brick.camp

A visual dictionary of LEGO building techniques. Contains a few hundred entries, each showing a technique with the parts it takes, the features it has, the space it occupies, and links to one or more sources.

It's a Hugo static site hosted on GitHub Pages. Searching happens entirely in the browser, against CSV lookup files generated at build time.

Running it locally

Requires Node and Hugo extended (how to install). Version 0.164.0 publishes the main branch, see .github/workflows/hugo.yaml.

npm install            # install dependencies
hugo server            # dev server at http://localhost:1313
hugo server -D         # … including entries marked `draft = true`
hugo --gc --minify     # production build into public/
npm test               # homepage JS tests (see tests/)

Adding content

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in the API keys. It's gitignored, so your keys won't be committed. Modelling and rendering shell out to LeoCAD and LDView, so install those too.

One command guides you through creating new content. Just run it and follow the wizard:

npm run new            # an entry, a source link, a link image or a part

Entries

A new entry runs through seven stages, and the modelling can take a while. So it's resumable, and every stage works out for itself whether it's already done:

npm run entry          # newest entry, first unfinished stage
npm run entry 142      # a particular entry

The id is the entry's folder name without leading zeros.

Two things no stage touches, so write them by hand afterwards: the size, and the tags (including partcount-). Tags are shaped base-type-value, as in angle-studturn-28 or shape-polygon-6. A malformed one fails the build and is called out.

Renders take their settings from ldview.conf, so your own LDView preferences won't interfere with anything.

Parts

Part pages come from the Rebrickable API, and each part joins a part group (the buckets you see on the "parts" page). npm run new files the parts it creates; this is for the ones added by hand:

npm run partgroups             # report what is unfiled
npm run partgroups -- --write  # file it, creating group pages as needed

License

The repository splits three ways:

• Code, meaning templates, JavaScript, stylesheets and icons, is MIT.
• Content, meaning entry texts, LDraw models, the renders built from them and the entry metadata, is CC BY 4.0. Credit it as brick.camp — CC BY 4.0 — https://brick.camp/.
• Everything else is third-party material under its own terms: the bundled libraries, the Rebrickable part images, the thumbnail beside each source link and the LEGO® building-instruction crops in the font entry. THIRD-PARTY.md lists what and whose. Worth a look before reusing any image, since some of it sits inside content/entries/.

Documentation

Architecture notes live in AGENTS.md, which deliberately covers only what no single file can explain on its own. Everything else is documented in the docstring of the partial or module it belongs to.