[Software] Brickficiency - Find the cheapest BL stores to buy parts

[mdoupe]

The SQLCE download link still works for me. I don't know if you realize I have to pay to host this free program.

[Daphatty]

mdoupe,

First, let me say THANK YOU for this wonderful software! Brickficiency made piecing together the UCS Super Star Destroyer a manageable affair. Now I get to enjoy the SSD every time I come to work. (Yes, I had to bring it to the office because I don't have the space at home. LOL!) Please let us know if/when you decide to accept donations for your software.

I have spent a great deal of time figuring out the most efficient way to leverage Brickficiency against large Wanted lists. With each new Wanted list, I found myself repeatedly encountering specific roadblocks when running queries. The most common roadblocks have been

• Parts with extremely low availability negating search results
  
• Parts with no availability due to region limitations negating search results.
  

Each time I encounter these problems, I have to manually exclude the problematic item. While doing so ultimately yielded the results I sought, the task proved to be quite time consuming with larger lists.

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest the following.

• For items in a wanted list that have no availability due to region limitations, I would like to suggest an option (i.e., a checkbox option) that would allow Brickficiency to automatically exclude affected items from the query and continue with the search uninterrupted.
  
• For items in a wanted list that have low availability, I would like to suggest an option that would allow an end user to specify a Minimum Seller threshold. If the minimum number of sellers for a given item are not available (for example, 20 sellers), the item is automatically excluded from the query and the search continues uninterrupted.
  

I have seen many people on this forum and elsewhere complain that Brickficiency isn't very good at handling large Wanted lists. I strongly disagree. While processing large Wanted lists does require some massaging, it certainly is possible. I believe these two features would streamline this process significantly.

Anyway, thanks again for Brickficiency and let me know if you need me to clarify any of my points. I tried to be as descriptive as possible without being convoluted. Now I'm off to Bricklink the Millenium Falcon. :)

[mdoupe]

There's a donation link way at the bottom of the download page. ;)

I've been mulling over how to do very large lists. UCS, Modulars and the like are some of the more common things I hear people using Brickficiency for, and it rarely works first try or without some coaxing.

That checkbox is a great idea. I'm definitely going to include that. The minimum threshold idea is also good, but has the potential to drive calculation times way up. I've already heard from lots of people stories of calculations taking multiple days on large lists.

I have some vacation time coming in July/August and may sit down then to try to work on this stuff. Between work, shows and my bricklink store I don't have very much time for anything else these days. :)

[Daphatty]

There's a donation link way at the bottom of the download page. ;)

I knew I was missing something! Donation sent!

The minimum threshold idea is also good, but has the potential to drive calculation times way up.

I had the same concern when the idea came to me. I had hoped limiting the concept to seller threshold would make the option more feasible since Brickficiency checks for seller availability before it kicks off its larger calculations.

I've already heard from lots of people stories of calculations taking multiple days on large lists.

Unlike most people, I was quite impressed by Brickficiency when it hammered the cores of my CPU with its calculations. Once the larger wanted lists came into my world, I moved brickficiency onto one of my work servers just to see it peg the CPUs at 100%. Nothing like seeing a 16 core server running at full capacity just to save me some money. :) I still had to wait several hours for the largest of the lists to complete but I found the experience quite satisfying nonetheless.

[mdoupe]

Unlike most people, I was quite impressed by Brickficiency when it hammered the cores of my CPU with its calculations. Once the larger wanted lists came into my world, I moved brickficiency onto one of my work servers just to see it peg the CPUs at 100%. Nothing like seeing a 16 core server running at full capacity just to save me some money. :) I still had to wait several hours for the largest of the lists to complete but I found the experience quite satisfying nonetheless.

Haha! I never thought of using a server to do my calculations. I will have to borrow some resources next time I have a large list. :P

Thanks for the donation!

[Daphatty]

Thanks for the donation!

You are most welcome. I look forward to your next update, as time allows of course. :)

[duster408]

Using Brickficiency for the first time and have a few questions but find can't answers. I open this .bsx file : www.snakebyte.dk/lego/instructions/technic/lathe/Lathe.bsx

Five parts could not be identified and were causing it to cancel seach so I removed them from the list. Is that something I should have done or is there another way?

