Lego building techniques
The following building techniques will help you make your creations more interesting. You'll be able to build out to the side, attach pieces upside down and build at angles. Check out the video tips below the pictures, advanced techniques, Lego's own creator videos and classic ideas.
How can the carrot be attached?
A blue Technic pin is too wide for the carrot's hole.
Minifig baseplate roof
Hinge plate sandwich
You can connect two hinge pieces in a way so that there are studs on the top and the bottom. The hinge pieces can now be used to stick the undersides of plates together. Let's think of them as the filling in a plate sandwich! Below, hinges pieces were used to make the sign double-sided.
Studs on side
Turn glass windows into a roof
You may need to attach plates to the horizontal windows to make them the correct length for your space.
You will definitely need:
- bricks with studs on their sides to fit into the bottom of the windows,
- headlight bricks because you'll insert the windows' studs into the backs of these bricks,
- tiles to fill in the gap between the roof and the part of the wall between the headlight bricks, and
- tiles to cover the hole in the front of each headlight brick.
Your glass roof can be as big as you like!
Create an octagonal roof
To put the canopy on top of the minisub, the black frame for the canopy needs to be horizontal. When it's horizontal you can only attach it to the rest of the minisub by using a studs-on-side technique. Here the frame is attached to a bracket inside the sub.
Why not just use an ordinary rocker bearing on top of the sub? Although it works, the rocker bearing can easily come off whenever you open the canopy. The studs-of-side technique is more robust here.
Why not just use an ordinary rocker bearing on top of the sub? Although it works, the rocker bearing can easily come off whenever you open the canopy. The studs-of-side technique is more robust here.
You can turn plane tail pieces into wings if you use studs on the sides of planes.
A curved slope piece in front of the wing makes the plane look sleek.
Rocker bearings
Rocker bearings can help you create a hinged door.
You need smooth tiles on the top of the van's door so it can fit perfectly under the roof. A special plate can work as a handle for the door.
Rocker bearings can create doors that open the top of a spaceship.
This spaceship has 4 wings. The wings are attached to rocker bearings. The wings can be moved at different angles.
Cheese wedges
The Optica spaceship uses cheese wedges to join pieces upside down.
Engines on top
The Optica is the first space vehicle to have converted jet engines on top. The spaceship needs holes on top for the engines' studs to be pressed into. How do we get holes on top? We use our imagination to use special pieces in new ways!