With the free Digital Designer software you can build absolutely anything with virtual LEGO bricks right on your computer. Then you can buy the real bricks to build your creation online in Lego Factory, or you can print out an inventory of bricks and take it to any Legoland theme park or Lego Store. Lego Digital Designer gives users the chance to play with Legos without paying for Legos. Loaded with features, the drawbacks are minor and this program is a lot of fun to use.

The program links to the Lego online store, but there's more going on here than corporate shilling. The graphics-intensive program seamlessly zooms in and out, rotates your point-of-view 360 degrees, connects bricks to each other, rotates them, and moves any hinges they might have so you can explore how your pieces fit together. Parts include basic bricks, model jet engines, and infrared sensors. The Brick Palette puts all your bricks in one basket, so to speak, so that managing them is no more difficult than keeping track of more than two dozen subpalettes that catalogue the variations.