Combine set inventories and own "just enough"?

[mpfirnhaber]

Not sure if any of you LEGO masters can help me out, but I thought it would be worth asking!

I have amassed a pretty sizable collection of Classic Space bricks over the last couple of weeks. I don't know what sparked it, but I now have a great big pile of sets and parts from eBay and BrickLink, included most of the exclusive transparent and printed stuff that makes these sets so fantastic. But as I look through what I've got, I think I have "too many" of certain pieces, and "not enough" of others. I wasn't particularly targeted with my approach, especially on BrickLink, and I just bought en mass, from sellers who had lots of cheap old space parts.

My goal is to have a collection of parts that will allow me to build any Classic Space set, but no more. I'm not a set collector, and I don't plan on displaying multiple models simultaneously.

So my question, finally, is how can I get a combined inventory of all Classic Space sets, minus the duplicates?

Take the 6x8 trans yellow plate as an example. It's in 7 sets, but if you remove identical releases from different regions that knocks it down to 5. If I wanted to build all these sets at once I would need 8 of these plates. But the most plates used by any of these sets individually is 2, so I want to own 2 of these parts in nice, clean condition.

I can obviously do this manually for each part, but that's a heck of a lot of work. Any thoughts on how I can automate this process?

Thanks!

[Darth Punk]

You might check out http://rebrickable.com as it allows you to indicate what sets you have and from that it tells you what sets you can build. You can also add individual bricks as well. It's probably the closest thing to what you want.

[mpfirnhaber]

Looking at it now. I can dive into a particular piece in a particular color, see all sets that use it, and sort the list by quantity used, quickly giving me my upper limit!

I'll still have to do it one element at a time, but it's much quicker than manually checking inventories at BrickLink.

Now I know that I only need 24 1x2 light gray plates to be able to build any Classic Space set :)

I guess I'll need to build a spreadsheet. Once I've done this for Classic, I'll probably do the same for Futron and Blacktron, and maybe SP1.

Cool :)

[bonox]

Good luck with it. Might want to stay away from the monorails though if you value your wallet. Much of that stuff is unique to one model.

Edited January 20, 2015 by bonox

[mpfirnhaber]

Fortunately I already have the Futron monorail as part of my childhood collection :)

[Nacho]

If you can get all the data into an excel spreadsheet I think it will make your job 100% easier!

I would go to brickset and download the part list into CSV: http://brickset.com/inventories/10243-1

The CSV can then be opened by Excel. Once you've done this with a few sets, Excel has built in functions to find duplicates.

If you format the sheet properly from the start you could also use it as an inventory list to keep track of how many of each part you own etc.

[mpfirnhaber]

I thought about doing it in Excel but it would get messy fast. Rebrickable has a "parts list" function to help me keep track, so I'll stick with that.

I'll just go through one part at a time, find the max quantity, pull it from my bins, then add that quantity to my "classic space" parts list in Rebrickable. Once I've gone through all my different, I can start pulling up sets in Rebrickable, and it will tell me what I'm missing so I know what to order from BrickLink. I'll know when I'm done when it says I can build every set :)