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Subject: 
Parts naming conventions
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.database
Date: 
Wed, 7 Jul 1999 21:54:42 GMT
Viewed: 
321 times
  
I didn't know exactly where this fit into the thread so I just started a new
one.

Read with interest the discussion of part naming conventions as this is
something I have been (trying) to deal with for several years as part of my
element registry.

No one "standard" name will serve the interest of all groups. Naming for
auctions differ necessarily from naming for L-draw, for example. What would be
cool is a convention where you have an "official" systematic name and as many
synonyms as you wish to link back. Although the systematic name may not be
short or concise the reader who understands the nomenclature rules would be
able to reconstruct the element from the name alone.

A good example of this in real life is IUPAC chemical nomenclature. Chloroform
is a pretty well known chemical but you just have to know its structure,
however the systematic name trichloromethane allows anyone to draw its
structure (again, assuming you knew the rules).

So you could conceivably name elements using a root element or partial element,
such as a brick, plate, beam ,etc and variants could be described by adding the
variation to the root, e.g:

Plate, 1 x 2
Plate, 1 x 2 with thingamabob

And you could indicate the location of the thingamabob: 1 x 2 Plate w/
(2)thingamabob, etc, etc.

I suspect that all 3000 or so Lego elements probably boil down to about 100-200
root elements.

What this really drives at is the need for a well though out set of element
roots, or in other words an element classification or taxonomy. I suspect this
would be the hard part of such a project, although
If properly constructed individual element naming would be relatively easy once
you agreed on the classification of an element. Beyond this however is that it
would be easy to see the variations and relations between elements.

After all of this you can relate back any common or particularly descriptive
names.

If this whole thing was done right you would be able to figure out the name of
any element you had and figure out the element from any name you had, which
would be useful for any reason, such as auctions, L-draw, inventories,
whatever.

Jim
hughesj@one.net
http://w3.one.net/~hughesj/technica/technica.html



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Parts naming conventions
 
Jim Hughes wrote: <snip> (...) Right. And you could denote whether a thingabob was vertical or horizontal with a variant on the cis/trans nomenclature as well, instead of using vertical. if we agreed that "cis" (or whatever we picked) meant an (...) (25 years ago, 8-Jul-99, to lugnet.admin.database)

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