LEGO ETHS- The Design Process

I am building my high school (Evanston Township High School) out of LEGO. If this is your first time reading my blog, heres an overview of what my plan is:

like I said earlier, I'm building a LEGO model of my high school. I plan to buy the digitally design the model, buy the pieces and construct it. When completed, I wish to donate the model to my high school. At first, the model was going to be the entire school, and to be built on a very small scale. (ETHS is an enormous school, so the final product would still have been quite large.)

My intention was for the model to be built on a very literal, yet small, scale similar to the Adam Reed Tucker's LEGO Architecture sets.

A screenshot of the design idea I
scrapped in favor of the Minifig model.
The most developed part of this
model is the section I ended up choosing
to build on Minifig scale.

A bird's eye view of the High School
(image courtesy of Google Maps)

However, after a little while designing the school on that scale I decided to change my design entirely. I started a new minifig scale model (on the same scale as a LEGO man) of the high school.

Since the school is so big, i'm only really to be able to build the front part of the school on minifig scale. Thats fine with me though, because the front is the most iconic section of the building.

The portion of the school I will be building on mini-figure scale.
The final model should be roughly 66 studs (lego bumps) wide and
48 studs long. 

                            
                            
                            

   While designing, I had to think about the amount of pieces I was using. I didn't want to create a design that would end up being a fortune to pay for (my current budget is supposedly estimated to be around 1500 dollars). Budget details are still being figured out.

   Another thing to consider while designing is the issue of making sure everything can be not only built but supported when constructed in real life and not on a computer.

My progress as of March 4th, 2014.

I've been doing a lot of de- and re-construction on the model to make sure everything is solid and supported by pillars.

The reason the model is split in half in the image on the left is because I figured the school is largely symmetrical, so to save time and simplify the design process I'll just work on a single half and order double the pieces when finished.


That's it for this update. I'll be taking lots of screenshots as I design (and pictures as I build) so expect more updates on the project soon!