Category:Lego Digital Designer (LDD)

Lego Digital Designer model of "A Really Useful Engine" [image info]

Brighton Toy and Model Museum, constructed as a virtual Lego model [image info]

Lego Digital Designer (LDD) (version 4.3) is a piece of free downloadable computer software that runs under Windows XP and higher, and which lets the user create virtual Lego models. The software downloads a manifest of brick types that represents almost every sort of standard Lego brick in existence, including Lego Technic parts.

The program also automatically generates an assembly manual for the model that can be saved as a .PDF file.

The obvious advantage of Lego Digital Designer is that it lets users experiment with building very large or specialist models at zero cost, without needing to have all the particular brick types and colours needed. At first sight this might seem to make Lego itself redundant, but having designed a particularly nice Lego model, it's very tempting to order the parts from Lego or from a service like BrickLink, and build it for real ...

"Design byMe" custom Lego set service (discontinued)

LDD also used to offer a service (Design byMe) whereby designs could be showcased on Lego's own gallery pages, allowing visitors to order a complete set of parts, and have it delivered in a custom box with printed instructions. This effectively allowed users to create their own Lego sets.

These extension services were discontinued in January 2012 (perhaps due to customer complaints when sets weren't quite complete, or when printed instructions were omitted because of their size), but the LDD software itself is still available, and is still free.

Lego have indicated that they liked the idea of the "custom set" service but withdrew it because of quality control issues, and that a replacement for the service might appear at some point, if the logistical difficulties can be overcome. The company still allows users to order arbitrary lists of parts (Lego Pick-a-Brick), so perhaps the problem with the integrated service was one of high customer expectations - a customer ordering a custom collection of parts might have an understanding attitude if a few parts were out of stock, or missing, or wrong, but a customer ordering a "special set" and finding mistakes may have been less forgiving!