1. Preparing the Drawing: Flow Planner bases calculations on distances read from your drawing. Therefore it is important to have a drawing that is appropriately scaled using ACTUAL units. The drawing does not need to be highly detailed for Flow Planner to work, since you will provide location text labels for all locations. (As such, the drawing needs to be detailed enough that you can tell where “Machine 6” is located.) Flow Planner Units Flow Planner can work in either Engineering (Foot-Inch) or Decimal (Metric) units. You can check and change the units in the drawing with the Units command in AutoCAD. By default, the application will assume that if your drawing is set to Engineering units that your base unit is 1inch in size. If your drawing is set to Decimal units, then the application will assume that your base drawing unit is 1 millimeter (although your base unit could also be 1 Meter). Once Flow Planner is running, you can reset your default base units (to Inches, Millimeters, or Meters) on the Settings Tab if these defaults are incorrect. AutoCAD Note: Remember that if you use the AutoCAD UNITS command to change your drawing units, which you will also probably need to set your drawing limits (size) by using the AutoCAD LIMITS command. You will then need to follow the limits command with the ZOOM ALL command in order to ensure that you are viewing the entire work area. Adding to the Drawing Regardless of which units you use, remember to convert distances properly when drawing. For a Foot-Inch drawing with the default base unit size, if the distance between a table and a box is 3'6" in reality, make sure that the table is 42 base units (inches) from the box in the drawing. 

2. Preparing the Routings: The Material Routing is basically a list of moves that the material handling device (i.e. Fork Truck) needs to make to a specific set of locations within the factory. The routing can be defined within the application in the Routings Tab, or it can be created in another application (e.g. Microsoft Excel) and imported into Workplace Planner as a CSV file. If you choose to create your Routing in Excel, it is very helpful to see an example first. Open the HydraPumps.csv sample file provided in the tutorial directory, and use it as a template to help ensure your format is correct. Remember that you will need to save the Excel file as a comma-separated file* so it can be Opened within Flow Planner. *You can also change the delimiter type to a semicolon. To have Flow Planner read this type of file, change the default delimiter on the Licensing/Settings Tab. For details of creating, importing, and editing routings, see the Routings Tab section of the Flow Planner manual. 

3. Conducting the Analysis: After the drawing properly reflects the state of your facility and you have created your routing, you are ready to do an initial analysis. The analysis is started by clicking the "Calculate" button in the Part Routings Tab. The first thing that Flow Planner will do when you select "Calculate" is to make sure all From Locations and To Locations referenced in the routing exist in the drawing. If any locations are missing in the drawing, you will be prompted to place them. After this check is completed, Flow Planner calculates the time spent and distance covered in moving parts from one location to another. The program will create, or update, the list of paths (in the Paths Tab) with the computed times and distances. The results window is prepared with a summary of the distance, time, and travel information. You can see how time was utilized by viewing the graphs or charts in the Utilization Tab. Selecting the “Save As” button will save your results to a file. The routing data, method/processes/containers data, products/parts data, and results data are all stored in separate files. These files are all simple comma-delimited text files that are easy to import into a word processor or spreadsheet (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Right click on the items in the list or on the chart to copy the information to other applications.

The installer that ran when you downloaded this app/plug-in from Autodesk App Store will start installing the app/plug-in. OR, simply double-click the downloaded installer to install the app/plugin.

You may need to restart the Autodesk product to activate the app/plug-in.

To uninstall this plug-in, exit the Autodesk product if you are currently running it, simply rerun the installer, and select the "Uninstall" button. OR, click Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features (Windows 7/8.1/10) and uninstall as you would any other application from your system.

Tutorial files are included in the tutorial directory which is located within the folder where the application is installed - %AppData%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ Proplanner_FlowPlanner.bundle\Contents\Program\Tutorial Files