[Mechaton] Buying from Bricklink

[chaldfont]

I recently bought Mechaton and I'm trying to get some mechs together to run a session for my friends. I bought enough pieces for a couple of Vincent's mechs from his site and found the process rather tedious. I went looking for a better way to shop for lists of parts and didn't find any. The best I could do was to make a wish list for each mech using Brickstore and import it into Bricklink. But that still left me to manually check every store to find ones that had all (or most) parts I needed.

Bag that!

So I started writing a program that would do this for you. When it's done, it will be able to look up your wish list on as many shops as you want and report back which shops have the pieces you need and how much it will cost you. That way you can buy from the shop with the best inventory and the best prices.

But before I get too crazy, I just wanted to make sure someone hasn't beaten me to the punch. Does anyone know of a way to do this? If not, is this something you would use? What features would you like to see?

Meanwhile, I'm going to go make those walkers...

[lumpley]

I don't know of any such thing already existing, and I hope you make it!

-Vincent

[Noclue]

Me too!

[Yokiboy]

I'd be interested to see your proposed Web application as well, sounds very usable.

However, I wish some Mechaton mech builders would share their kits at Lego Factory so I could buy the same kit without having to do much work at all. Seriously though, has anyone tried out Lego Factory?

There is even a Mech category of kits at Lego factory, but I don't know which ones are the correct scale. Searching for Mechaton brings up nothing.

TTFN,

Yoki

[lumpley]

Lego Factory's CAD software sucks loud butt, and their selection of parts is ... good, but not great. I've designed a cool mech using just Lego Factory parts, but the CAD software won't let me conveniently put it together to share, and I haven't had time for figuring out how to get past the inconveniences.

If you read down in that linked thread, you'll find that Kilodyne's a little ahead of me in that regard.

I think that Lego Factory figures big in the future of Mechaton, but it's not here quite yet. If anybody feels like working toward it, fantastic! I will, but only at my own best pace.

-Vincent

[Yokiboy]

Have you tried the new version of the Lego CAD? I hadn't tried it at all until today, but they claimed it was "New & Improved." Anyhow, I managed to make a copy of the classic, naked mech from the autumn '06 edition of Mechaton.

Hopefully the link works, it should go to my 4-pack of the mech. They didn't have any 1x2 45 degree transparent tiles though, so I just used an opaque instead.

Btw, I really love the building instructions in the Lego CAD.

I'm off to check out your linked thread now.

TTFN,

Yoki

[lumpley]

I have. It's really, really stupid about the pneumatic T-piece and the lamp holder (and I'm sure other parts too). You know its auto-alignment thing, where it places the pieces strictly legally? It has no idea how fun those parts are.

-Vincent

[Yokiboy]

Ok, I didn't notice yet. It's easy enough for me to throw some of those pieces on the ground next to a mech though, just so I can order it from Lego.com, without having to spend all day going through Bricklink. I simply want to get over the hurdle so I can play Mechaton, but I might go the route of using other playing pieces.

[Mantisking]

Have you tried the new version of the Lego CAD? I hadn't tried it at all until today, but they claimed it was "New & Improved." Anyhow, I managed to make a copy of the classic, naked mech from the autumn '06 edition of Mechaton.

Oh, good, someone else has already done it.  I did up one in red and grey and thought of uploading it.

Hopefully the link works, it should go to my 4-pack of the mech. They didn't have any 1x2 45 degree transparent tiles though, so I just used an opaque instead.

I used a transparent 1x2 brick instead of a sloped brick.

[David Artman]

Yoki mentioned Lego Factory, but not the explicit Pick A Brick site (which is hard to find--four clicks from Home):
http://factory.lego.com/pab/

You won't end up with a "model" complete with customized packaging, but it has a quite a few more pieces from which to choose than Lego Digital Designer ("Lego CAD", LDD). Basically, if you're already "throwing bricks on the ground" in LDD, then this is a bigger ground with more bricks to throw.

HTH;
David

(P.S. JUST ordered Mechaton from IPR--thanks for this game, Vincent! I expect I'll be writing rule add-ons myself, before too long....)