Lesson 3 · Your first scenario and run

The layout says where vehicles can go; the scenario says what they must do. You will tell the simulator which stations generate orders, how many vehicles serve them and how fast, watch the fleet work, and run an hour of production.

Open the scenario

Open your project from lesson 2, or its checkpoint. In Draw, click an empty spot of the canvas so nothing is selected, then press Configure simulation in the Properties panel (or click Simulate in the header). The side panel switches to the Scenario tab.

The scenario is a list of steps. The dot in front of each step tells its state at a glance, and its summary on the right shows the current values, so you can check the whole setup without opening anything.

One step is open at a time, and until you choose one the first step that needs attention opens by itself. Any change to the scenario restarts the simulation from zero, so make your changes before you run.

What to transport

An order always goes from a pickup to a drop-off. You choose the pickup stations and the drop-off stations, and the simulator forms the pairs it can serve: every pickup with every drop-off that the paths can reach from it. Orders take the pairs in rotation, so with one pickup and two drop-offs, material alternates between Line 1 and Line 2.

1. Tick the drop-offs first. In Drop-off stations, tick Line 1 and Line 2.
2. Then the pickup. In Pickup stations, tick Goods in. The step turns green and reads 1 → 2 · 2 pairs: one pickup, two drop-offs, two usable pairs. As soon as the pair is valid the Fleet step opens by itself, because it is the next one that needs attention; click a step's header to open or close it.

The fleet

The Fleet step is amber and says 2/3 AGV. A new project starts with three vehicles, but the simulator only places a vehicle on a free charger or parking station, one vehicle per station, and you drew two. It never invents a starting place for the third, so it tells you rather than guessing.

1. Set the number of vehicles to 2. Type 2 in the AGV count field of the fleet. The summary becomes 2/2 AGV · 80 cm/s and the dot turns green; the two vehicles appear on the chargers. In the next lesson you will add a third charger and see what a third vehicle changes.
2. Leave speeds and times as they are. Each fleet has its own: a new one drives at 80 cm/s on straights and 40 cm/s on curves, accelerates at 40 cm/s², brakes at 60 cm/s² and takes 12 seconds to load at the pickup and 12 to unload at the drop-off. You change them on the fleet's card; any speed set on a path takes priority.

When orders arrive

Open Orders. The default is a new order every 60 seconds: one order a minute, 60 an hour, the demand you will try to serve. Two rules decide who does what when several orders and vehicles are free: Order priority picks the order and AGV selection for the mission picks the vehicle. The defaults (oldest order, nearest vehicle) are fine here.

Watch it work

The controls to run the simulation live in the toolbar above the map, next to what they drive.

1. Choose a speed and press Start. Leave Playback speed at 10× (ten simulated seconds for every real one) and press Start run. Run duration next to it can stop the run at a chosen time; choose ∞ for now. The clock shows simulated time. Pause holds everything, the step button next to it advances one simulated second, and Reset goes back to zero.
2. Read the colours. A vehicle is light blue when idle, green while driving to a pickup, a drop-off or back to a charger, and blue while loading or unloading; a ‖ sign means it is waiting for traffic. Stations light up too: the pickup of an assigned order is green, its drop-off magenta, and orders still in the queue are orange. The Movements dock under the map lists the active and pending missions.
3. Reset. Press Reset. A run you want to keep should come from the next section, not from a half-watched demonstration.

Run one hour

Start run is the one-click way to get a result you can compare. From zero it starts at the selected playback speed. Paused runs resume; after completion the button starts a new run. A run stops at the chosen duration and is archived. Choose Max to calculate as quickly as possible.

1. Choose the duration. In the toolbar above the map, set Run duration to 1 h and Playback speed to Max. Longer runs are steadier, but an hour is plenty to learn from and takes about half a minute.
2. Press Start run. The Results tab opens on Current run with a progress bar. When it reaches the end a notice announces the run, with buttons for the results and for the comparison, and Run finished appears.

Read the four numbers

With two vehicles you should see about 58 missions, a throughput of about 58/h, utilisation near 99% and a queue of one or two. Demand is 60 orders an hour, so the fleet keeps up, but a utilisation of 99% means the vehicles never rest: there is no margin. Any hiccup would make the queue grow. That is the first lesson of fleet sizing, and the next lesson is built on it.

Below the four numbers, collapsible sections hold the detail: Mission times (lead time is creation to delivery), Bottlenecks, Fleet usage and Timeline. PDF exports a readable report; Technical data contains Export (.zip) and JSON, and the run is also kept in Run archive.

Checkpoint

It contains: 8 paths · 5 stations · 2 AGVs.

Download the checkpoint (aurora-03-first-run.en.sim)

Open it with Project›Import project. It replaces the project you have open, so save yours first (or open it in a new browser tab). Anything you do from here on is a copy: the checkpoint file itself never changes. Use it to continue from here if you skipped a lesson, or to compare your own project with the expected one.