Profilo
edge"Civil engineering for boys"
Brick construction toy, created by Dutch company concrete factory 'Duinker & Verruijt'. The system is manufactured between 1943~1946.
This is my first 'brick' building toy. It's a heavy box, different texture feel and nice to build with.
Funny detail: reading the manual, they also encourage you to add cardboard windows etc yourself.
History
According a newspaper, Profilo was invented by C. Verruijt jr. The idea was born 2 years before, when the company was asked to 'invent' a modular concrete barracks. At this point the groove system was invented. The production, allocated in Alphen aan de Rijn, was never started. In a quite period following, they decided to scale the idea down, by making a brick construction set out of it.
The manual was written by G.J. Harmer from Den Haag. Including 'how to build', some examples of parts (models 1-99) and buildings (models 101-403, where the first number stands for the box number). The manual also to be checked by a child psychologist.
According a Dutch letter from the company towards a toy store: "The concrete bricks are created from fine-grained sand from the Rijn. We proudly present a precise mass production brick building toy. The tolerances of the parts are lower then 0.1 mm."
(Sources from BW.)
Boxes
Like other systems, there are 4 'main boxes' and 3 'supplement boxes' and 1 'junior box'.
Manual boxes 1-4 (Dutch)
Some system characteristics
Here a short list of some system characteristics and how it's retrofitted into the virtual LeoCAD library:
| Part types: | Original: | Virtual: |
|---|---|---|
| Full stone | Concrete Size: 40x20x20 [mm] | Single color pieces |
| Bay size | 20 [mm] | 20 [mm] |
Library information
According the manual 12 parts only:
Overview of the parts library:
The single Profilo category, consists of these part types:
| Part groups: | Colors: | Unique shapes: |
|---|---|---|
| Full blocks | 4 | 1 |
| Halve blocks | 4 | 1 |
| Frame elements | 1 | 3 |
| Roof elements | 3 | 7 |
| Total parts: | 12 |
Building in LeoCAD
Let's first start with the example building (model 107) from the manual:
It was satisfactory to build and to follow the guidelines for this example building. Although the building is not very solid, these bricks are easily moveable in horizontal plane.
3D Models:
The biggest model (no. 403) in the manual, a train station, needs box 4 to be completed. In this implementation: 441 parts in total: 318 full bricks, 45 half bricks and some other parts.
