How to buy pieces of a model you found at mecabicks, liked and want to build it?
jotapeflores started this discussion in General Discussion

I liked a model and wanted to build it. What is the easiest way to buy all the pieces for this model? Is there any way to generate a list of all used pieces? And buy all the pieces on that list? What are the best sites to do this?

5 replies · Page 1 of 1

You can export a parts list to Bricklink.

The model must be made publicly available. From the model page, click on Inventory and then Bricklink XML.

Once you have this, you can paste the contents of the xml file into a Bricklink wanted list.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50819332977_2006fe9d6a_o.png

when i upload the xml file in the bricklink wanted list, it gives this error of "Invalid File Format: Content is not allowed in prolog.". I googled it and to solve this error, it was just removing the spaces between the lines, but it didn't work. What should i do? https://flic.kr/p/2mK4Spy

Hello-

I think the issue that BL is having right now is that you have "-" in front of the first two elements. What app did you use to open the XML file? It seems to have done some automatic formatting. I downloaded your SR-71 file to see what was going on. I use Notepad ++ to view these, although standard Notepad (Windows) will work too. Neither of these programs will format the XML for you and I think that might be what's giving you issues.

Anyhow, beyond that, you had a few parts that needed updating in the Mecabricks parts database. I fixed those. You will need to re-download the XML file because of these changes.

Now you have a little more work to do. With the new file that you will download, this will be the error message:

The document entered contains duplicate item/color combinations. Only one item of each item/color combination is allowed.
Please fix the following duplicates:
Item No: 92946, Color: 11

So why does this message happen? Bricklink groups parts together that are functionally the same. In your case, Bricklink says that part 92946 is the same as 15672. Here is the Bricklink page for those parts:
[url]https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=92946[/url]

If you search for either of these part numbers, it will pull up that one page, as 15672 is an alternate part number for 92946. Unfortunately for you, you used both parts in your model. When Mecabricks exports the XML file, it should replace the alternate part number with the primary number. This will result in a duplicate part number in the XML. You have two options to fix this:

  1. You can replace all of the 15672 with 92946 in your model (or vice-versa). On your model you have 15672 on the wings and 92946 on the fuselage by the cockpit. If you make them all the same part number you'll be golden.

  2. You can also edit the XML file. You have two instances of 92946 with color code 11. You need to find those and then figure out how many you actually need. Each part in the XML export has a string that looks similar to this:
    <ITEM><ITEMTYPE>P</ITEMTYPE><ITEMID>92946</ITEMID><MINQTY>2</MINQTY><COLOR>11</COLOR></ITEM>
    This appears twice in your XML. What you need to do is delete one of these and change the MINQTY value to 4.

Either option should work, although changing two parts on your model will probably be easier.

Cheers!

Thank you so much for helping me with this! I successfully added the items to the wanted list, now I just need to learn how to buy the pieces. Thank you a lot 😄

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