Manufacturing: From a drawing to a workshop-ready cut plan
A freeway-board drawing goes in. Strut counts, a printable schedule and cut plans for struts and aluminium come out.
What goes wrong
Every freeway-board job starts as a drawing. Someone reads it by hand, works out the struts and joiners on a calculator and notepad, writes the materials list, then lays out the cuts by eye.
On a multi-board job that takes hours, and the workshop still ends up without one clear plan to work from.
What needs to change
One drawing in, one workshop-ready plan out. The numbers should come out the same way every time, a person should check them before anything is cut, and the same panel data should carry through to the aluminium layout without being typed again.
The system
A batch calculator for freeway-board jobs. It reads the drawing and fills in the panel data, works out the struts and joiners for every panel, and produces a printable strut schedule. It then plans the strut cuts against the stock you hold and lays out the aluminium sheets, showing which come from stock and which need ordering.
How it works
Starts when a drawing is loaded. Ends with a strut plan and an aluminium cutting sheet.
- Load the drawing. Panel sizes, drop tags and measurements are read from it and filled in. Nothing is retyped.
- Check the panel data. Someone confirms it against the drawing before anything is calculated.
- Calculate struts and joiners. Counts, lengths and offsets for every panel, with a printable schedule for the workshop.
- Plan the strut cuts. Cut against the stock you actually hold. Each piece is numbered, and leftovers are marked keep or scrap.
- Lay out the aluminium. The same panel data gives the sheet layout: sheets from stock, sheets to order, and a cutting sheet to print.
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