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There are a few sites out there that still have them. It will cost you probably about 50-80 bucks each. The BIG one probably 200 or more. http://www.bricklink.com/index.asp

But for free there is
http://www.ldraw.org/
and
http://www.peeron.com/

I have been having so much fun with this these programs recreating virtual lego sets and I dont have to DIG through my massive box of em. Plus the programs are more cad like (and have more pieces) then the offical lego editor.

There are some nice add-ons for POV-Ray that generate Lego parts, so you can play with them in a virtual environment.

eg

http://www.ldraw.org/

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

You too can build a huge lego erection... Without leaving your machine! http://www.ldraw.org/

I agree, Legos are too expensive. I've spent nearly $3000 on my collection, but it was well worth the good memories. Then again, knowing about Ldraw could have saved me some money.

MLCAD

LDraw

Sera

Just when I think the nerd community cannot surprise me any more, along comes something like this article. Not only is there a CAD system for building with LEGO, there are enough of them to justify a common graphic interface for them. Jeez Louise.

RAY-TRACERS:
YASRT Yet Another Simple Ray Tracer
Raja Ray-tracer in Java
Radiance raytracer free for non-commecial use

MODELERS:
YAPRM Yet Another Pov-Ray Modeler

OTHERS:
LeoCAD Not a ray-tracer but can plug-in to many ray tracers. It allows you to take virtual LEGO bricks and make things out of them. Neat!
LDraw Another LEGO modeler

Go build it!

Pedantic [LEGO]Geek mode on

A: Lego Army men
Many fine examples already exist for filling units in most era's.

B: Lego Star trek
Trek is often done. Tho Blake's 7 is more hip.

C: Lego Warhammer 40k
A whole[all units] Dark Eldar army and ideas for modeling units for other powers can be found.

D: Lego D&D
Players of D&D[with LEGO] and other game systems are legion. As are the armies. Several rule-systems for play are also out there.

E: Lego Half life
There are CAD models[in easy format for conversion] for many of the parts go nuts. Sprite based(using POV to render frames) has also been done for a few games over the years.

F: Lego programming department
Cluster em.

PDG mode off [/;-)

You're too late.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

LDraw format is vastly more standard.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

LDraw seems to be the most popular format for Lego CAD stuff. LeoCAD can use the LDraw format, but from what I remember it isn't the best program for large things. I don't remember which programs run on Linux though... check ldraw.org.

LGEO parts library: http://www.ldraw.org/download/win/lgeo

L3P to make POVRay scenes: http://www.ldraw.org/download/win/l3p

Which uses LDraw: www.ldraw.org

a sampling of what it can do (on my website): http://www.sproat.us/jeremy/lego/stickfig/wallpape r/

LGEO parts library: http://www.ldraw.org/download/win/lgeo

L3P to make POVRay scenes: http://www.ldraw.org/download/win/l3p

Which uses LDraw: www.ldraw.org

a sampling of what it can do (on my website): http://www.sproat.us/jeremy/lego/stickfig/wallpape r/

LGEO parts library: http://www.ldraw.org/download/win/lgeo

L3P to make POVRay scenes: http://www.ldraw.org/download/win/l3p

Which uses LDraw: www.ldraw.org

a sampling of what it can do (on my website): http://www.sproat.us/jeremy/lego/stickfig/wallpape r/

Check out LDraw. It lets you virtually put together a Lego model with unlimited pieces. The web site has links to tools that allow you to render your models in POV-RAY.

For those folks who have never played with Lego, it's never too late to start, and LDraw's resources allow one to do so for virtually no cost. I encourage Lego newbies to start their journey by looking for inspirational Lego galleries much like the one posted in this article. (It's interesting, though, to see how large the percentage of computer graphics-only galleries are starting to appear on the Web.) Here are a few of my favorite links:

• El Lutzo's site has photos of real creations, images of virtual creations, and pictures from a tour of Legoland.
• A lighthouse and a castle. Simple but cool.
• Fantek galleries. Interesting. Be warned, though, the gallery images are very large files.
• DMS personal gallery. DMS is a Linux kernel developer, and the gallery includes a Lego Tux!
• Brickshelf, one of the largest photo archives on the web.

