Plant Tree

Overview

The Plant tree displays one or multiple factories referenced by the eBOM and mBOM within the project. Users can have multiple plants in the Plant tree.

Figure 1:  Plants Module

The user can view the Plant tree by clicking the "Plants" tab on the container application. The right side of the screen changes once the Plants tab is selected. The following modules work around the Plant tree and appear on the right hand side.

User Interface - Plant tree

The following options appear when the user right clicks

Figure 2:  Plant Tree Menus

Right clicking on the plant tree provides several menu options:

1. Click on an empty space in the plants tree and menu for Uploading or adding a plant can be seen. Uploading a plant means loading a pre defined AutoCAD DWF file with boundaries and locations marked on it. Adding a plant means creating the plant struture within Proplanner. refer to the Import Section for details.

2. Clicking on a Plant node provides several options -

Uploading an existing Plant

"Upload a Plant" button allows the user to browse the ".fbf" file to be loaded in the project. For instructions about creating an .fbf file, refer the Plants Tutorial.

Add Plant button brings up the window shown below.

Figure 3:  Uploading an existing plant

Adding a Link to a Plant Node

The right click menus change as per the node. There are restrictions on the items that can be added to different nodes. Plants can have only boundaries, Boundaries can have Activity Locations and Boundaries, Activity Locations can have only resources attached to it.

Link can be added to any node on the plant tree by clicking on Link on right click menu, which brings up the following window. The link can be added by typing or browsing the web link.

Figure 4:  Adding a link

Importing Plant Data

In order to import a layout from AutoCAD the user first need to install the plant view extractor, this is an add-on application in AutoCAD.

Figure 5:  Creating layers

1. Open your layout drawing in AutoCAD. Create a layer called Boundary for the departments, zones etc., a layer called Location for the actual activity locations and workstations and a layer called Resource for the resources in the drawing.

2. Next use the Polyline or the Rectangle command to mark each boundary and activity location. As you mark these lines around an area, make sure that you are on the corresponding layer. For example as in the next image draw a boundary and an activity location within the boundary in your drawing. Note that the layer in the layer window is boundary.

Figure 6:  Creating boundaries

3. Make the current layer as Boundary and draw a boundary in you layout.

4. Next change the layer to Location and draw two locations within the boundary.

5. The resources in Proplanner are handled differently. In order to add a resource, first change the current layer to Resource.

6. Type text in the AutoCAD command line, type in the name of the resources and place them within the activity location.

7. Click on the “P” icon on the Proplanner tool bar.

8. This will pull up a form with the drawing name in the Plant name text box.

Figure 7:  Select the appropriate layers

9. Next select the appropriate layers, Boundary for boundaries etc.

10. Click on Read drawing, this will pull up the tree in the tree view.

Figure 8:  Selected boundaries

11. The user can now go in and modify the names of the boundaries and locations. To do the same, click on the “Go To ACAD” button.

Figure 9:  Adding/Editing Names

12. Next click on the Add/Edit Name, select the appropriate boundary or location and edit the name.

13. Click on Return to App and make sure that the names are showing up in the tree view.

14. Click on Extract, this will create an .fbf file for the drawing, browse and specify a location this file. The program also creates a .dwf file for the drawing.

15. Next in Proplanner, go to the plants module and right click on the plant tree view

Figure 10:  Plants tab

16. Select the “Upload a Plant” option and browse to the .fbf file created.

17. Click Open and this will create the tree in the plants module and also bring in a snap shot of the layout.

18. The user can now click on each node, and the program will zoom into each part of the plant in the Factory Browser.

Creating the Plant within the Application

Adding Boundaries

1. Right click on the “Hydra Pumps” and select “Add Boundary”.

2. Enter the ID as F001, Name as Finishing and Description for that Boundary.

3. The Boundary should show up as a child node in the tree.

Adding Activity Locations, Resources

1. Right click on the F001 node and select “Add Activity Location”.

2. Enter ID as AL001 and Name as Polishing.

3. Right click on AL001 and select “Add Resource”.

4. A list of existing resources should show up, select a resource from the list and add it under that node.

Note: A resource that has already been added to a location cannot be added elsewhere. Refer the Resource manual to get the procedure for adding new resources.