Title: The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide Author: Allan Bedford Pages: 344 Publisher: No Starch Press ISBN: 1593270542 Genre: Computer / Hobby Review: The Lego Builder's Guide is a nice introduction to the lego world. While this book may not appeal to the expert lego builder, the beginner will find the techniques informative, and the intermediate builder will probably learn a few new tricks. Younger legomainiacs might lack the patience to read this book, but it should be a nice review for a parent who wishes to guide a young architect in the right direction. Legos have been around for years, and considering the basic nature of these instructions, this book should be useful for many years to come. The book starts out with a basic description of the bricks and types of bricks available. This information is interesting, but not necessarily essential, especially to the more intermediate builder. It also includes a description of brick dimensions and ratios. The latter is the most useful information presented, and those who want to get right into building may just want to skip the first chapter. After that, the book begins building. The author uses enjoyable examples to illustrate several building techniques. While overlapping may be a given to most builders, he introduces a few techniques that may help reduce the number of bricks used, or make good use of limited options. The next few chapters discuss building at different scales, from tiny models, homes for minifigs (the little lego people), a slightly larger scale, and how to build jumbo bricks. These were some of the most fun chapters and my only complaint would be that there wasn't enough information here. Building and designing with legos is a matter of practice, and while this isn't a design reference, I would have enjoyed a few more examples in each chapter, especially the minifig chapter. This section included only one design. However, I appreciated the last part of the chapter which went over possible variations on that design. I was most looking forward to the technic section. I was disappointed that this chapter did not include a single complete design, but as the author notes, technic could take up a whole book on its own. The author does do a good job describing how technic pieces work together, and gives several small examples of how parts can be arranged for function. Many readers may find the design aspect of the book frustrating, but I think the author does a good job of getting the reader started. Like any artistic endevor, designing will take time. While this may be frustrating, the solution is practice. I was encouraged to read that the author, too, has difficulty with designing, and frequently makes changes while designing and building. The grids provide a nice start. However, the author doesn't talk much about computer design aids. If this book is missing one thing, it's a chapter on how to effectively use computer software in designing models. The book includes two appendixes. The first appendix has pictures and descriptions of almost 300 of the more common bricks. The second appendix has examples of the grids the author recommends for designing, with descriptions as to when each type of grid may be useful and notes on effective use of the grids. It also includes several of the examples used in the text. Since copying these grids from the book would be tedious, the author has created a web page where they can be downloaded and printed. The URL for the site is http://www.apotome.com/ and it also includes instructions for some of the designs shown in the book. I do wish the author would post pictures of the design end-results on the web page, as this would be an excellent meduim for such. It is completely understandable that the book would be in black and white to save the buyer a good deal of money, but since the book refers to the web site frequently, it would be nice to view the completed products in color. As of this review, only the firetruck is in color. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was a tough read only because as a poor college student I had no bricks to play with while reading it. For me, this re-awakened how much I loved legos as a child and how I don't want to loose that aspect of my inner child. I would especially recommend this book to adults who never had a chance to enjoy legos. This book will be excellent in assisting anyone who is interested in enjoying the most brilliant toy in the world. Copywrite 2006. All material is the opinion of the page author. If you have problems with this site, please contact the webmaster. Posted 03 August 2006.