KimT wrote:The part count is an estimate by the builder himself.
The whole diorama weighs about 750 kilograms -
Not sure how much a regular 2x4 brick weighs, but that could be what he used to estimate the amount of bricks.
System scale LEGO (the mix you'd typically see in sets) is about 350 pieces per pound. At 750kg, that would be about 578,713, which is about 1/3 of his estimate. Plus, 2x4 bricks and such typically weigh MORE than the standard mix (there aren't as many 1x1 round plates, cheese slopes, technic pins, etc). Your standard 2x4 brick weighs about 2.32g according to BrickLink, which would translate to 323,275 bricks-- a bit more than 1/5 of his estimate.
The Hoth layout I did back in 2002 was probably in the ballpark of 30,000-40,000 pieces, and that was roughly 1/3 to 1/4 the size of his in terms of solidly built brick foundation.
Honestly, 750kg sounds way too heavy to me-- but even if it is 750kg, that's still not really enough to easily make the 1.5 million estimate. Each piece would have to weigh on *average* 0.5g, which is about the weight of a 2x2 tile. So, if you told me that it was made out of solid plates, it might be plausible.
KimT wrote:Plus do consider that this thing has a train track build in - it's not just built on a baseplate, there's a skeleton build that holds a train track and on top of that you have the snowy build. So that could easily up the amount of bricks pretty fast.
If the height of the snow field were something like 30+ bricks off the ground, that would make sense to me. But it didn't seem that tall to me. Also, if they were solidly filled with LEGO, that would make more sense, but typically you just build a skeletal structure rather than filling with 100% bricks.
Anyway, I'm mostly curious as to how he came up with the number, because it sounds like WAY more than I would've expected for a display that size. If I guessed, I would have said about 200,000 pieces or so, maybe as many as 400,000. But I didn't see it in person, and I don't know the construction technique. It's POSSIBLE, to be sure-- it just seems too big to me.
DaveE