Building the Perfect Beast - the UCS AT-AT

My love of cavegod's massive UCS All Terrain Armoured Transport (AT-AT) MOC (below) is well documented, so much so that regular readers of this blog must be sick of me going on about it by now. It's hardly surprising, though - the AT-AT is perhaps my favourite ever vehicle from the Star Wars universe, and as a huge Star Wars fan and an equally huge LEGO fan I guess it was pretty much inevitable that if anyone was to build a huge and detailed version of the AT-AT then I would be all over it like a rash.

I've got to know cavegod, also known as Pete, pretty well over the past couple of years, and I've tried to persuade him to sell his AT-AT to me, but he always just laughs and says "build your own !". Thing is, having exhibited at LEGO displays with Pete a few times and seen the thing close up and personal, it'd be pointless to try to design my own. The guy has a serious knack of nailing the design of LEGO-built Star Wars vehicles time and time again - Sandcrawler, Republic Attack Shuttle and Speeder Bike to name but three - and his AT-AT is I think the best of the lot. Realistically, nothing I could build would come close - it'd just be a futile exercise.

Pete's AT-AT, NSC 2011

Anyway, to cut a long story short, at some point last year I think Pete finally got sick of me trying to buy his AT-AT and moaning about how empty my life was without one, and he offered to help me build one. I was sceptical, until that is the LDD files started to arrive in my inbox and I realised he was serious. Six files in all, covering the legs, head, neck, internal skeleton, sides and roof of the beast.

I've blogged about LDD a couple of times before (here and here). It's a piece of software that allows you to build 'virtually' with LEGO on a PC or Mac, with an almost unlimited palette of pretty much every part that LEGO have ever produced, in any colour, and in any quantity. You can see an LDD screen grab of one of Pete's AT-AT files below (click to enlarge).

The thing about LDD is that once you have a design, you can ask the software to produce a set of building instructions. Having reviewed the LDD files that Pete sent, it became clear that I basically had all the necessary blueprints to build a replica of his AT-AT.

Given the size of the thing, however, collecting together the necessary parts was obviously going to be a significant challenge. I have a relatively modest collection of loose LEGO, and cannabalising my collection of sets wasn't going to be an option for me, so it was immediately evident that I was going to have to source a hell of a lot of parts. In the old days, you could upload your LDD designs to the LEGO company and for a fee they'd send you the parts you needed to make your virtual masterpiece a reality. This service was unfortunately stopped last year, however, so another source of loose LEGO was going to be required. 

First things first, however : LDD unfortunately won't provide you with a listing of all the parts making up your digital design, but there's thankfully a third-party application called LDD Manager which apparently does the job. It was written by Eurobricks staff-member Superkalle, and what he doesn't know about LDD is probably not worth knowing; you can find out more about the software and download it here. There's another software package called "Wanted Bricks" which will, I'm told, also generate parts listings from LDD files. Please note that I've not used either of these applications myself - Pete sent me parts listings that'd he'd already generated from his LDD files - but both were applications that he recommended, so both should hopefully do the job.

Once I had parts listings for the six AT-AT LDD files, the next job was to painstakingly merge the six listings into one master spreadsheet. There's no doubt an automated way of doing this, but if there is then I don't know what it is, meaning that I had to resort to doing it by hand.... This involved some seriously tedious data entry. Anyway, it got done eventually, and for the record, the AT-AT is made up of around 6,200 parts, which gives it a bigger part count than any official set that LEGO has ever released, including Set 10179 Millennium Falcon (5,195 parts) and Set 10189 Taj Mahal (the current daddy of official sets at 5,922 parts)

Once I had the master parts listing, it was time to start collecting together the necessary parts. Luckily, I've been pretty diligent over the past few years about keeping track of my loose LEGO. I use a website called Peeron for this purpose; you tell it which parts you have, in which colour and in which quantities, and it will keep track of your stash of loose LEGO for you. Then, it's just a case of searching by part and by colour at a later date and Peeron will tell you how many parts of that colour you have (although it unfortunately won't tell you where the hell you've put them...). So for example, the AT-AT requires thirty three 2 x 3 bricks in light bluish grey. My Peeron listing (below - click to enlarge) tells me that I have 103 loose 2 x 3 bricks in medium stone (another name for light bluish grey) so I'm sorted for those parts at least....

All told, I had somewhere in the region of 2,000 of the parts I'd need for the AT-AT in my collection of loose LEGO, so it was then time to figure out where I could get hold of the remaining 4,200-odd parts. The answer to that question is Bricklink, the indispensible and inevitable destination for anyone looking for loose LEGO, and I quickly set about putting together the mother of all Bricklink Wanted Lists. Part by part you tell Bricklink what you need (see screengrabs below - click to enlarge) in what colour and in what quantity and when your wanted list is eventually complete, Bricklink will tell you which of the thousands of Bricklink sellers across the globe have the parts you're looking for. At least that's the theory; in reality, with a project this large, it's almost certain that nobody will have all the parts you need, and it'll invariably be necessary to use multiple sellers in multiple countries, piecing together the full complement of parts like a complex, expensive jigsaw puzzle. 

Building a Bricklink Wanted List (1)

Building a Bricklink Wanted List (2) 

Even with the tools available on Bricklink, the process of sourcing all the parts was time-consuming and challenging. I ended up placing orders with multiple different stores, located in countries on both sides of the Atlantic including the U.S., the Netherlands, Slovenia, Canada, Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere. The largest order was for more than 2,600 parts (from AFOL Supply in the Netherlands - cheers, guys !), and the smallest was for just 4 parts. Every store sets its own price for each individual part; some stores charge additional fees depending on the number of different parts you order from them; some stores add a specific charge for packaging; some stores pass on the PayPal fees to the buyer; postal charges obviously vary according to the size of the order and where the parts are being shipped from, and there's even the potential for import duty to be levied by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs depending on the value of the package and the country of origin. As you can imagine, it can be extremely complex to juggle all these variables in order to get all the parts you need from as few sellers as possible while minimising the total cost. I spent hours on this task, but I'm nevertheless pretty sure that I could have sourced the parts more cheaply than I did. And the total cost ? No comment - my wife might read this....

And then the packages start to arrive, from small envelopes to big, heavy boxes. The first job is to carefully check that you've received what you ordered as mistakes do happen. Sometimes wrong parts are sent, and sometimes parts are just missing. There have been issues with a fair few of my orders so far, but every single one of the sellers concerned has been quick to apologise and send out the correct parts. Once the orders have been checked and feedback has been left for the sellers, it's time to cross those newly-received parts off the master parts listing, which gradually chips away at the "parts left to source" count at the bottom of my humungous Excel spreadsheet....

Pete with his AT-AT

At time of writing, all the parts have been ordered, and most are now in hand. I'm waiting on just 54 more pieces and then my mammoth parts grab will be complete. I'll post an update when I'm finally in possession of all the parts and building is underway. Huge thanks to Pete for putting together the LDD files for me, but he did warn me in passing that they might contain some mistakes, so the build will be a whole different challenge I think...

If you're interested in building your own AT-AT and want to get hold of the LDD files, scroll up to the top and send me a message via the 'contact' link on the right side of the screen; I'll pass your details on to Pete.

STEAM 2011

               

                                                                                  Building the AT-AT : Part 2 -->