For those folks who have never played with Lego, it's never too late to start, and LDraw's resources allow one to do so for virtually no cost. I encourage Lego newbies to start their journey by looking for inspirational Lego galleries much like the one posted in this article. (It's interesting, though, to see how large the percentage of computer graphics-only galleries are starting to appear on the Web.) Here are a few of my favorite links:

• El Lutzo's site has photos of real creations, images of virtual creations, and pictures from a tour of Legoland.
• A lighthouse and a castle. Simple but cool.
• Fantek galleries. Interesting. Be warned, though, the gallery images are very large files.
• DMS personal gallery. DMS is a Linux kernel developer, and the gallery includes a Lego Tux!
• Brickshelf, one of the largest photo archives on the web.

For those folks who have never played with Lego, it's never too late to start, and LDraw's resources allow one to do so for virtually no cost. I encourage Lego newbies to start their journey by looking for inspirational Lego galleries much like the one posted in this article. (It's interesting, though, to see how large the percentage of computer graphics-only galleries are starting to appear on the Web.) Here are a few of my favorite links:

• El Lutzo's site has photos of real creations, images of virtual creations, and pictures from a tour of Legoland.
• A lighthouse and a castle. Simple but cool.
• Fantek galleries. Interesting. Be warned, though, the gallery images are very large files.
• DMS personal gallery. DMS is a Linux kernel developer, and the gallery includes a Lego Tux!
• Brickshelf, one of the largest photo archives on the web.

For those folks who have never played with Lego, it's never too late to start, and LDraw's resources allow one to do so for virtually no cost. I encourage Lego newbies to start their journey by looking for inspirational Lego galleries much like the one posted in this article. (It's interesting, though, to see how large the percentage of computer graphics-only galleries are starting to appear on the Web.) Here are a few of my favorite links:

• El Lutzo's site has photos of real creations, images of virtual creations, and pictures from a tour of Legoland.
• A lighthouse and a castle. Simple but cool.
• Fantek galleries. Interesting. Be warned, though, the gallery images are very large files.
• DMS personal gallery. DMS is a Linux kernel developer, and the gallery includes a Lego Tux!
• Brickshelf, one of the largest photo archives on the web.

LDRAW - or, more specifically, the fabulous MLCAD program - is exactly what you want. Unfortunately, doesn't handle working technic models, but it's still a helluvalot of fun.

Wasn't there a project to create a data model for describing lego parts in terms of valid connections to other lego parts, so you could build virtual lego models with moving parts?

You're the second person to mention this, so I should point you to MLCad, a Lego CAD program for Windows.
You should start at www.ldraw.org to learn all about Lego CAD programs. Tons of good stuff there. There are parts libraries, rendering programs, and loads more.

LDraw has been around since early 97. LDraw has several thousand parts available, and a lot of GPL add-on programs.

LDraw.org

Why does the site seem to make it sound like this can only be used with a couple of Dacta sets (specifically 9630/9645)? No where does it mention using it for other sets, though it seems to imply you could "design" your own parts, hence building a Lego component library...

But why should you? Why not just use LDraw or LeoCAD for modeling your Lego creations?

good point, it isn't clear what exactly the role of randomness is in the kind of optimization problem at hand... but I would suspect that what they really want to do is experiment with the characteristics of GA's rather than try to build better bridges.

Having worked in an optimisation methods research group, I tend to agree.

I think I see your point here, though. What is there about the "bridge building problem" that can allow for a direct measurement of a GA's strengths (relative to other kinds of search algorithms)?

I haven't read any articles from the group, but my guess is that viewing the sequence of bricks added as a "gene string" might make LEGO constructions an obvious task for genetic algorithm optimisation.

Can anyone tell me what information the elements of the strings contain besides the type of LEGO brick? They have to encode where the brick is placed relative to the previous addtion, otherwise almost any mixing of two strings will result is an unusable design.

This seems to be an appropriate time for a plug for LDraw - a free (beer, not code) program for drawing LEGO models.