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Preparing for Layout Planning

Commercial

Included in the public demo Compare editions

Correct movement in the Editor is only part of preparing an asset for a layout. In the Layout Planner, you place it on the floor, rotate it and connect it to neighbouring assets. For this to work, the asset needs the correct floor position and orientation, plus snap points at its connections.

When an asset is placed, the planner puts its pivot on the cursor and its lowest point on the floor. By default the pivot is the bottom centre of the bounding box.

  • Use To Ground and Pivot to Bottom in the Transform section of Quick Edit so the asset stands on the floor with its origin where the planner expects it.
  • For an asymmetric asset — a robot with a long arm, an L-shaped fixture — the bottom centre may lie over empty floor. A WebPivot marker sets the pivot explicitly; it is authored in Unity. See Pivots.

Use Align Y Up if the CAD data arrived lying on its side. Turn conveyors and stations so their transport direction runs along a main axis. This aligns the planner’s rotation steps with the snap points.

Snap points let the planner connect assets: a conveyor output meets the input of the next conveyor, and the two then move as one chain. A snap point is an empty node at the connection, whose name says what it is:

NameMeaning
Snap-ZN-convrollInput of type convroll
Snap-ZP-convrollOutput of type convroll
Snap-ZB-convrollBidirectional connector of type convroll

To add one:

  1. Select the asset’s root and add an Empty Child.
  2. Move it to the connection, at the edge where the neighbour attaches. The outward direction is taken from where the node sits inside the asset.
  3. Name it Snap-<axis><N|P|B>-<type>. The Editor has no rename field yet; rename the node through an AI assistant connected over the AI bridge (web_execute("editor.rename", {path, name})), or author the snap points in Unity before export.

Use the same type id on every asset that is meant to connect: convroll only connects to convroll. Compatibility rules, chain mode and flipping are described under Snap Points.

Save the asset in the current project, which is the first library the planner offers. You can place the asset immediately without publishing or registering it. To share assets across projects, put them into a separate catalog. See Library and Catalogs.

Open a layout in the Planner workspace and drag the asset from the project tab. It should land on the floor centred on the cursor. Turn on Show All Snaps: a marker sits at every free connector, and dragging the asset near a compatible neighbour pulls the two together.

With the asset prepared, continue with the use case: