It’s always nice when AFOLs’ skills are put to use for the benefit of the entire community. This is how we got an excellent Lego motors compared characteristics by Philo, a very inspiring website of Jennifer Clark, or the MLCad application developed by Michael Lachmann. Upon launching my own website, I’ve taken an opportunity to add three useful tool which I created:

BrickShelf gallery statistics

Many of us use the BrickShelf, and is satisfied by the possibilities of this great free tool. However, great as it is, the Brickshelf is a pretty severe tool too. It does not provide any information on the popularity of our galleries other than the view counters inside each folder. For the lack of any other data, we must rely on the counters - and that is exactly what the external statistics module does. After entering a BrickShelf username, or a gallery number, you will see a list of the folders it includes, along with a detailed comparison of their popularity. That is obviously not all - statistics can be saved, and compared to the current ones in future. It can be done by a button that appears at the bottom of the folders’ list once all of them are rendered. You can have a single save for each gallery on a single computer, and it will remain valid for a year, unless overwritten with a new one. Once the BrickShelf counters are refreshed (which currently occurs once every 24 hours),the re-rendered statistics will include an analysis that shows how much each folder’s view counter has increased, and how did their share of the total views number change. If a folder contains subfolders, it is marked by a different colour, and next to its name a link appears, that can be clicked to view statistics of that particular folder. There is no limit of how deeply nested the scanned folder can be, and the stats can currently render up to 96 folders in a single gallery. One disadvantage of the module is the necessity of overwriting the save if a folder is added or removed from a respective gallery. Additionally, the Internet Explorer uses won’t be able to view the statistics properly.

Gear ratio calculator

A must-have for majority of the Technic builders. Up to 10 pair of gears can be selected, and their final ratio is calculated. You can see a ratio and an explanation for each pair of the selected gears. Upon clicking the button at the bottom of the page, you will see an overall ratio of all selected gears, and if you choose a motor that drives them, you will see the output speed. Note that the speed is theoretical - it doesn’t take into account the condition of the batteries that power the motor, nor the resistance of gears that slows the motor down - hence it is usually higher that the real speed. The selected gears can be changed at any time, and the overall ratio can be recalculated.

Pulley ratio calculator

It works exactly like the one above, except it lets you choose pulleys instead of gears. Again, the calculated output speed is theoretical.

Please keep in mind that all the listed tools are being continuously improved and developed. Should you spot any bugs, or have suggestions as to what needs change, feel free to comment and let us know

Esta entrada foi postada 7 Jan 09 at 23;38 e está arquivada como Lego, Technic, Editorial. Pode seguir as respostas a esta entrada através de RSS 2.0 feed. Pode deixar uma resposta, ou segui-la do seu próprio site.