LDD User Palettes to check personal real brick availability

[Nachapon Lego]

Using lxf file that contain all of your personal real bricks/set in correct quantity as UserPalettes. Then it can be ensured that you have all real parts for every thing you build using this User Palettes. The missing parts and quantity will show in red minus number automatically. Convert the UserPalettes to single color for ignore color checking, just parts with same shape.

Sample: Mike Psiaki's Lego X-Wing and DS.

Using Lego LDD User Palettes to check personal real brick availability by Nachapon S., on Flickr

Using Lego LDD User Palettes to check personal real brick availability _ignore colors by Nachapon S., on Flickr

Create the personal UserPalettes by import models form official LDD topic that you own.

Then save and copy the LXF to C:\Users\ YOUROWN \AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\UserPalettes

Pull down menu-> View -> New Themes -> LDD.

Bottom left, third icon -> Filter bricks by boxes -> your LXF.

Edited March 6, 2014 by bbqqq

[JGW3000]

Is there any way to create a parts list from a Rebrickable export file? I've got 1000's of loose parts, and it will be a real pain to enter them all into a LXF manually.

[Nachapon Lego]

@JGW3000. You can use LDD-manager to auto generate LXF file of loose parts.

[JGW3000]

Cool, I'll give it a whirl, thanks for the tip bbqqq

[dvsntt]

This is a very good idea. Can LDD Manager also convert a brickstore file to an LXF file?

[JGW3000]

OK, so despite (or in spite of) a 4 yr old PC, I managed to get 9700+ loose parts into a lxf file, which now works great in LDD as my own personnel parts list for buildign. But I dread the thought of updates. It took considerable massaging, and some funky Excel work, to go from Rebrickable xml export in BL format, clean up to remove coding, copy into LDD-manager, run the macro to generate the lxf file, and then figure out what parts had wrong or different ID's and which didn't load. There is considerable inconsistency between ReBrickanbe, BL, LDD-manager, and LDD in terms of part codes and what the three 'think' are correct LDD part numbers - about 30% of parts need to have part #'s added by hand, took about 2 hours to do this and find the 1/2 dozen parts that LDD didn;t like - the whole process took about 4 hours.

One issue is that LDD only uses 4 or 5 digit numbers for parts, while BL, etc. uses alphanumerics in addition. LDD mostly, but not always, has the most recent part number if multiple versions of a part or mold exist, while BL tracks all of them. We need a way to have a clean assignment from BL or other system ID's mapped onto LDD ID's, and confirmed for accuracy. Alternatively, I can work with the Excel file generated by LDD, but once the Excel file has been updated to account for changes in inventory, need a way to go from Excel back to a new lxf file. As time permits I will try to write an Excel macro to generate the lxfml code, but its hairy, some tips would be welcome to get part xyz parsing correct.

Edited March 1, 2014 by JGW3000