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For the last few weeks I have been spending my time working with Richard at
BrikTrak.com and Dan at Bricklink.com to help develop an exciting new addition to our sites.
Today we would like to announce the availability of BI Portal Model
Inventories for beta testing. This new functionality links the Building
Instructions Portal directly to Bricklink.com. From now on, when you add
links to your models, MOC’s and building techniques on the Building
Instructions Portal, you are now able to quickly and easily upload your LDraw
format model.
Doing this allows anyone who looks at your model on the BIP
to see an inventory breakdown of the parts required to build your model and
even click a link to be taken directly to stores on Bricklink.com that have
the items required for sale! Or to see it already in action, check out this
Building
Instruction.
To test this yourself, simply log in to the Building
Instructions Portal at http://www.bricksonthebrain.com and add a new link. You will see a checkbox
at the bottom of the screen and if you check this, then you will be taken to
the model upload wizard. That’s all it takes to allow others to quickly view
or purchase the parts required to build your model! You don’t necessarily
have to use the actual instructions file for your model. You can simply
create a LDraw format model that includes, in no particular order or design,
all the parts needed to create your model.
This new functionality allows
you to upload all the main LDraw format model files including .dat, .mpd and
.ldr. It even handles Multiple assembly .mpd’s properly and counts all the
parts in the model accurately (something that even BrikTrak currently doesn’t
do - but Richard is working on) Now, this is a beta test and certain features
may not quite work exactly as expected, but the main functionality is there.
This application integrates the BIPortal, BrikTrak webservices and Bricklink
together and is just the first phase of what is to come. There will be
further additions over time and we are working very hard to bring powerful
resources to the Lego fan community.
There is a forum setup at
BrikTrak.com for any comments, bug reports, suggestions or general chat about
this application. Please feel free to tell us what you think! You can find it
here Please see the Known Issues thread for various fixes we still need to
make in this release.
Please let us know what you think! We would really
like to know what you think, and how you would like to see the
flow/functionality/features improved.
(And by the way, Richard sends word that he is working on the next release of
BrikTrak - in fact the next release will use the exact same engine to split
LDraw models that the BI Portal Model Inventories Application uses!)
Thanks!
Jake
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Jake McKee
Webmaster – BIP
http://www.bricksonthebrain.com/instructions
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