Why?

Why not? For both personal and work reasons, I had a desire to to learn OpenGL, a standard software library for programming 2D and 3D graphics. One of the more popular books for learning OpenGL is

The OpenGL Programming Guide
2nd Edition
The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL v1.1

by Mason Woo, Jackiet Neider, and Tom Davis
published by Addison-Wesley

However, I wanted a pet project to guide me along in learning some of the basic techniques of 3D computer graphics. Notice the cover - a globe made out of Lego® like bricks! Combined with my hobby of building Lego® creations, the idea of figuring out how to both design and build such a globe was irresistable.

AFTERWORD: I finished building the final version of the globe in June, 1998. In July 1998, I visited the Lego® Imagination Celebration 25th anniversary tour when it stopped in Washington, DC. As part of the exibit they had pictures from the new Legoland in Carlsbad, California. One of the pictures was a globe made from bricks similar to mine - and the same colors! I estimate that their globe is about 2.5 times larger in diameter than the one I constructed (I can't afford to buy that many bricks!)

NEXT How I did it
BACK to Planet Brick
BACK to Rob Butera's Home Page

rob@butera.org