The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide

Question: What is the Brickopedia?

Answer: The Brickopedia is a feature that is unique to The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide. This section of the book is technically Appendix A, but I have always referred to it as the Brickopedia to better describe what readers would find in it. It is, as the name suggests, an encyclopedia of sorts. And of course as you can guess it’s an encyclopedia of LEGO elements.

Does it contain all the available LEGO elements? No, it doesn’t. Instead, It contains nearly 300 of what I felt were some of the most core elements to the system. They are among the most basic and reusable pieces that represent the elements most useful to just about any LEGO builder. Theme specific pieces, or pieces that were too specialized were not included. However, many of the pieces that were included will no doubt remind even the most hard core builder just how amazingly versatile the LEGO system really is.

Here is a sample entry taken directly from the book:

As you can see, the Brickopedia isn’t just a collection of pictures of parts, but rather tries to provide some contextual information to help builders judge the usefulness of each part. Additionally, the Brickopedia is organized in a somewhat different way than other databases used to track LEGO pieces. It is broken down by the similarities shared by pieces, rather than by a strict taxonomy. I felt that it was time to revisit the way pieces were categorized and named and in some cases I made minor changes to better suit the way the Brickopedia was set up.

The Brickopedia was created specifically for The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide and is not meant to replace any of the other systems out there used to categorize bricks. Rather, it is simply meant to provide another perspective on the system and of course to match the descriptions given within the rest of the book.