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In 2002 I was using well established CAD software that handled curves just fine. One of my first undergrad projects was modelling LEGO. CAD is a different beas

• dharmab 8y ago
  These screenshots are from a consumer-oriented LEGO design tool designed to run on a typical PC.
  • knolan 8y ago
    And these CAD packages also ran on typical PCs. Most of my classmates used their own laptops; I couldn’t afford one. Sure you’ll need a powerful workstation for a full assembly of a complex machine like a car where every part is fully modelled and contrained (oddly enough today’s packages continue to sap vastly superior resources to do much the same work) but drawing a high quality LEGO block with just primary features with Phong shading is trivial for consumer hardware from 2002. There’s more polygons in the 3D spinning screensavers in Windows 2000. The shareware tool Pro/Desktop was incredibly light. There’s some misconception here that PCs couldn’t draw a few hundred polygons as recently as the early noughties. Looking at LEGO specific software and tools like LeoCAD, which originated in the late nineties, they appear to have been able to render bricks just fine. I’m left with the impression that the images used were done so with an artistic intent.