NEXOGON: Landing Platform

Even before Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha on Flickr) received the shipment of LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ Combo Power shields I sent him for our new parts festival, he was busily playing with some that he bought himself!

[UPDATE: Want to know how the platform is built? Check out this recreation on Mecabricks by Oby1! If you use it in some way, please credit Tim Goddard and Oby1 for their great work.] 

So far on New Elementary we have explored a lot of the potential geometric options, so I am starting with something a bit different. I've effectively built a giant Nexogon and turned it into a landing pad. I added a bit of 'tanscaping' (landscaping built with Brick Yellow [TLG]/Tan [BL] bricks and slopes primarily on their side) and passed the photo to my good friend Rob Damiano who did some wonderful things to bring it to life.

NEXOGON Landing Platform by Tim Goddard with Rob Damiano. Click for larger view.

To begin the build I played about with the geometric options available and soon arrived at the first hurdle: I needed to be able to build sideways with a 30º angle, and that pretty much left me with cheese. This proved to be both a positive and a negative; a positive in that it allowed a lot of fine detail, a negative in that it was going to be a big challenge to have a relatively thin, free-floating structure with a smooth surface.

Lining up cheese slopes just by stacking them on plates does not give a smooth edge, but there are techniques to get around this, all based upon raising every second cheese slope by the height of half a plate. This diagram shows you the core geometry involved; how you deal with the sideways 1x1 tile depends on your model. There are a couple of approaches described here.

In my case this started to get a bit tricky to maintain towards the pointy edges as I ran out of room to fit in SNOT, so I cheated a little by building in some vents.

Keeping the platform not much more than two studs deep also made lining up the cheese slopes tricky. Because of this the finished model cannot be turned upside without a few tiles going astray!

These exploded views show how it all comes together.

READ MORE: Tim Goddard's triangular landing platform is on Mecabricks, recreated by Obi1

Let us not forget the Nexogons! These proved easy to work with in this build as they are used studs up and serve as the central point holding the main structure together with a clip and bar arrangement in the corners. The use of shield tiles was the only real option for the centre, but sometimes the obvious choice is the best.

Every landing platform needs a ship, so I built one.

This inspection craft is built a little like a tube, with a core of studs pointing out in four directions.

READ MORE: The Nexo Knights colour scheme was inspired by a Space theme from 1993... so Tim Goddard does a mash-up

Oby1's recreation of Tim Goddard's landing platform in 3D on Mecabricks

If you utilise this work, please credit Tim Goddard and Oby1.

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