As one of the most successful and popular toys, LEGO bricks have great appeal to both adults and children. But there are so many kinds of LEGO parts, it is not easy to store and manage so many parts and freely build the creations in mind. So back in 2002, LEGO started developing LEGO Digital Designer, whose original vision was to allow people to build bricks on a computer, have fun and share their creations.
At present, Lego's virtual building software mainly includes the official LEGO Digital Designer (LDD, which has stopped updating), and the unofficial BrickLink Studio, LeoCAD, Bricksmith, LDraw, Mecabricks, and MLCAD. Among them, LEGO Digital Designer and BrickLink Studio are the best and have the most users around the world.
BrickLink Studio (STUDIO for short) is a new generation of LEGO virtual building tool for Windows and Mac platforms, developed by BrickLink in 2014, using Unity. BrickLink was acquired by The Lego Group in 2019, and its BrickLink Studio has now become the official successor to LEGO Digital Designer, which was a free program launched by The Lego Group in 2004, let you build models with virtual LEGO bricks, and became the primary digital building tool for many LEGO enthusiasts at one point.
Compared with LEGO Digital Designer officially produced by LEGO company, BrickLink Studio is better in terms of ease of use, practicality and update frequency. For example: it supports physical stability checks, provides an in-app instruction maker, supports seamless integration with BrickLink's catalog, marketplace, and gallery, can generate renderings and animations of the building process, automatically generates instructions, and more.
Key Features
| Feature | Description |
| Intuitive and easy building | Watch as your bricks clutch, hinge, and clip to each other through our snap-to functionality. Compatible connections are detected, allowing you to assemble parts quickly. |
| Convenient stability check | Make sure your designs are stable prior to having them in person. Studio 2.0 offers physical stability check to help you build more stable designs. |
| Photorealistic renderer | When your designs need that icing on the cake, the photorealistic renderer will export breathtaking, exceptional quality images for your creations. With just a few clicks, your designs never looked more vivid. |
| Integrated instructions maker | Creating building instructions just got easier! Studio 2.0 offers an in-app instructions maker that helps you create custom instructions for your designs. From editing steps to designing pages, you can do it all. |
Related Links
Download URLs
| License | Version | Download | Size |
| BrickLink Studio | |||
| Freeware | Latest |  |
n/a |
| LEGO Digital Designer | |||
| Freeware | v4.3.12 Final | |
n/a |