Lesson 2 · Stations and roles

Paths only say where vehicles can drive. Stations say what happens where: where material is picked up, where it is delivered and where vehicles start, park and recharge. A station is a point on a path with one or more roles.

Time

15 min

Start from

the checkpoint of lesson 1

You will learn

place stations on paths and give them roles
tell pickups, drop-offs, chargers and parking apart on the plan
read the Network tab and the readiness checklist

Open your project from lesson 1, or the checkpoint at the end of it. Press Fit so the loop fills the canvas: stations are small, and more room makes them easier to place.

What a role means

Roles are independent tick boxes, so a station can have several. The symbol on the plan follows the role.

Role	Symbol	What happens there
Pickup	green triangle	orders load material here
Drop-off	red inverted triangle	orders unload material here
Charger	cyan dot in a square	vehicles start, park and recharge here
Parking	violet square with a hole	vehicles start and park here, without recharging

Vehicles start only on chargers and parking stations, one vehicle per station, and go back to the nearest free one when they have nothing to do. A fleet of three vehicles therefore needs three of them; you will meet this rule in the next lesson.

Place the stations

Keep the suggested Number for this lesson. The first available number starts at 1; deleting a station makes its number available again. Entering 1000 and pressing Enter starts a new sequence from 1000 when you place the station, saved with the project. You can also renumber an existing station in its properties: links and mission references follow it. A custom Name appears on the map and in mission choices instead of its number; crowded tags move to a free side of their station.

The pickup, Goods in. Choose Station or press 7 and click on the bottom side near (3 000, −6 000). The station snaps onto the path (a station cannot exist away from one), is selected, and its properties open. Set Name to Goods in and tick Pickup: the grey dot becomes a green triangle.
The first drop-off, Line 1. Click on the right side near (10 000, 2 500). Name it Line 1 and tick Drop-off. This is where a production line takes the material.
The second drop-off, Line 2. Click on the top side near (3 000, 6 000), name it Line 2 and tick Drop-off.
Two chargers. On the bottom side, to the left of Goods in, click near (−4 500, −6 000) and near (−2 000, −6 000). Name them Charge 1 and Charge 2 and tick Charger on both. Their AGV orientation (°) stays 0, which points east: a vehicle starting there faces the way the path runs.

Tip

To change a station afterwards, press 1 for Select and click it; drag it to slide it along its path. Select favours stations over paths: hold Alt while clicking to pick the path underneath. The Objects tab lists everything and finds things by name.

What you should see

Five stations on the loop: a green triangle at the bottom, a red one on the right and one at the top, and two chargers at the bottom left.

To combine roles using the checkboxes in this lesson, open Combine roles. The role selector also provides common presets.

Check the network

Open Network. Its dot turns green and the panel says No problems found: the network now holds a pickup and drop-offs that the paths connect. Below that, a collapsed line Notes lists information that needs no action here: on a one-way loop every station lies on the only way round, so the tab notes that none of them can be avoided. With nothing selected, Properties shows the Ready to simulate checklist and the Configure simulation button, which you will press in the next lesson.

Note

You did not draw any link. While a layout has none, vehicles drive along the paths directly, in the direction each path allows. Links are optional controlled routes between stations; lesson 5 uses them.

Try it yourself

Tick Parking on a new station instead of Charger and compare the two symbols. Delete it with Delete afterwards.
Tick both Pickup and Drop-off on one station: the symbol becomes a diamond. You will use this for buffers. Undo it.
Drag Line 1 along the right side and see that it never leaves the path.

Checkpoint

The plan at the end of this lesson: the loop with one pickup, two drop-offs and two chargers

It contains: 8 paths · 5 stations · 3 AGVs.

Download the checkpoint (aurora-02-stations.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.