Model Citizen

LEOCAD Is a FREE! 3D programme that lets you make Lego models on the computer in 3D. I downloaded it last year but just could'nt get on with it. Anyway, I  gave it another go this last week and found it a lot easier. It has a huge parts library with it though finding the part you want can be a bit tricky. What is good is that the parts will snap together and if they facing the wrong way you just rotate the piece again to a constrained angle. It has options for various viewports too. You can change the colour of the pieces before dragging them into the window and all in all it's a programme worth spending a bit of time on.

This is a view of the programme. I have a 24" monitor so it's a lot more spacey than this view.

I currently have only finished one test piece which I exported from LeoCad as a Wavefront object. This is great as I can then import it into whatever 3D programme I want. i chose Cinema 4D using the plug-in Riptide that also imports the materials too. I gave it a tweak here and there setting the Phong value to 60 and adding a few custom colours and here's the result:

  I want to try something more adventurous nex. i'm still learning but here's what I found so far:

Brickfactory  This site has hundreds of scanned Lego instruction manuals to help build your model.

MLCAD  This is also a Cad package for designing Lego plans. Not quite figured out how it can be used with LeoCad but I've seen some stuff on Deviant Art that is a 3D model from MlCad, soit must be possible.