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How can a vertical 1.5 stud wide gap be filled, for example between this brick on a jumper plate and regular plate? I can achieve ratios multiples of 1/3 and 2/5 with sideways plates, but some trickery (perhaps with headlight brick) has to be used to achieve this 1/2 stud ratio.

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(almost right)

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  • The gap between the bricks is 7.5 units (1.5 bricks wide). And that ".5 unit" is the real issue here. There's a small number of parts with 1 unit in size that are somewhat usable. However I cannot think of any 0.5/1.5/2.5/... unit sized parts.
    – Alex
    Aug 14, 2020 at 8:55
  • I might have to give up and leave it. The 0.5 unit is 0.8 mm which can probably be overlooked.
    – qwr
    Aug 14, 2020 at 9:50

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Before I attempt to come up with an answer, let me share how I think through problems like this, as it might make it easier for others to solve problems like this in the future.

We can see that the gap itself is 30 LDU, as modules are 20 LDU, so 1.5 modules is 30 LDU. Some quick rules of thumb:

  • Multiples of 20 LDU can be made with regular bricks horizontally
  • Multiples of 8 LDU can be made with bricks, plates, and tiles vertically
  • Multiples of 4 LDU can be made with clever use of brackets and Erling bricks
  • Other numbers require the use of fairly odd pieces

We see that 30 LDU is not a multiple of 20, 8, or 4, so we'll need some special pieces for this. If we had an element that was 6 LDU thick, we could then make up the difference using 3 plates (30LDU - 6LDU = 24LDU = 8LDU * 3) or one brick vertically. Thankfully, at least one such element exists in the classic fences:

Fence 1x4x2

We can stack 3 plates or one brick on the center section to perfectly fill our 30 LDU gap:

parts

fence and brick together

final build

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  • Very nice. I remember seeing fences mentioned I'm the unofficial advances building guide online. Maybe Ldraw has a database of dimensions that can be searched through?
    – qwr
    Aug 14, 2020 at 20:53
  • The LDraw parts library is effectively a database of very detailed part dimensions, but I'm not aware of an easy way to search it from something like this.
    – jncraton ♦
    Aug 14, 2020 at 21:38
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    I guess I can also go through stud.io and look for interesting parts. Most are a standard size.
    – qwr
    Aug 14, 2020 at 23:20
  • If you are looking for a smaller part, the minifig neck brackets might work.
    – jncraton ♦
    Aug 15, 2020 at 17:54
  • i.stack.imgur.com/4QLiI.png the neck bracket looks ever so slightly too wide. Given Lego tolerances it probably would work in a real build. Can you add this to your answer?
    – qwr
    Aug 18, 2020 at 4:31

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