Layout Designer

Where things are placed on your floor decides how far people and materials have to travel, how much they wait on each other, and how easy it is to spot a problem. Most of that cost is invisible until you draw the floor to scale and look at it.

This isn't just theory for its own sake — it's the same thinking behind Lean/Industrial Engineering methods like value stream mapping and the 8 wastes. If you want the deeper "why", the Knowledge Base covers those concepts on their own; this page is about how to actually use the Designer to put that thinking into practice.

Scroll to zoom in and out, or use the +/− buttons in the toolbar. Zooming is centred on wherever your mouse pointer is, so you can zoom straight into the part of the drawing you're looking at without losing your place.

To pan, hold Space and drag anywhere (a hand cursor shows this is active), middle-mouse-drag, or click the hand icon in the toolbar to lock pan mode on without holding anything. "Reset view" (the expand icon) snaps zoom and position back to the default.

The grid size field sets real-world spacing between grid lines (in metres or feet/inches, matching your chosen unit system) — the default is 1 metre. Grid lines and their measurements are drawn along all four edges of the drawing, so you always know where you are without scrolling back to a corner.

"Snap" (on by default) makes objects, freeform lines, guides and the Measure tool all lock to the nearest grid line while you drag — useful for keeping things aligned without eyeballing it. Turn it off when you need to place something at an exact non-grid position.

"Drawing size" is your facility's real-world width × depth — 20m × 20m by default, up to a maximum of 200m × 200m (200m² is bigger than almost any single-site factory or warehouse; the cap exists so the canvas doesn't grow to an unworkable pixel size, not because of any real facility limit).

Changing width or depth only resizes the canvas itself — it never rescales anything you've already drawn. If a number you type looks wrong afterwards, use the Measure tool's "Calibrate from this" instead (see below) — that's the control that actually changes scale.

The Objects tab lists every placeable item alphabetically, with a search field to filter it — type "bin" to jump straight to bins, for example. Click any item to drop it on the canvas.

Every object has an editable Name, plus real-world width/height, and — for process stations like machines and benches — cycle time, operator count, setup/changeover/waiting time and more, all in the Properties tab once it's selected.

Objects are grouped into five layers automatically, based on what they are: Machines & Process, Storage & Materials, Structure & Utilities, Walkways & Flow, and Safety. The Layers tab lets you hide or lock a whole layer at once — handy for decluttering the view or protecting walls/doors while you rearrange machines.

There's currently no way to manually move a specific object onto a different layer than its type implies — layer assignment is automatic only. If that ever gets in your way for a specific case, that's a small, contained feature to add on request.

Along the bottom of the canvas, four numbers summarise the whole plan: Travel distance, Bottleneck, Cycle and Operators. None of these are fields you type into directly — they're read-only rollups, calculated automatically from what you've already entered on individual objects, and they update live as you edit the drawing.

Travel distance is the same "Total daily travel" figure shown in the Flow tab — the round-trip distance covered across every "Connect flow" link on the plan, at 8 hours/shift unless you change it there. Bottleneck is whichever process station (machine, bench, assembly, etc) has the highest cycle time on the whole plan — the one everything else effectively waits on. Cycle is that bottleneck station's own cycle time, set on its Properties tab. Operators is the total headcount added up across every station on the plan.

You won't see a Takt time here yet. Takt (how fast you'd need to produce to keep up with customer demand) needs a real daily-output/demand number, which the Designer doesn't collect anywhere today — so rather than show a made-up figure, it's left out until that input exists.

"+ H guide" and "+ V guide" in the toolbar drop a dashed reference line across the canvas — drag it into position, and Delete removes the selected one. These are a pure drafting aid: they're not part of your layout, they never show up in PNG/PDF/SVG/DXF exports, and they save with the plan so they're there next time you open it.

Use them the way you'd use guides in Illustrator or Figma — as an alignment reference ("everything left of this line is the receiving area") without needing to draw an actual wall or zone object.

The Measure tool (ruler icon) is a one-off, manual measurement: drag across any two points on the canvas and it shows the real-world distance, in whichever unit system you've chosen. Hold Shift while dragging to lock the line to horizontal or vertical.

If the number it shows doesn't match reality — say a wall you measured on-screen as 4.2m is actually 5m — click "Calibrate from this", type in the true distance, and "Set scale". That recalculates the whole drawing's scale from that one known distance, so grid lines, object sizes and every future measurement update to match. This is separate from the Flow panel's distance setting below, which is about connections between stations, not ad-hoc measuring.

"Connect flow" links two stations with a directed arrow representing material moving from one to the other — the Flow tab then shows distance, walking time, trips/hour, trips/shift and daily travel for every connection, plus deterministic suggestions for the longest routes.

"Measure distance from" in the Flow tab controls how that connection distance is calculated: "Nearest edge" (default) measures the real gap between the two objects' closest edges — the number that matches what someone would actually walk. "Centre to centre" measures between their middle points instead, which is always bigger since it includes half of each object's own footprint. Neither is more "correct" — it's a convention choice, so it applies globally rather than per connection.

"Draw lane / walkway" is a freeform multi-point line for forklift routes, pedestrian lanes, or anything that doesn't move in a straight line — click to place each point, double-click or Enter to finish, Esc to cancel. Drag any point afterwards to reshape it, including routing it around in a loop by adding more points.

Beyond the analytical "Connect flow" links, the palette has a standalone "Flow arrow" decorative object for annotating a drawing — e.g. marking general traffic direction without tying it to specific stations or trip calculations. It comes in a one-way version and a two-way version (arrowhead on both ends, for aisles or lanes used in both directions), toggled in its Properties panel, with a colour picker to match your drawing.

Connections themselves (the analytical kind) can also be curved — select one and use the Curve slider in its Properties panel to bow the line around an obstacle, then "Straighten" to reset it. This stays directional on purpose: it's modelling a real one-way material flow with real trip-time math, not a decorative line.

"History" keeps automatic checkpoints of your plan (roughly one every 3 minutes while you're actively editing, capped at the last 20) — preview any past version against your current canvas, then Restore if you want to go back; Ctrl+Z undoes a restore just like any other edit.

"Improve with AI" reasons over your actual stations, cycle times, operator balance and flow distances — not generic advice — and always shows a before/after preview. Nothing touches your live canvas until you click "Apply this layout", and that goes through the same undo history as everything else.

PNG and JPEG are snapshot images — good for sharing or dropping into a document. SVG is a real editable vector file, not a screenshot, so it can be opened and adjusted in something like Illustrator or Inkscape. PDF adds a title block and footer, good for printing or a formal handover. DXF is a basic geometry-only CAD export (lines, circles, text) for opening in AutoCAD or similar — it's intentionally minimal, not a full-fidelity CAD file.