Getting More Parts

The Lego bricks you use in Bricksmith come from a part library called LDraw, maintained by Lego hobbyists around the world. Their effort is hosted on the Internet at www.ldraw.org.

Periodically, LDraw.org releases more official parts. But sometimes, the part you need hasn't been included in an official release yet—either because the part was only recently finished, or because the part is still being perfected before it is certified for official release. In either case, you can still use the parts today. You just have to download and install them.

New Official Parts

Official Parts have been fully certified by LDraw and released in a part update package to the library. Part updates are listed here, but I don't recommend downloading them that way. Here's the easier route:

Download and Install

1. Download the newest complete LDraw library.
2. Drag the old LDraw folder that came with Bricksmith to the trash.
3. Move the new LDraw folder you downloaded to the place where the old folder was.

Making Your New Parts Appear in Bricksmith's Part Browser

1. Go to Bricksmith > Preferences.
2. Select the Parts tab.
3. Click "Reload Parts" in the LDraw Folder section.

New Unofficial Parts

Unofficial parts haven't been released in an official part update yet, either because they aren't certified perfect yet, or because they are queued up waiting for the next official update. There are two ways to download unofficial parts:

• The Easy Way (everything at once)
• The Hard Way (one part at a time.)

The Easy Way (everything at once)

1. Download the complete archive of parts in the tracker.
2. Rename the downloaded folder "ldrawunf" to "Unofficial"
3. Move the folder to LDraw/Unofficial
4. Follow steps under "Making Your New Parts Appear in Bricksmith's Part Browser" above.

Note: there are a few applications (notably L3P) which don't recognize parts in LDraw/Unofficial. Should you encounter one, you'll have to manually merge the files into the main LDraw folder. Do not accidentally overwrite nested folders such as PARTS/S or P/48.

The Hard Way (One part at a time.)

1. Look up the part number you need (it's usually molded on the bottom of the Lego brick somewhere)
2. Search for it on the LDraw Part Tracker.
3. Download it and copy it to LDraw/Unofficial/parts
4. Check for any listed dependencies or subparts.
5. Download them. The website will tell you where they go; usually it's LDraw/Unofficial/P.
6. Repeat as needed until you have no more subparts to download. Note that subparts can require other subparts.