Engadget notes that Lego has launched a service for designing your own custom brick designs.
File this under “wish we had this when we were kids”: LEGO is starting a new program called LEGO Factory where you can download a desktop application that allows you to create a custom brick design. You can take the designs you create using the LEGO Digital Designer software, upload them to the LEGO website, and actually order a kit of LEGO bricks that will make the design you spec’d out.
I used to be a Lego junky. My brother and I would built a 3 foot+ long space battleships by hacking pieces together. We'd do things like erase the faces off of heads and turn them into turrets and things like that. It was Lego Hacks just back in the 80's when the pieces were more generic. The scale of our creations was total different then the happy little sets of today -- these things were flying fortress.
A bunch of kids in the neighbor hood used to built ships and have pretend battles (hey, we were 8 years old.) The ship names and weaponry was adapted from a early japanese animation series that was in syndication then called Star Blazers. Ours was named the Andromeda (here is a picture of the cartoon ship) and like the cartoon it had two wave motion guns (two non-Lego plastic tubes that was salvaged off of something from a grocery store), detachable battle satellites, fighter planes and dual missile launching turrets in the back.
Most of the fun was figuring out what set gave you the most bang for your buck and how you could use every piece on your ship. I can remember shopping in the toy section of stores for what $5 mini sets we could buy to upgrade our ship. A mobile lunar rover gave us radar dishes and antenna to upgrade our communications stack. A space scooter gave us an exhaust piece to boost our array and wing pieces we could mount more weapons on. Every so often you'd get bored with your or needed to "refactor" to better use the pieces you've collected since the last design.
It taught me a lot about design and engineering. I credit a lot of professional skills to my hours of time I spent building and creating my own science fiction.
If only this service was available back then. What damage could we have done if Lego sets could have been built to our exact specifications!
I'm going to have to dig out my old Legos stashed away somewhere at my parents house.