It would then go through and find a store(s) for every part listed but no stores that had any group of parts. I understand that with 199 unique parts, no one or two stores would have all items. But isn't the idea of the program is to find stores that have say 30 parts here and 20 other parts there? I'm not completely understanding the calculating options of setting the minimum and maximum combinations but tried 1, 2, and 5 with same results. Can some of you open that .bsx file in Brickficiency and let me know what results you get? I had the option to query all countries selected too.

Edited April 12, 2015 by duster408

[Daphatty]

Using Brickficiency for the first time and have a few questions but find can't answers. I open this .bsx file : www.snakebyte.dk/lego/instructions/technic/lathe/Lathe.bsx

Five parts could not be identified and were causing it to cancel seach so I removed them from the list. Is that something I should have done or is there another way?

It would then go through and find a store(s) for every part listed but no stores that had any group of parts. I understand that with 199 unique parts, no one or two stores would have all items. But isn't the idea of the program is to find stores that have say 30 parts here and 20 other parts there? I'm not completely understanding the calculating options of setting the minimum and maximum combinations but tried 1, 2, and 5 with same results. Can some of you open that .bsx file in Brickficiency and let me know what results you get? I had the option to query all countries selected too.

You have too many unique parts in your Wanted list. I've used Brickficiency extensively and I've found that 60-70 unique parts is about the most you should have in a scanned wanted list. Otherwise, the calculations will run endlessly and will likely return no results. Remember, the end result of a brickficiency scan is a list of no more than five vendors that have 100% of the items on your wanted list. If one item is not available, the scan will fail.

As for the discrepancies, you can exclude the items from the scan without removing them from your Wanted list. Just right-click the item in question and select Exclude from the Status sub menu.

I wrote a detailed how-to post for Brickficiency a few days back. Have a look and see if any of my tips will help you in your search.

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=108018

[blackdeathgr]

Really nice software! And thanks for sharing it with us. It's a lifesaver for us BL-holics

[Phoxtane]

Gotta say, this program is absolutely great! I've used it on three Bricklink orders already, and for someone who's never used Bricklink before, it's a bit of a godsend to be able to just say 'find the pieces for me' rather than go digging through the bowels of Bricklink. That said, I think there's a memory leak somewhere - for fun, I was running a job that was to find 16 8x8 plates, in any combination of stores, and I found that five minutes later memory usage had jumped to 29.7 gigabytes out of the 32 I have installed on this machine, from a start of around 2-3 gigabytes.

Unless of course that's just the program storing found matches in memory, of course...

[mdoupe]

Five parts could not be identified and were causing it to cancel seach so I removed them from the list. Is that something I should have done or is there another way?

At a glance, "Hose, Rigid 9L" in Light Bluish Gray has never been made. Brickficiency cannot find what does not exist.

Gotta say, this program is absolutely great! I've used it on three Bricklink orders already, and for someone who's never used Bricklink before, it's a bit of a godsend to be able to just say 'find the pieces for me' rather than go digging through the bowels of Bricklink. That said, I think there's a memory leak somewhere - for fun, I was running a job that was to find 16 8x8 plates, in any combination of stores, and I found that five minutes later memory usage had jumped to 29.7 gigabytes out of the 32 I have installed on this machine, from a start of around 2-3 gigabytes.

Unless of course that's just the program storing found matches in memory, of course...

Uncheck the box that says "continue looking for larger combinations...", Make sure you have 1 beside minimum combination.

Looking for 3, 4, 5 store combinations for one part will do exactly what you mentioned.

[Phoxtane]

Looking for 3, 4, 5 store combinations for one part will do exactly what you mentioned.

Figured as much. Thanks!

[legolijntje]

[...]

Brickficiency cannot find what does not exist.

It can't!?

Well, put it on the wanted feature list then

[SMC]

Wow just using this for the first time and it is great very easy to use but I do have a problem.

Edit: Never mind I have worked it all out, thanks again for this great tool.

Edited April 23, 2015 by SMC

[S_Bartfast]

Cleaned up the code somewhat to release. Because the source is open. Like the page says. Even though you couldn't download the source.

Any chance you'd be able to fix that

Seriously though, I would like to investigate the possibility of adding weight information to the order along with possibly calculating shipping costs.

Would it be possible for me to get a copy of the source?

Edited May 12, 2015 by S_Bartfast

[Bob De Quatre]

Don't know if it has already been reported, but Brickficiency seems to only import 1000 lots from Bricklink, regardless of the wanted lists. So I have a wanted list with 170 lots, but when opened in Brickficiency it only had 160 lots. I had to delete some old wanted lists to have less than 1000 lots in total.

