Building in SL: Finding Megaprims

Building in Second Life® is a lot like sex. The act itself is the ultimate, but I love playing with the various toys and finding special materials, too. One controversial material for SL building is the Megaprim (AKA Huge Prim; Web), any "block" larger than the 10m³ that the system can generate. Claims of added lag, their use by Griefers and misuse by n00bies, and the need for good building skills makes them controversial. Since any plot of land can have just so many prims, skillful use of Megaprims to replace several individual pieces is very useful. However, I have yet to find a convenient way to to store and retrieve them.

So when my friend Peter Stindberg announced on Plurk and on his Blog about a new tool created by the genius Katharine Berry (Web) to search for Megaprims via the Web (here) and have them delivered to you in-world I was ecstatic! Normally I keep a folder of frequently used sizes but mostly I keep a barrel (really, a barrel) filled with boxes of Megaprims sorted by the Z dimension. I'll probably keep the folder, but now I can skip rolling out the barrel, waiting for contents to load, dragging out the box I think I need .... you get the idea. With Kathrine's site I just type in the dimensions I want and it will search for the nearest size available within the variables I specify. If you are a builder you need to try this then give Katharine a hug when you see her in-world.