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I’ve uploaded a sheet to google docs. Let me know if you do not have access to it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AszRIVULP9QidF9TWnVTbV8xMEltSWZxSzI5WFREbGc&usp=sharingclick on the “sorting hierarchy tab. click on the + next to each of the levels to expand further.
basically, it is:
1. Brick (just what it sounds like)
2. Slopes and curves
3. Plate
4. Movement (vehicle, technic)
5. Minifig (people, plants, animals, accessories)
6. Specialty (bars, taps, dishes, tile)At the very least, I think members should be crossing into Level 2 range when sorting for the LUG.
As has been said, each sort requires a level of adaptability. Anything that you are obviously going to have a lot of, go ahead and pull out right away. ie: if you have 1,000 red 1×2 bricks, don’t saturate your brick sorts with them, keep them separate.
If you take home a box to sort, please do provide your own baggies. You’re welcome to reclaim once you dump back into the LUG supply.
I have much to say on this subject. Let’s discuss at our Q4 meeting. But here are a few thoughts:
I would second the motion that if you’re going to bother taking brick home to sort, it would be best to break it down as much as possible. The massive sorting parties are fun, and many hands make light work, but at the same time, no two people are sorting quite the same, and the chaos makes it tricky in the end game. Also, we just needed more places to put bricks on Saturday. Hopefully, sorting into 6 cereal bowls (or whatever) based on the basic categories above isn’t too tricky for most people. If / when we get all the LUG brick sorted that far, we could move on to deeper sorting (breaking out the 1x brick from the 2x brick, etc.) But the further we go, the more organized our storage will need to be…
oh, and this, for efficiency in storing:
For 2x bricks, and greater than 1×4 just a single stack of 10.
For 1×2, 1×3, and 1×4, rows of 2,3,and 4 respectively criss crossed to 10 rows high.
1×1 are fine loose.
I could go two ways with that… the grammar joke (ain’t + nothin’ = something), or…
Whoa, we have a dissenter! If you’re not going to get in line and march in step, you can just leave! (this is a joke. Don’t leave, Dan. We still like you, even if you refuse to conform to our fascist sorting and stacking standards.)
I ain’t stackin’ nothin’.
but…but…it’s efficient!!
why you always gotta be a megablocker?
why you always gotta be a megablocker?
Oooh! Oooh! Fight! Fight!
…as they used to say in my grade school when the hardcore insults came out.
Anyhow, yeah, in all seriousness, I’m breaking stuff down to around level three; sorting by color only for well-represented colors (that is, leaving an “other colors” bag where it seems to make sense); and sorting clear parts and Technic pretty much not at all. I might even combine several sizes of wedge plates, tall slopes, etc., now and then. And I’m not stacking – it’s efficient (I do stack certain parts in my own collection), but personally I’m volunteering to sort LUG booty, but not to stack it.
(If any particular bags offend you, perhaps someone else will volunteer to take them from where they are to level 5 (fully broken out and stacked).
By those standards (a rough level 3) I’ve finished the box I took home to sort. It’s over 150 bags, which can fill about 8 to 10 of those plastic shoeboxes.
I’ll probably skim a cup from this stuff before I return it, but here’s a picture to give you a feel for what we got.
Actually 2 pictures, one for the basic rectangular bricks and plates, one for everything else. LOTS OF PARTS!Dan’s photos & comments kind of illustrate what I was getting at – a single LUG Support box, sorted only to “roughly level 3”, has over 150 types of brick. And that’s not down to individual elements, let alone individual elements AND colors. The man-hours required to fully sort the quantity of brick in our LUG inventory would be astronomical (and we’d need a TON of storage options).
I think that Saturday’s experience reinforced for me that it is a HUGE time saver while building if one can find the right SHAPE of elements quickly (also, it helps get a feel for if you have enough) – meaning, I got frustrated very quickly with pawing through a big box of “gray” looking for 2×4, 2×6, anything that would help me actually build a mountain. There were tons of fenders, ball joints, and other things that were gray, but not remotely useful for my task, which resulted in much aggravation.
It’s probably unlikely that we’ll ever have a full-on LEGO Company parts vault, where one simply strolls down the Basic Brick aisle to the 2×4 shelf, and the third bin from the left is Dark Bluish Gray. But if we can get to the elemental level (not necessarily broken down by color), that would be a great help for future builds.
On a different vector, I think there’s a bit of ambiguity when describing Josh’s list as “levels”. It’s really more of “categories”, meaning, from one giant unsorted box, here are six general types of brick you might find…
1. Basic brick (just what it sounds like)
2. Slopes and curves
3. Plate
4. Movement (vehicle, technic)
5. Minifig (people, plants, animals, accessories)
6. Specialty (modified and decorated plate and brick, tile)So, while I don’t think anyone is expecting you to organize all the various Technic axles and wheelbases by individual element, Dan, if you at least throw all the Technic and vehicle stuff into one bag, it’ll be easier to dig through (or do a refined sort) later. If you didn’t already do that, what happened to the Technic & vehicle stuff you encountered during your sort?
