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Your first study

From an empty account to a printed report, in the order the product expects.

2 min read7 sections

#Before you begin

You need a plan of the building in one of the supported formats — an ASCII DXF is ideal because its scale is read automatically — and a rough idea of the demand: how many pallet or tote moves per shift the site has to handle. Everything else can be changed later.

Not ready with a real building? Open the demo. It contains five complete studies — each with a scaled plan, a marked-up layout, a fleet, a simulation and telemetry — and it is yours alone for six hours.

#Step 1 — Create the study

From the dashboard, click New study.
Give it a name, a site name, and attach or create a client. The reference number is assigned for you.
Optionally pick a template. A template sets a sensible default machine and, once a plan is scaled, can draw racking, aisles and docks to fit that building.

#Step 2 — Upload a plan

Open Site Layout and choose the study.
Drop in a DXF, PDF, or a PNG, JPEG or WebP image.
A DXF declares its own units, so the scale is read from the file. For a PDF or image, use Set scale: click the two ends of something whose length you know — a bay, a door, a marked dimension — and type that length.

DWG is not supported. Open it in your CAD tool and export an ASCII DXF. A binary DXF is rejected too.

#Step 3 — Draw the layout

Pick a tool from the palette — racking, aisle, dock or obstruction — and drag rectangles onto the plan. Shapes snap to a grid derived from the plan's scale and to the drawing's own corners, so an aisle you draw between two rack faces lands exactly on them.

The panel on the left totals the area of each type, and once the study has a fleet, checks every aisle against the most demanding machine on it. The pill in the toolbar gives the verdict — how many aisles clear, or how many are too narrow — and the drawer along the bottom lists every shape with its size, area and clearance.

#Step 4 — Build the fleet

Open Fleet. Click machines in the library on the right to add them, then set units and shifts on each line. The strip at the top derives the widest aisle the fleet needs, its combined rated capacity, and the floor it takes when parked. The machine that needs the widest aisle is the one every aisle on Site Layout is checked against.

#Step 5 — Run the model

Open Simulation. In the panel on the left, enter the demand — moves required per day — and the shift pattern. Travel distance can be typed, or derived from the plan as the distance from the dock centroid to the racking centroid. The readouts above the form give capacity, requirement, utilisation and headroom; the pill in the toolbar says whether the fleet fits.

Open Reports, pick the study, and print. The document carries the plan, the markup, the fleet, the model and every aisle finding. Switch the interface language first and the report follows it.