Planning and Designing the Temple

The first set of bricks purchased for this project came from Costco. They had a Classic box (set 10717) for only $40, and it had 1,500 bricks in it. I didn't realize how good of a deal it was at the time. I was able to use over 60% of the bricks from this box. It was such a good deal, another box was purchased in August.

A LOT of pictures and videos from the internet were scoured over repeatedly. Certain angles weren't available, and due to the COVID pandemic, the temple was closed to the public. This made traveling to Los Angeles to take pictures of the temple not possible.

The build was freehanded at first. I restarted the foundation, main entrance, chapel, and cafeteria several times, each time doing it differently. It soon became apparent a plan was needed. In the long run, the freehand method was not going to work very well, so a search began for some 3D software.

LEGO has a program (which is not supported) called the LEGO Digital Designer (LDD). Working in this program didn't go very well. The software had problems with some of the pieces I was using. So a new hunt began for some software to assist with the project.

I finally settled on Bricklink's software Studio 2.0 (also known as studio.io). The learning curve for this software was pretty flat, and I picked it up quickly. It took about a month to build the temple digitally. Once finished, a parts list was printed, and I created an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the pieces I was ordering, the pieces the project needed, and the orders that were being placed. Once that was finished, the parts were broken down into groups so the ordering process could resume. 

My next hurdle was quickly realized...my design wasn't structurally sound in places, so a redesign took place, and new parts ordered. There ended up being several redesigns because of structural problems. While the build took place, I continued to study pictures and videos available on the internet and repeatedly saw new things that needed to be included.

The model is 22.3 inches tall and 30.2 inches square. It weighs 33 pounds, and there are 8,135 pieces. There are 258 different bricks used. (Updated 9/15/2020)

There will be some landscaping done with flowers and trees down the road. Since the landscaping will change from time to time, the count for those bricks is not included.

Here are the 3D renderings of the build.