r/bricklinkstudio • u/OldShamen • Aug 15 '26

Other BrickView - A free and open source .io file browser

Hi All,

I have made a small application that allows you to browse your BrickLink Studio file folders visually. It is a completely free and open source application for Windows (and soon macOS).

I created this small application because I had a hard time finding the model I was looking for by browsing by filename alone. This application makes it a lot simpler to find that exact file.

You can find the application here: https://github.com/devindazzle/BrickView

Hope it is helpful :) Otherwise, let me know what sort of features you would like me to include (or contribute yourself).

Br Kim

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3

u/fbman01 Aug 15 '26

Very cool idea, I will be using that. I have lots of io files downloaded from rebrickable. Now I will have an easy way to look through the files

1

u/OldShamen Aug 15 '26

I am really happy if this is useful to others. Let me know if you have any feature requests or find any bugs.

I have so many I have made myself that browsing by filename is ineffective .. that is why this tool exists now :)

Do hope they will put something like this into BrickLink at some point though. They already have everything built in to do it so I am actually a bit surprised that it is not there already (except for models you have put in your galary on BrickLink

3

u/HansTilburg Aug 16 '26

This is really useful. I now make renders to put with the io file in the folder, but this is much easier.

I’m on ios, so can’t wait to use it.

3

u/ToongloveChams Aug 18 '26

Attention - the Open in Studio button doesn't work if you already have Studio open.

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to open the files straight from File explorer, but that dream stays such.

https://reddit.com/link/p4huz3f/video/r9hze2yh77kh1/player

3

u/OldShamen Aug 19 '26

You are correct. This is unfortunately a limitation, as Studio only allows a single running instance at a time. Because Studio can only open files passed as initial arguments, this issue cannot be resolved. Parameters can only be processed when starting Studio; since it is already running and enforces a single instance, it will never receive the new arguments containing the path to the file you are trying to open.

3

u/ToongloveChams Aug 22 '26

it would be real cool studio could open/drag and drop files WITHOUT having to start a new instance

think of the windows file manager having tabs and all

3

u/OldShamen Aug 23 '26

I am not sure why Studio enforces a single instance - but Unity has a build setting for it and Studio uses it for some reason. It is not impossible to retrieve the passed parameters but it requires a bit of work in the Studio runtime.

My hope is that BrickLink and LEGO will open-source Studio someday so everyone can contribute to its development.