[mdoupe]

It has been reported. It'll be fixed eventually. :D

[IronFish]

I'm having a problem where whenever I try to calculate an order, no matter what settings, it says "item "X" is not available from any of the stores you selected or you need to log in", can you please tell me what this means? Sorry to be a bother.

[mdoupe]

Make sure the piece exists (right click on it, click "Show Bricklink Catalog Info", confirm the colour is listed under "Known colours").

If it does exist, there is a checkbox on the calculation page, "Log in to retrieve price guide pages". Check that and enter your Bricklink username. It'll ask for a password.

[IronFish]

Make sure the piece exists (right click on it, click "Show Bricklink Catalog Info", confirm the colour is listed under "Known colours").

If it does exist, there is a checkbox on the calculation page, "Log in to retrieve price guide pages". Check that and enter your Bricklink username. It'll ask for a password.

I'll try that, thanks.

Make sure the piece exists (right click on it, click "Show Bricklink Catalog Info", confirm the colour is listed under "Known colours").

If it does exist, there is a checkbox on the calculation page, "Log in to retrieve price guide pages". Check that and enter your Bricklink username. It'll ask for a password.

I enter my username, but it doesn't ask for a password.

[mfeldt]

I just installed brickficiency and wanted to be impressed... however, it cannot get any info from bricklink stores.

As a remedy it suggests to log in, however the answer is always "Invalid Username or Password". I know that what I'm typing is not wrong, but maybe there's a problem with some special characters in the pwd? Is there a log anywhere where one could check?

[tsrplatelayer]

I just installed Brickificiency. I downloaded the program and the SQL free server , installed the server and ran the program. I am using 64bit Win8.1 so I downloaded the 64bit version of the SQLServer.

When I run Brickificiency it starts 'Downloading BrickLink database', the green progress bar gets abt half way across the screen then stops. After a while I get 'Brickificiency has stopped working' error message from Windows. I tried several times, sometimes the 'stoppedworking doesn't appear, it just hangs and after a couple of hours I closed the program and tried again.

Any suggestions what may be going wrong would be appreciated.

Thanks

[tsrplatelayer]

Any suggestions what may be going wrong would be appreciated.

Its working this morning, just flashed through the databse load - must have been network issues or something

[tsrplatelayer]

Its working this morning, just flashed through the databse load - must have been network issues or something

Now i am getting an error

642 stores found in United Kingdom

Getting Price Guide information for Black Crane Arm Center

Retrying...

Retrying...

Retrying...

Retrying...

Error downloading price guide (got page, but there was nothing on it)

Some items were unavailable. Calculation cancelled.

If I log in to BL and check part no. 2351 Crane Arm Center in Black it is available in 44 stores and the price guide is properly populated.

This is the first item in the file.

If I turn off 'Log in to retrieve Price Guide Pages' there is no error

Indeed there were several items in the list that has no sources. I changed status to 'x', saved the file. CLosed and re-opened BF and tried again with log in enabled and got the same error message.

Tried calculate again and got a slightly different error

642 stores found in United Kingdom

Using cached Price Guide information for Black Crane Arm Center

Error downloading price guide (got page, but there was nothing on it)

Some items were unavailable. Calculation cancelled.

According to BL all parts are available inthe UK, but some of them have limited sources. BrickStock is able to put a 6 month average price against all of the parts inthe list.

tried saving the file. Re-opening with brickstock and changing all part status to 'x' and then resetting status and a small number of parts to 'tick' - same error on first part enabled in the list , in this case a yellow 1 *2 grill 2412b, empy price guide

Allan

Closed BrickFiciency and reopened and loaded the short file and it works.

Seems closing and re-opening files doesn't work, but closing and re-loading app picks up ok. Now to try adding a few parts at a time.

Allan

Edited July 6, 2015 by tsrplatelayer

[S_Bartfast]

Now i am getting an error...

If I log in to BL and check part no. 2351 Crane Arm Center in Black it is available in 44 stores and the price guide is properly populated.

Be sure you have the "Condition" field set correctly in Brickficiency. An 'N' means you are only looking for "New" bricks where as a 'U' means you are looking for "Used" bricks.

I found I was getting similar errors when I unknowingly had my bricks set to "New".

Edited July 6, 2015 by S_Bartfast