On a different vector, I think there’s a bit of ambiguity when describing Josh’s list as “levels”. It’s really more of “categories”, meaning, from one giant unsorted box, here are six general types of brick you might find…
I think some confusion has crept in here. Probably my fault. Those categories are not the “levels” I’m referring to. If you dig around in the spreadsheet Josh linked to, you’ll find a tab showing four levels as columns. Essentially, his scheme goes like this:
Level 1 is those six categories. A Level 1 sort leaves you with 6 “sorted” bins and an angry LUG. (Probably)
Level 2 is, for example, breaking down bricks by width.
Level 3 is breaking down bricks by length too.
Level 4 is color.I’ve added Level 5 to represent stacking. I also have a somewhat different personal opinion about what’s in each level, as regards certain categories – as you can see by the spreadsheet not having 150+ rows – but that’s the general idea.
As for what I did with vehicles/technic for this box, I have separate bags for:
– tires (several sizes together)
– big wheels (one type)
– small wheels (several types together)
– wheel-axle plates (not quite all one type)
– assorted windscreens together
– technic pins (all types together)
– pin-bricks and pin-plates
– technic axles, bricks, plates, and whatever elseThat last bag is the least sorted of the whole batch; some other bags have at most about four shapes, or something like that. (e.g. both 2×3 and 2×4 wedge plates, left and right = 4 shapes in one bag. Didn’t feel like sorting those further.) But most of it is one shape per bag, and plenty of bags have just one color.
yeah, Dan, you’re doing 100% wonderful. I stack my personal stuff for efficiency and because it makes it easier to count, but the LUG doesn’t care about efficiency just yet and we’ll never really have a need to count just yet either. Probably wasted work to stack in the early stages.
Matt, you’re the only one confused on the levels vs categories. 🙂 I would expect each lug member to get into at least level 2 sorting, especially in the brick.
Certainly a conversation needs to happen to get a majority feel on what categories exist at what levels and which parent sub-categories go into. I just wanted to get the initial structure in place so that at least all the boxes out for sorting now would be consistent.
The thing to keep in mind is consistency is savior. No real need to get too hung up on which category something belongs in, just as long as it’s being consistenty sorted in that category.
I think some confusion has crept in here. Probably my fault.
Yup, I’m going with your fault. 😉
But seriously, yeah, I’d looked at the spreadsheet once, but didn’t revisit before posting… so… probably my fault.
Matt, you’re the only one confused on the levels vs categories.
Because one of them wasn’t covered in the thread, only in the spreadsheet. And I’m having a rough week. Lemme alone!
Level 1 is those six categories. A Level 1 sort leaves you with 6 “sorted” bins and an angry LUG. (Probably)
Indeed; that was my frustration last Saturday exactly. We spent some time sorting Level 1, but then rushed to build (and why not? We are under a deadline and had/have a lot to do!) Thus, my building effort was not very fruitful, even with Joe pulling some parts out of the “gray and black” bin for me. Obviously, since we all only have so much LEGO time, we can’t expect to sort the entire LUG inventory to Level 4 / 5, at least not any time soon. But, if we hold a few more sorting parties / have some more volunteers to at least get to Level 3 with some stuff over the holidays, we might be in a much better position next time we try to have a “let’s build a ginormous train layout with a town and a winter village and mountains again, mountains, Gandalf!” kind of party.
on that note, Nancy and Ellen, who were here saturday, took 1 box between the two of them and enjoyed sorting it much. They don’t plan to be builders, but they like sorting. I told them we’re not looking to convert anyone to some false standard that members have to build MOCs. Members define their own involvement and should feel enjoyment and encouragement in any of the facets of the LEGO hobby. Be it sorting, admiration, collecting, reselling, MOC’ing, building sets etc.
so anyway, I’ll probably meet up with them before greenberg to give them another box or two to sort.
bumping for some new comer questions and to revisit what has been said already to see if it needs to be revised.
The way our inventory is set up right now, all 1x bricks are together of the same color. The idea here would be whe people want to build a red building, they don’t just want red 1×2, they want an array of sizes to provide structural integrity. Besides those, everything else is sorted by part first, and then placed in baggies by color.
This would be the important thing do do when you sort LUG inventory. group by part first. If you have a sizable count of a color, then go ahead and sort it by color too.
Well, I sort down to Level 5. Am I going to change? Probably not. It needs to get sorted eventually so if I have a baggie of 1×3 pink brick all alone in a bag, it will eventually get more 1×3 pink brick added to it when the sorting detail increases. Unless of course Evan, Laura and Kristen undo all of your hard work and just dump it all into a single 1 gallon bag. 🙂
Unless of course Evan, Laura and Kristen undo all of your hard work and just dump it all into a single 1 gallon bag.
Those jerks.
The way our inventory is set up right now, all 1x bricks are together of the same color. The idea here would be whe people want to build a red building, they don’t just want red 1×2, they want an array of sizes to provide structural integrity.
Thanks, @dc221803. I agree with this line of thinking to a point, but maintain that if all the colors of a given size are in the same bin (but separate bags, say), I can easily grab the red 1×2, 1×4, 1×6, etc. from their respective bins in mere seconds.
Well, I sort down to Level 5. Am I going to change? Probably not. It needs to get sorted eventually so if I have a baggie of 1×3 pink brick all alone in a bag, it will eventually get more 1×3 pink brick added to it when the sorting detail increases.
Amen. Thinking big reduces duplicated efforts down the road.
stickied, for @arcadiumsol
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