Abstract: A toy building set with toy building elements with coupling means for releasably interconnecting the toy building elements, which further comprises outer and inner toy building elements with a longitudinal direction. The inner toy building elements are receivable in the outer toy building elements, and the inner toy building elements are slideable in the outer toy building elements along their parallel longitudinal directions. The outer toy building elements can be interconnected in their longitudinal directions to form a composite outer toy building element, and the inner toy building elements can be interconnected in their longitudinal directions to form a composite inner toy building element that can be slideably received in the composite outer toy building element.
Abstract: An exemplary embodiment is a method for generating a virtual brick model. The virtual brick models are generated by users and uploaded to a centralized host system. Users can build virtual models themselves or download and edit another user's virtual brick models while retaining the identity of the original virtual brick model. Routines are provided for both storing user created building steps in and generating automated building instructions for virtual brick models, generating a bill of materials for a virtual brick model and ordering physical bricks corresponding to a virtual brick model.
Type:
Grant
Filed:
May 20, 2003
Date of Patent:
January 20, 2009
Assignee:
LEGO A/S
Inventors:
Tomas Clark, Brad Justus, Jacob McKee, Ronny Scherer, Russell R. Stoll, Olga Timcenko, Thomas Scott Wilson
Abstract: A toy building set with toy building elements with coupling means for releasably interconnecting the toy building elements, which further comprises outer and inner toy building elements with a longitudinal direction. The inner toy building elements are receivable in the outer toy building elements, and the inner toy building elements are slideable in the outer toy building elements along their parallel longitudinal directions. The outer toy building elements can be interconnected in their longitudinal directions to form a composite outer toy building element, and the inner toy building elements can be interconnected in their longitudinal directions to form a composite inner toy building element that can be slideably received in the composite outer toy building element.
Abstract: A method of generating a computer readable model of a geometrical object constructed from a plurality of interconnectable construction elements, wherein each construction element has a number of connection elements for connecting the construction element with another construction element. The method comprises encoding a first and a second one of the construction elements as corresponding data structures, each representing the connection elements of the corresponding construction element, and each of the connection elements having associated with it a predetermined connection type.
Abstract: A computer-implemented method of generating building instructions for a building block model, comprising: retrieving a digital representation of the building block model; wherein said digital representation is indicative of a sequential construction order in which a plurality of virtual building blocks have been positioned in response to user commands during a computer-implemented virtual construction process, said virtual construction process resulting in a virtual building block model; and generating graphical representations of at least a first and a second part-model of respective first and second subsets of said plurality of virtual building blocks; wherein the second subset includes the first subset and a predetermined number of additional virtual building blocks of said plurality of virtual building blocks; and wherein the additional virtual building blocks are subsequent to all virtual building blocks in the first subset with respect to a sequential instruction order derived from the sequential constr