Docs
Site plans
Templates
Four warehouse archetypes that set a sensible machine and, once a plan is scaled, draw a starting layout to fit it.
A template is a shortcut for the first ten minutes of a study. It does two things, and the second is optional.
- Starting a study from a template creates it with the right machine already selected, so the aisle clearance check has something to check against from the first drawing.
- Once a plan is uploaded and scaled, Site Layout offers to draw the archetype's racking, aisles and docks to fit that building. Everything it draws is ordinary markup you can move, resize or delete.
#The four archetypes
| Template | Machine | Starter markup | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cross-dock | Pallet AMR | Dock banks on both faces and travel lanes between them | Long, shallow buildings; inbound to outbound with no storage |
| Cold store | VNA turret truck | Narrow racking runs with 1.8 m aisles | Sub-zero, high-density storage |
| Retail DC | Reach truck | Wide-aisle racking runs at 3.2 m | Mixed pallet quality, high SKU counts, wave picking |
| Line feed | Tow tractor | A central aisle with flanking racks | Line-side replenishment at a fixed takt |
#What a template does not do
It does not know your building. The drawn layout is a starting arrangement scaled to the plan's outline, not a design; you will move most of it. It does not set a fleet, a required throughput or a payback. And if a plan is too small for the archetype to fit, it says so rather than drawing something silly.
Templates are most useful on a PDF or an image, where nothing is drawn for you. On a DXF the racking is usually already in the file, and you will mark it up faster by tracing than by templating.