There's an option to watch an animated guide on how to recreate whatever complex design you just built. You can place your model against a cheesy 3D background, save it, take a screenshot, explode it only to have it reassembled on the next mouse click.

Seventeen prebuilt models are included to help beginners. The Brick Palette puts all your bricks in one basket, so to speak, so that managing them is no more difficult than keeping track of more than two dozen subpalettes that catalogue the variations. Parts include basic bricks, model jet engines, and infrared sensors. The graphics-intensive program seamlessly zooms in and out, rotates your point-of-view 360 degrees, connects bricks to each other, rotates them, and moves any hinges they might have so you can explore how your pieces fit together. The program links to the Lego online store, but there's more going on here than corporate shilling.

Loaded with features, the drawbacks are minor and this program is a lot of fun to use. Lego Digital Designer gives users the chance to play with Legos without paying for Legos.

Lego digital designer online