LEGO® building at angles: Escaping the grid

Today we are excited to publish a guest article from Arno Knobbe (@legoarno on Instagram), an Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands who attended our building workshop at Skærbæk Fan Weekend 2024. As a fan of both numbers and LEGO® bricks, he is perfectly qualified to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about building “off-grid” with LEGO parts, but were too afraid to ask because it would probably involve math... Fear not! With Arno’s beginners’ introduction to LEGO building at angles and diagonals, it's easy.

When building with LEGO, we usually adhere to the familiar structure of the standard square grid, where everything aligns neatly and predictably. This grid system provides stability and order. However, there are moments when creativity takes over, and we decide to break free from the constraints of this rigid structure. Either because some angled part needs to be matched, or simply because the diagonal bit breaks the monotony of building in “the Matrix”. The LEGO universe offers several techniques for escaping the LEGO grid by building at an angle, which I will be taking you through today.

LEGO® techniques with reflected wedges: Escaping the grid

After the popularity of his first guest post for us, Arno Knobbe (@legoarno on Instagram) returns today to explain more core building techniques for sending your models off the rectilinear grid. 

In my previous post, I discussed a classic LEGO® technique for building at an angle, the rectangle trick, and its relation to the "sugar grid", a concept recently introduced on the Brick Sculpt YouTube channel. In this article, we’ll look into another mainstay of LEGO building techniques, reflected wedges. I’ll investigate some parallels between this technique and the sugar grid as well.

LEGO® Pythagorean triangles: Escaping the grid

Arno Knobbe (@legoarno on Instagram) completes his popular trilogy of guest articles today, gently introducing you to the math behind useful techniques for building at diagonals to the LEGO® grid. If you missed them, you may wish to read the others first – Part 1: building at angles, and Part 2: techniques with reflected wedges.

Building a triangle naturally forces you to escape the LEGO® grid. Sure, you can align 2 sides with the grid – creating a right triangle – but the third side will have to be diagonal. As soon as you try this, you run into trouble: most dimensions will not lead to easy connections at the 2 corners involved, neither with hinge plates nor regular stud-antistud connections. The age-old answer to this challenge, that most builders will be familiar with, is the Pythagorean triangle. Today’s article is my modern take on this millennia-old technique.

Tom Loftus' Fractal 45 spaceship MOC

Continuing today's reflected wedge extravaganza, Arno Knobbe challenged me to dream up something swooshable using some of the geometric delights we saw in his technique article about building off the LEGO grid with reflected wedges. Let's escape the grid in a spaceship!

Review: 31216 Keith Haring Dancing Figures from LEGO® Art

Keith Haring was a famous American pop artist, best known for having created stylized figures and animals, often drawn in lines that were simple but nevertheless packed in a lot of energy and movement. That style is the subject of the latest LEGO® Art set, 31216 Keith Haring – Dancing Figures.

Parts review: June 2025 LEGO® Minecraft™ sets

After venturing out into The Minecraft Movie and Minecraft Legends, the LEGO® Minecraft™ theme returns to the core game with a myriad of biomes to explore. The June 2025 wave of sets includes a new ladder mould, big translucent plates, and menacing enemies, but that's not the only reason New Elementary is excited about this wave – New E alum Aron Gerencsér designed much of this LEGO Minecraft wave!