It also means it will respect a schema and naming convention for colors that corresponds to what real Legos look like and some of the software may even assist in putting together a build manual once I’m done creating a model I’m happy with (ha, look how adorable I am imagining life ~36 months from now) That’s way more interesting than whichever software I’m using because it means thousands of people have already contributed parts to this centralized open library using this format, so whatever I decide to adopt I can count on this being fairly reliable in how it translates every brick into a drawing on the screen. Luckily, I soon found that there is an open standard for Lego modeling for CAD software called LDraw. There are a bunch of apps for phones and tablets but this scale of a project simply won’t go anywhere with such an inefficient UI (lots of dragging and opening and closing option panels). LEGO underwhelmed right away as their own software has not been maintained in years.

I started out by looking at what’s already out there.

I have never really used CAD or 3D software in any meaningful way before, much less for a specialized need like Legos. I decided to give it a go with modeling the Lego chaumière with software! This is giant leap from trying to put bricks together.

Lego modeling software