Course: from zero to hero
Build one plant from an empty canvas, a lesson at a time: a loop and its stations, a first run, traffic, block logic, two fleets, batteries and disturbances, and a VNA warehouse, ending with a plant you can study and compare.
How the course works
Every lesson adds one layer to the same plant, the Aurora Plant, and explains why before it says where to click. You do the steps in the app, in a second window next to this page. Nothing is hidden behind a video: the steps are text, so they can be searched and always name the controls as they appear on screen.
- Checkpoints. Each lesson ends with a project file of the plant as it should look. If you skip a lesson or something went wrong, open the checkpoint and carry on.
- Coordinates. Geometry is in millimetres, with x to the right, y up and the origin in the middle of the plant. “Click near (−10 000, −6 000)” means: put the pointer there, reading the X/Y in the status bar under the canvas. The grid and the snapping do the rest, so a few millimetres either way do not matter.
- Names. Controls are written as they appear in the app, in the language of the page. The course names stations (Goods in, Line 1…) so that the text, the pictures and the checkpoints agree; you can name yours differently, but keep the same names to follow the later lessons without translating.
- Numbers. Figures quoted from runs, such as missions per hour, come from the checkpoints and are approximate: your own run may differ by a few percent. What matters is the pattern they show.
You need a recent desktop browser and a window at least 1280 px wide. If the plant does not fit the canvas, hide the side panel with Hide the side panel (the button at the top right of the panel), or pan with the wheel.
The roadmap
| # | Lesson | What you do | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Draw the first loop | Start a project, draw four paths and four curves, make the loop one-way. | 20 min |
| 2 | Stations and roles | Place a pickup, two drop-offs and two chargers on the loop and give each its role. | 15 min |
| 3 | Your first scenario and run | Choose what to transport, size the fleet, run one hour and read the four headline numbers. | 25 min |
| 4 | Sizing the fleet and comparing runs | Tighten the demand, run one, two and three AGVs and let the comparison table show who copes. | 25 min |
| 5 | Traffic: dead ends, gridlock and zones | Add a repacking spur, break the plant on purpose, then fix it with an exclusive traffic zone. | 30 min |
| 6 | Plant logic: your first block diagram | Replace the fixed order rate with two production lines that ask for material at their own rhythm. | 25 min |
| 7 | Conditions, counters and chained transports | Cap the queue with a condition, count what is lost in a variable and chain a second transport to a delivery. | 30 min |
| 8 | Several fleets and who may go where | Add a heavy forklift fleet, give it its own bay and restrict stations to the fleets that may use them. | 30 min |
| 9 | Batteries and disturbances | Switch on the battery model and random stops, and see what a plant loses when things go wrong. | 30 min |
| 10 | A very-narrow-aisle warehouse | Draw a dead-end annex with a rack aisle, add a VNA truck and store and retrieve pallets from the block diagram. | 40 min |
| 11 | The whole plant: logic, warehouse and what-ifs | Protect the annex, rebuild the diagram so the lines are fed from the warehouse, run a shift and compare three alternatives. | 45 min |
About 5.5 hours in total, over as many sittings as you like: every lesson ends with a checkpoint you can restart from.
What you will have built
The finished plant is a 20 × 12 m one-way loop with a goods-in pickup, two production lines, a repacking spur, three chargers and a dead-end annex holding a very-narrow-aisle warehouse. Two AGV fleets and one VNA truck serve it, driven by a block diagram that stores incoming pallets, retrieves them on demand and counts what each line receives.
After the course
- The scenario cookbook has focused studies you can run on this plant: fleet sizing, dispatch rules, dead ends and batteries.
- To draw on a real floor plan instead of a blank canvas, see CAD floor plans; everything you learned about paths, stations and logic carries over unchanged.
- Shortcuts, units and limits lists the keys and the limits in one place.
The simulator models software behaviour. A study on the Aurora Plant says nothing about real vehicles or a real site until you have drawn that site and checked the model against it.