Lego Sears Tower??

[hondasaurus]

impressive.
i was more of a medieval fan. but they're all cool.
my friend and i used to take them to each other's houses when we were 10. one time i dropped a grocery paper bag full of legos on his driveway, scattering them into his lawn, that sucked. i lost all of mine when my stepfamily moved out at 16, not sure if they took them on purpose or not, but either way they didn't return them, errr.

 

[phyregod]

Add another few months of work. LEDs for each window, clearance lights, antenna lights, etc.. on a controller that allows individual operation. of course now you need to build in behind each window so you can light one window without hitting the surrounding structure with light.

Or not. That wouldn't be very true to leggo-building.

I've always wanted to get huge amounts of erector set pieces, motors, pulleys, etc.. And just have them on hand. Create all kinds of crazy machines on days like today when its too cold to ride, nothing to do, wandering around the house and watching TV..

 

[jamesA]

i've thought about it, phyre... i've thought about it.

 

[TenTwelve]

I need to buy some Legos.

 

[jamesA]

Got my pieces today, so I went over around 8:30ish I believe and started on it. Got it done up to the 7th floor, or around 6.4% of the building complete.

Then I started collecting pieces I'll need to build up and mass them beside the building.

I also found a whole lot of pieces for my antennas that I'd been looking for. My mom is a great organizer, made it so much easier to find little random pieces.

 

[serrilion]

Nice Project, deff diffrent but jeez, you have to much time on your hands!

 

[jamesA]

I put in my 40 hours a week at work and then some, what the hell else am I supposed to do with my time?

Shit, it took me all of about 45 minutes to build 7 floors...

 

[serrilion]

Should go out and have fun! Ya know get out a little, and if it took ya 45mins then finish it off

 

[jamesA]

It has to go another 101 stories. It'll take time to get all the parts.

Going out isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'll just save myself the boredom.

 

[whiterabbit06]

If it took you 45 mins do do 7 floors then the remaining 94 floors should take you approx. 10 hrs 3 mins. You could have it done in one off day.

 

[serrilion]

Damn people and there math lmao! Forgetting he needs to consentrate that long + his hands need to hold up, even as a kid 3 hours with legos with out a break was a challange, then again I was obsest with firecrackers + legos, awesome claymor style mine

 

[whiterabbit06]

Yea I built this lego house for christmas one year and took a small strand of lights that were left over from decorating and made the insode light up and everything. Needless to say I left it on too long and when I went to take it apart all the legos were melted together on the inside.

 

[jamesA]

Yea I built this lego house for christmas one year and took a small strand of lights that were left over from decorating and made the insode light up and everything. Needless to say I left it on too long and when I went to take it apart all the legos were melted together on the inside.

You don't seem to understand that the clear bricks I'm using for windows I have to order...

Unless you can order me enough to do the entire building at once, this is going to take a LONG time to complete.

If I recall correctly, of the clear 2x1 bricks that I'll be using for windows there will be (rough math here) 2,470 of them. Even at 16 cents/each, that's a shitton of money that I'm not spending all at once.

Now you know why I didn't, actually cannot, finish it all at once. I stopped at the 7th floor because that is all the window pieces I had.


I've been thinking about it tonight though, I'm going to redo it and reduce the size by 4 bricks. I think it'll make it a little more slender, cheaper, and a little more sturdier with all the internal bracing.

Edit: and it's the remaining 101 floors. The Sears Tower is 108 stories, the roof is counted as "109" and the mechanical Penthouse is counted as "110".

 

[phyregod]

Nah, do it right.. take your time, why not?

 

[jamesA]

Exactly. Anyway, I spent a few more hours redoing it all. This Digital Creator download kicks ass, I'll know exactly what I need.

Basically all I'm going to do is take off 4x4 bricks of the base, and shorten the tubes to 7x7, with the beams making up the inner two tubes.

This way at the setback, the roofs won't looks so odd with one rooftop being 8x8 and another being 10x10.

Here's what I've done on the digital designer today, it looks a lot better.

The first one I drew up took me 3 days to complete. This one took me 3 hours, thanks to finding the multifunctionality of the copy tool. lol

Anywho, this one looks a lot more symmetrical. I'm happy with this look, so I'm going to restart my real one. This configuration actually made it easier to internally brace it, and I think it will be much stronger (not to mention slightly cheaper)

Thankfully I am only 7 stories up, so it won't take too much to just completely redo it.

 

[cheese9988]

I found a couple of guys who did part of the Chicago skyline, any chance you will take it that far?

 

[jamesA]

Sears tower is going to be a huge undertaking in itself. lol I'd really like to, but I'd be more inclined to do Fort Waynes' skyline first.

Once work slows down a little bit I'm gonna head downtown and take a few pictures of One summit square, the lincoln bank building and National City Center to get ideas on those buildings. But I'd like to finish this first.

Pictures of Lego Sears Tower v2.1 to come.

 

[jamesA]

Pictures and descriptions, even though some of you could care less. Well I could care less about you caring less. so ha!

Anyway, I decided to rip it down to the base and redo it removing 4 blocks from each side of the perimeter, I had initially designed a 26x26 brick building, but I shortened it to 22x22 so each "column" piece would only be a 1x1 brick instead of a 2x1 or 2x2 brick. This will help to simplify the pieces I'd need to order once I went through all my moms pieces.

I went over to my moms right around 4:30, helped her shovel some and then went in to demolish and reconstruct. I came up with a few new things that I added into the building as well.

Here's the building redone, With my internal bracing worked out as well. It'll be stronger since one piece will connect to the inner bracing, and then back to the opposite wall.

^ (wow you can tell which is the old window piece in this picture... I'll have to move that elsewhere...)

In this one you can make out the elevator shaft I'm building into it for the skylobby. You can also see all my plates supplies in front there.

In this one you can see the full elevator shaft rising. The bracing will be done every 10 floors. The elevator right here reaches right around the 50th floor mark, in case you're wondering. This is right around where the first set of stepbacks will occur.

Kind of a shitty picture, but this is the skylobby entrance.

Here is the skylobby floor. I built it into the design so that the elevator shaft will end right there, I'm also going to build it so that you can take off the top 5 floors and view inside the skylobby.

After resizing the entire building, I had to redo the roof as well. I think it turned out awesome. I redid the antennae so that they're in the triangular shape the real ones are.

In case you're wondering, this was my brothers old room from the early 90s until he moved out, he draws, paints and yada yada so they let him draw and paint his walls.

 

[phyregod]

I went and downloaded the Lego Digital Designer. I've burned hours just goofing around with it. Working on a double wishbone suspension.. Just for kicks.

Awesome fun if you're into that kinda thing.

 

[jamesA]

I would sit for hours playing Sim City 4 if I could find my deluxe edition disc, this really is basically the same thing.