I think that the ability to restore blocks is an amazing addition. Unfortunately, this feature is incomplete; as the astrotech seems to not be able to distinguish between the different subcategories of a given block type.
For example; I shot a small shuttle and left some hull/system damage on it. When trying to repair the ship, I got the same "inventory" message and figured I had to have a storage block filled with the needed parts attached to the repair beam. I got the message again but this time it said I didn't have any grey basic armor slabs. So to rule out any possible error on my part, I spawned a fresh copy of the same shuttle, then scrapped it and put all the parts into my repair storage. Same message; missing grey basic armor slabs.
Tonight, I got the same message about wedges.