 Lego
evangelists insist that the plural of 'Lego' is 'Lego,' not 'Legos.'
Yea, verily, the Book of Lego sayeth: "If thou desire to speaketh of
multiple pieces, thou shat utter, 'Mineself haveth many Lego or mineself
haveth many Lego blocks.' A pox be upon any man who sayeth, 'Mineself
haveth many Legos.' Amen." Not using all upper case letters when writing
the word; i.e. LEGO vs. Lego, is a mortal sin to the Lego faithful.
I'll tempt Fate here since using all caps online is interpreted as shouting.
 Seriously,
though, Lego has made a fortune selling blocks not just for little
 kids
to scatter on the floor for parents to step barefooted on, but also
to adults who use them for amazing works of art and for robotic creations.
I have written a few times about Lego projects, or instance the full-scale
model of a
Rolls Royce Trent 1000 turbine engine, and the many
tech-related
Lego subjects of renowned Lego sculptors
Andrew
Lipson and
Nathan Sawaya.
 Now,
an online
Lego building block simulator allows you to build simple objects
without the expense or mess of actual blocks. You won't be able to incorporate
motors, lights, speakers, sensors, cameras, or microprocessors in this
version like you can with a Lego
 Mindstorms
set, but you can throw together some cool 3D structures like my "RF
Cafe Rocks!" example (took about 5 minutes to create). Since Legos are
universally recognized and loved, maybe you could build a model of one
of your current projects and use it for a cover sheet on a report or
presentation; it would lighten the mood in the room more so than a corny
joke. An IC die with metallization patterns on the top and some gold
(yellow) bond wires to a substrate would look really slick (see my example
above), as would a connectorized amplifier block or an antenna. After
you try your hand at it with the simulator, go buy some Lego blocks
and build a hard copy. Heck, if you have a 3D printer available, use
that. Even if you don't plan to use
LEGO BuildWithChrome,
at least add the website to your kid's Favorites bar since it is a good
tool for developing 3-dimensional perception skills. BTW, it
does not work well with anything other than the Chrome browser.
Posted January 21, 2014
|
