djm Posted July 4, 2018 (edited) Earlier this year, the addition of BrickArms parts to the BrickLink catalog has had a side effect on BrickStock. Namely, the appearance of the Brick Arms colours within BrickStock. All of BrickArms colours have been added to the BrickLink list of colours with a prefix of "BA". This degrades the usability of BrickStock since you now see a large list of Brick Arms related colours starting with B which you have to scroll passed to see the BrickLink/LEGO colour names. Moreover, when in the colour list, typing the letter B takes you to the start of the Brick Arms colours rather than the value "Black", which used to be the first "B" colour. I have come up with a solution to move the BrickArms colours to the end of the list. While not solving the problem (which ideally would exclude the BrickArms colours altogether), the solution does at least restore the appearance of the BrickStock colour list close to how it previously was. Moreover, the solution, although a little bit hacky, avoids the need to alter the BrickStock code (the most recent version of which is unavailable anyway). The solution renames the BrickArms colours so that their prefix begins with "zA" rather than "BA", hence moving them to the end of the list of colours. It achieves this by patching the BrickStock database file to rename the BrickArms related colours appropriately. The solution is straight forward and, if you follow the instructions below, can be used by anyone. Note that this solution outlined works for Windows. If someone is using BrickStock on a Mac, perhaps they would like to post an equivalent solution using tools appropriate to a Mac. The steps are; (1) One-time step. Download Freeware Hex Editor XVI32. I have no affiliation with the author of this software but if this solution is useful to you, consider making a donation to the author via their PayPal link. (2) One-time step. Unzip the downloaded zip file into an appropriate directory e.g. "C:\Program Files\xvi32" (3) One-time step. Download this file into the same directory as in step 2 e.g. "C:\Program Files\xvi32" (4) Run the program "C:\Program Files\xvi32\xvi32.exe" (or wherever you installed the program in step 2). (4.1) Select the menu item "File/Open ...". Enter the value "%USERPROFILE%\brickstock-cache\database-v0" (without the quotes) into the field labelled "File Name:". Press the "Open" command button. (4.2) The tool should then display the contents of the BrickStock database file. (4.3) Select the menu item "XVIscript/Editor...". This will open a dialog window titled "XVIscript interpreter". (4.4) Select the menu item "Script/Open ...". In the dialog window that opens, navigate to the location where you place the xsc file in step 3 and select the file. Click the "Open" command button. This will open the patching script. (4.5) Optionally, if you want to also rename the Modulex colours to change their prefix from "Mx" to "zx", remove the leading semi-colon from the last three lines of the script. (4.6) Press the "Execute" command button. All going well, an "Information" dialog will pop-up displaying the message <"BA" colours renamed to "zA">. Click the "OK" command button. (4.7) If you modified the script as per step 4.5, you will see a second "Information" dialog pop-up containing the message <"Mx" colours renamed to "zx">. Click the "OK" command button. (4.8) A dialog window will be displayed showing the message "Script executed successfully!". Click the "OK" button. (4.9) Click the "Close" command button. If you modified the script as per step 4.5, you will be prompted as to whether or not you want to save the modified script. Make an appropriate choice. (4.10) Select the menu item "File/Save" in the XVI32 application window. Then close the application. You will have now patched the colour names in the BrickStock database. (4.11) Run BrickStock and confirm that it is running correctly. Take a look at the list of colours - the BrickArms colours (and optionally the Modulex colours) will appear at the end of the colour list. Note that every so often (or when you explicitly request it), BrickStock will refresh its database by re-querying BrickLink. When this happens, you will need to repeat step 4 (& its sub-steps) above to reset the colour names once again. What to do if the above steps do not work for you? Simply delete the BrickStock database (i.e. the file identified in step 4.1) and then from within BrickStock, choose the menu item "Extras/Update Database". Hopefully the above list of instructions restores some of the sanity into BrickStock for you which was lost once BrcikLink added BrickArms colours to their database. Regards, David Edited July 4, 2018 by djm Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Holodoc Posted July 5, 2018 Thank you very much for the step-by-step description of your solution! I am not using this kind of software, but if somebody else does (and I believe some do), could you please confirm if it works? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
M_Boss Posted July 10, 2018 I am a Mac user, I have looked into this issue, but have yet to even locate the "brickstock -cache" file. If anyone else has found it please post where it is. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zux Posted July 11, 2018 I can confirm everything works (including XVI32) on Ubuntu based Linux machine with Wine installed. All BA and Modulex colours are now at the very end of the list. Thanks for a quick and easy workaround! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
djm Posted July 11, 2018 40 minutes ago, zux said: I can confirm everything works (including XVI32) on Ubuntu based Linux machine with Wine installed. All BA and Modulex colours are now at the very end of the list. Thanks for a quick and easy workaround! Thank you for taking the time to confirm that. David Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
