Designing and building my own LEGO set

As a kid I was a huge fan of Lego. It was pretty amazing to have a bunch of bricks that I could turn into any toy I wanted. It’s probably fair to say that I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing with Lego and it definitely impacted my future interests and even career choices. I returned to Lego as an adult just a few years ago when my son turned 3 and since then we’ve enjoyed building bricks together. I’m not aiming to be a professional Lego builder, it’s all about having good fun and memories with my son. But recently I decided to take it to the next level.

My son is now 6, he loves Lego, but he also loves football. I saw him playing with Lego and recreating different football situations, in fact he could sometimes do it for hours! I did some research and I was hoping to find existing sets with a football theme, but I couldn’t find anything that is playable in the way I would expect. So I decided to build one.

Prototype

I’ve started with a small prototype created with parts that we already had at home. It was done just in a few minutes to see if it’s playable and turned out to be really great. My son organised there tons of games, he even did the entire World Cup competition, starting at the group stage and of course he included the final game too. It was so enjoyable to watch him playing and having so much fun.

Software

I wanted to build something better and started to look for a software which I could use to design my own set. I checked a few options and the best one for me was Mecabricks. It’s a smart Lego designing tool that works in the browser, which is so handy as there is no need to install anything. I don’t know the advanced functions of this software, but for me the most important bits are: finding the right brick in the right colour, dragging it into a 3D scene and placing it in the correct location.

I was actually able to design the football pitch quite quickly, in total it perhaps took around 4 hours, including the time I’ve spent on learning and exploring the new software. I tried to make it look like a real pitch, but also make sure it’s playable: so there are studs available to easily connect minifigures and barriers around the pitch so the ball will not fall out too easily.

Buying bricks

It was all going smooth, but then it was a time to actually find the real bricks. There are several ways of buying bricks you want. You can buy an actual Lego set that includes as many bricks matching your needs, you can visit a real physical Lego Store where they have the “Pick & Build Wall” or you can buy parts separately on the Internet. I recommend the most popular site called Bricklink where you should be able to find pretty much any brick that ever existed.

I was able to generate a list of bricks used in my project on the Mecabricks website and then I started to look for them on Bricklink. I discovered that some of the bricks did not exist in the selected colour, some of them were very limited in capacity or the sellers were based in remote locations, which could result in a long shipping process. My only option really was to be more careful with the design. I had to simplify the project, change some bricks completely or change their colours and constantly verify my choices on the Bricklink website. And finally I had something that could be actually built. I made the project public, so you can see it here.

Building my own set

I found all the bricks I needed on Bricklink in 3 different shops located in Germany, Italy and Lithuania. It took around a week to deliver bricks to Poland and it was really exciting when they arrived! It’s a very satisfying moment where the virtual project is about to become a reality. We’ve built the set together with my son and it was a wonderful surprise for him. Building without instructions is a bit different and you probably have to be slightly more focused, but this set was easy enough.

It was a really great side project and it was so nice to see my son being excited about this too. He loves it, he has already spent hours playing on the pitch and I’m sure this set will stay with us for years. We have some plans to extend it, but we’ll see what the future brings.

Summary

You might wonder how much did it cost to create this set? First of all the Mecabricks software is free, which is great. Brick prices on Bricklink are reasonable too, however keep in mind that is probably better to rely on more common bricks as they are usually cheaper. The shipping costs can make it more pricey, that’s why is so important to carefully pick the seller location, ideally as close as possible to you.

In case of this set the bricks alone were 67.72 EUR plus the shipping costs of 25.81 EUR (from 3 different countries), which brings the total amount to 93.53 EUR. It’s not cheap, but I think as something done rather rarely and for fun, it’s perhaps not too bad. The set is also quite large, so the overall price is acceptable.

Overall I’m very satisfied with this project, it had some challenges and required to learn a few new things, but that’s good. It gave me a lot of joy, but most importantly it was a great surprise for my son.