Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-13413401-20130728125025/@comment-13705676-20130728152331

Forthewin11 wrote: Ok, I think I understand what you are saying. Please tell me if the following are wrong:

The import bus is to import things into the ME system. It can be connfigured to import everything in the inventory or only certain things. Correct. If you want the bus to import everything (which is often the case), just leave the menu of the import bus (by right-clicking it) clear of any items.

The export bus is used to automatically process things in the system. Example: I want to macerate every tin ore I get, so use the export bus (configured with the tin ore) on the top of the macerator and an import bus on the right. Correct again :)

The ME interface is used to select when and how many things to process. Example: I do not want to smelt all the tin dust I get from the macerator because if I want to make bronze, it requires tin dust. So instead of using an export bus on the furnace to make tin ingots, I would place the ME Interface on the top with the encoded pattern. The import bus still needs to be placed on the right, correct? Then I can choose how many tin to smelt from a terminal. The ME interface is a sort of 'on-demand' processing system, whereas export buses are more automated in that way. Your solution as described works, as it will smelt tin dust only when you order it to. You can also do this in a more automated way with level emitters hooked up to export buses.

Example: Let's say you want all of your tin dust smelted into tin ingots, exept for 5 stacks of tin dust, which you want to use to craft bronze dust. You can still hook up an export bus to the top of a furnace to smelt your tin dust automatically. But you want the system to know to not smelt your 5 stacks. This is done by placing an ME level emitter facing the export bus. Place the tin dust in the menu of the level emitter and set it to "emit if value is above 320 (i.e. 5 stacks)." A redstone signal wil then emit a signal to the export bus, telling it to continue feeding tin dust into the furnace, until the tin dust in your ME storage reaches a low of 320.

Import buses can be placed in any slot of a device exept for solts used for exported items.

Lastly, the storage bus (I didn't know this existed until now) is should be connected to non-ME chests/barrels/DSUs. I don't need to place an import bus, right? Also, the items in the chests/barrels/DSUs wont take up space in the ME drives, correct? Correct. No need for import buses because it is just used to incorporate the adjacent chest/DSU as 'ME storage'.

And no, the connected DSU's don't take up storage in your ME drives because the items are not stored on those drives, but in the DSU's. Which is great, because DSU's are a lot cheaper and can hold a lot more data than ME storage drives :)