LEGO Airplane Design | Anuranan Bharadwaj

Role

Individual — 3D Design & Drawing Package

EGR 120: Introduction to Engineering · Spring 2023

Tools

BrickLink Studio · SolidWorks · Rendering

Key Contributions

Designed a complete LEGO airplane assembly in BrickLink Studio, placing individual LEGO parts to form a twin-engine aircraft with T-tail and tricycle landing gear
Produced a photorealistic rendering of the finished model composited over a runway scene
Generated a 17-page engineering drawing package in SolidWorks with title blocks, orthographic multiview projections, and dimensional annotations
Presented a comparative study of the LEGO design against real aircraft configurations

This page documents an EGR 120 project covering the full design-to-documentation workflow for a custom LEGO airplane — from 3D modeling and photorealistic rendering through a formal 17-page SolidWorks engineering drawing package.

Project Overview

The EGR 120 final project required designing a complete LEGO airplane model and producing a formal engineering drawing package that documents the design to industry-standard drafting conventions. The project covered the full design-to-documentation workflow: digital 3D modeling using LEGO-specific CAD software, photorealistic rendering, and the translation of a 3D assembly into a structured set of 2D engineering drawings in SolidWorks.

The airplane was designed with an emphasis on visual accuracy and structural plausibility — selecting LEGO parts whose geometry approximates real aircraft components such as fuselage panels, wing surfaces, engine nacelles, and landing gear struts. The finished design is a twin-engine aircraft featuring a T-tail empennage and tricycle undercarriage, rendered against a runway background to simulate a real aircraft environment.

Design a recognizable airplane configuration using authentic LEGO components in BrickLink Studio
Produce a photorealistic rendered image of the completed model
Document the design in a formal SolidWorks drawing package following engineering drafting standards
Compare the LEGO design to real aircraft configurations and identify analogous design features

LEGO airplane design rendered on a runway — Fig. 1: Photorealistic rendering of the completed LEGO airplane — twin-engine configuration with T-tail and tricycle landing gear, composited on a runway background

3D Design & Rendering

The airplane was designed in BrickLink Studio, a parametric LEGO CAD environment where each component is selected from an actual LEGO part library and snapped into position using the same stud-and-anti-stud connection logic as physical LEGO assembly. This constraint — that every part must be a real LEGO piece with real connection points — forces design decisions that parallel actual aircraft design: the fuselage cross-section is governed by available brick widths, wing sweep is approximated by stepped LEGO plate offsets, and nacelle geometry is shaped by cylindrical and curved specialty parts.

Design Decision

Trade-off: Worked exclusively within the real LEGO part library — rather than freeform geometry — accepting that aerodynamic shapes would be approximated by rectilinear and curved specialty bricks instead of smooth surfaces.

Why: Designing within a fixed part library mirrors the constraint-driven nature of real aircraft design, where every shape decision must trace back to an available, manufacturable component — reinforcing the link between 3D design intent and physical buildability.

Twin-engine tractor configuration · T-tail with the horizontal stabilizer elevated atop the vertical fin
Mid-mounted wings · retractable-style tricycle landing gear built from LEGO Technic axle and wheel components
Teal, orange, and white color scheme, chosen to maximize visual contrast across the major structural groupings — fuselage, wings, and empennage — making the design readable in both rendered and orthographic views

The final rendering was produced using BrickLink Studio’s built-in ray-trace renderer, with the output composited over a runway photograph to place the model in a realistic aviation context.

LEGO airplane design — alternate angle view on runway — Fig. 2: Alternate angle view of the completed design, showing the T-tail empennage, wing planform, and tricycle landing gear configuration

Reference LEGO Technic race plane used for comparison — Fig. 3: Reference LEGO aircraft used for the design comparison study — the presentation evaluated how the custom design compared to an existing LEGO airplane configuration in terms of part selection, structural layout, and aerodynamic form approximation

Engineering Drawing Package

The 17-page drawing package was produced in SolidWorks and documents the LEGO airplane design using formal engineering drafting conventions. Each sheet follows a consistent title block format including project name, author, scale, sheet number, and revision fields. The package includes multiview orthographic projections (front, top, right-side, and isometric views) of the full assembly, with dimensions and annotations applied according to ANSI/ASME drawing standards introduced in EGR 120.

Key elements of the drawing package include:

Full-assembly orthographic views with overall envelope dimensions
Isometric assembly view showing the complete airplane from a three-quarter perspective
Individual part drawings for major subassemblies including the fuselage, wing panels, empennage, engine nacelles, and landing gear
Consistent title block annotations across all 17 sheets, following course-specified formatting standards

Design Decision

Trade-off: Re-modeled key subassemblies as simplified solid bodies in SolidWorks rather than attempting a direct geometry transfer from BrickLink Studio.

Why: BrickLink Studio does not natively export in SolidWorks-compatible formats, so re-modeling was required — this step also reinforced the relationship between 3D design intent and the 2D projections used to communicate that intent in formal engineering documentation.

Full assembly isometric drawing — Sheet 01/17 — Fig. 4: Sheet 01/17 — Full Assembly Isometric view with ERAU Aerospace Engineering title block, scale 1:1

Full assembly exploded view — Sheet 02/17 — Fig. 5: Sheet 02/17 — Full Assembly Exploded View with 22 numbered part callouts, scale 1:2

Wing 1 subassembly drawing — Sheet 08/17 — Fig. 6: Sheet 08/17 — Wing 1 Subassembly exploded view with parts list (wing panel, wing lights, fasteners), scale 1:1

Full section view drawing — Sheet 13/17 — Fig. 7: Sheet 13/17 — Full Section View (Section A-A) showing internal cross-section geometry with dimensional annotations and section hatching, scale 2:1

Support element detail drawing with tolerances — Sheet 16/17 — Fig. 8: Sheet 16/17 — Support Element detail drawing with diameter tolerances (H8/f7 sliding clearance fit), hole depth callouts, and general tolerance block, scale 2:1

Key Takeaways

Design constraints drive creative problem-solving

Working within the LEGO part library means every design choice is constrained by available geometry. Achieving aerodynamic shapes from rectilinear bricks requires the same kind of trade-off thinking that governs real aircraft design: optimizing within a fixed solution space rather than designing without limits.

Engineering drawing is a precise communication standard

A drawing is not a picture — it is a contract. Producing 17 pages of formal documentation to ANSI/ASME standards established early habits around dimension placement, view selection, title block discipline, and scale consistency that underpin every subsequent CAD project.

3D-to-2D translation requires deliberate view selection

Choosing which views fully define a part — without redundancy or ambiguity — is a non-trivial skill. For complex assembled geometry, selecting the front, top, and side orientations that minimize hidden lines and convey the maximum information in the fewest sheets is a design decision in itself.

Rendering grounds a design in physical context

Compositing the model over a real runway photograph communicates scale and intent in a way that an orthographic drawing cannot. Photorealistic rendering is a standard deliverable in aerospace concept design, and producing one early — even for a LEGO model — builds intuition for how design decisions read at full scale.