a good job of making all the images and models work in the colours available.

Overall - decent but not super. Weakly recommended for LEGO enthusiasts. More recommended for adult beginners.

[Sic Transit Gloria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've played with Legos for over a decade, but only now am I looking to improve the quality of my models. I thought this book would be a big help by giving me tips and tricks on how to make my creations a little more professional.

I was wrong.

Allan Bedford only covers the most basic of topics. Although he even goes into things like building jumbo bricks and sculpting with Lego, he doesn't actually go into detail about how to overall improve your creations. The chapter on sorting was no help either, as it basically says, "Sort you bricks and put them into boxes." The book was also not very enjoyable. The writing style is fairly bland, and it's all printed in black on white on normal paper, making it look more like a cheap textbook than a popular guide for creating Lego models.

Put simply, expect to get the basics and nothing more.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to the core concepts behind LEGO building. The brickopedia was particularly useful. The building tips were useful and really got into the structure and engineering of the builds.

I think the charting and graph style for setting up the builds was an interesting approach. It's a nice free-form style for drafting blue prints of mosaics and larger 3D builds.

I wouldn't say that this book was exactly for children. It's sort of ambitious and does include information about non-standard pieces. It is also quite text heavy. That's not to say that a child couldn't find the illustrations (Now in Color!) useful.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good primer on building with Lego. Covers everything from basic building techniques to storing your collection. No real "wow, that's useful" moments, but a good solid intro to the hobby. Actually, there was one tip using two brick separator tools that I will be sure to remember.

The "Brickopedia" at the back was the original reason I got this book, and while I have since found far more comprehensive brick catalogs online, it was still an interesting and informative read.

I doubt I'll end up referencing this book very often, but I'm glad I read it.

[Brent Knorr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confess, I scanned this book more than I completely read it, but it has some pretty good ideas on how to get started on more complex Lego building if you want to move past just building kits or very basic structures. It would have been nice if the interior illustrations and pictures could have been in color, but they are generally still quite clear even in black and white.

[Noah Kellstedt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like Lego and I like reading this book because it taught me new technics and showed me how to build different things. It also inspired me with new ideas of things I could build with Legos.
Compared to other Lego books this one had more basic informations.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves building legos. It is a good book to have in my lego collection.

[Jameson Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am moving it back to my currently reading pile as. i am always pulling it back out to reference it. i have the b/w version and i am sure the coloured one would be easier but this is still a very goos book to use .

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really good overview of building techniques for Lego builders just starting out...

[Jason George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great building tips!

[Perpetualstudent · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contains some good material including design guides and a brick encyclopedia. Overall the content is at a fairly basic level.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books has some great tips and tricks and a great catalogue of pieces.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book for the serious Lego enthusiast. I really appreciated the Brickopedia and will be soon cataloging all my pieces accordingly.

[Kirstin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book for a LEGO loving family like mine.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting little book. The brickpedia is cool to look through.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many techniques seemed familiar, but others were novel and I was pleasantly surprised to integrate them into my building.

[Trigoc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too basic, I expected something more advanced

[Erik Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Lego books.

I liked this book because it's technical.
I gave it a four star rating because it ain't a step by step guide.

[Olivia Ambrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really informative! Some really good basics for building with Lego :)