Managing Products in Conveyor Systems

You can generate, position, and attach copies (workpieces) of product references on the conveyor and its related entities (carriers, trolleys, lifters).

This task shows you how to:

See Also
Managing the Conveyor Network
Power & Free Conveyor Concept

Prepare the Data

Create factory data containing a conveyor, trolleys, and one or more manufacturing products with proper mount and base ports defined for each.

  1. Create a cell containing the factory data and one or more manufacturing products.




  2. Ensure that each manufacturing product resource has one or more products (if multiproduct analysis is required), and a base port defined. The base port is used for position management when mounted to a tool.


  3. Ensure that tool equipment resources have at least one mount port defined.


Manage Workpieces in Your Session

Workpieces Manager allows you to manage all workpieces generated in the session.

Note that generated workpieces exist only in the current session—they are discarded when the session is closed. However, workpieces can also be managed from within a Scenario of a Manufacturing Simulation. In this case, persistency is available at the scenario level. This means that you can define a different set of workpieces for each scenario.

  1. From the Conveyor section of the action bar, click Conveyor Network and select a conveyor.
    The Network dialog box appears.

  2. Click Workpiece Management .
    • If you are working from within a Manufacturing Simulation, you can also select Workpieces Manager from the context menu of the current Scenario.

    The Workpieces Manager dialog box appears.

    This dialog box provides the following functionality:

    Adds a manufacturing product to the Workpieces Manager dialog box. It is used to create workpieces.
    Removes a selected manufacturing product or a workpiece from the Workpieces Manager dialog box.
    Opens the Workpiece Attachments dialog box and allows you to edit the attributes (mount ports, base ports) used to mount the workpieces on tools.
    Clears all selections in the tree view.
    Updates all workpieces in the current session after mount and base ports have been modified.

    When selected, Reframe on selection reframes the viewpoint on all selections in the tree.

    When Sync 3D & Tree view selection is selected, clicking an object in the work area results in the same object being selected the Workpiece tree, and vice versa.

  3. Click and select a manufacturing product in the cell.
    The Workpiece Attachments dialog box for the selected manufacturing product appears.

    Workpiece displays the selected reference manufacturing product.

    The All Tools tree is grouped by tool references. In-session instances are listed under each.

    Note that only tools that have mount ports defined are available for workpiece attachment.

    The tool Mount Ports and the manufacturing product’s Base Ports are listed for each reference.

  4. Select one or more tool instances.

    As each tool instance is selected, the workpiece is displayed in the work area and attached to the specified tool instance, with its base port snapped to the tool mount port.



  5. Select a port in the Tool Mount list to display it in the work area.

    You can also select a port in the Product Base list to display it.

  6. Click Close.

    All created workpieces are displayed in the Workpieces Manager dialog box under the corresponding manufacturing product reference.



    The Current Tool list for each instance contains all possible tools available for attachment. You can also click to select a tool in the work area on which the workpiece will be mounted. Selecting a different tool automatically releases the workpiece from the current tool that attaches it and reattach it to the new selection.
  7. Close the Workpieces Manager dialog box when finished.