Space, clearances and options keep changing until the order is placed. Keep them in one parametric model that sales, engineering and the customer look at together – plans, IFC files and parts lists follow from it.
A public example project: a robot cell built from T-slot profiles. It shows which planning questions a parametric cell model answers before detailed design starts.
Does the cell fit between the press and the walkway? How wide must the door be for the pallet trolley? Mesh, polycarbonate or sheet infill? How high does the fence need to be?
Each of these questions becomes a value in the cell Sheet.
The cell is configured, not drawn:
Posts, bays, feet and brackets are placed from these values. Nothing is moved by hand.
Add rules such as “at least 1.0 m between the cell door and the walkway” as a formula in the Sheet. The result appears as a status next to the dimensions and updates with every change.
The rule stays visible and checkable instead of living in someone's head.
Fence bays, posts, levelling feet and corner brackets are catalogue parts. The two-leaf sliding door runs on its rollers, the six-axis cobot runs a pick-and-place cycle.
Safety distances according to EN ISO 13857 and the risk assessment remain your responsibility; the model makes the assumptions visible.
Change cell size, fence height, infill and door width, and start the pick-and-place cycle.
In many projects the layout lives in a slide deck, the dimensions in an e-mail and the parts list in a spreadsheet nobody updates. When the cell becomes 50 cm deeper, three documents are out of date. confBuild keeps space, equipment and rules in one model: a new cell depth moves the fence, updates the clearance check and changes the parts list at the same time.
Start rough and add detail only where a decision depends on it.
Hall dimensions, column grid, walkways, existing machines and media connections – typed in, drawn in the floor plan editor or described to the AI client.
Cells, conveyors, platforms or racks as sub-Sheets with their own parameters, positioned in the layout.
Clearance and footprint rules show their status. Compare variants in 3D, walk through the layout or fly the camera along a route.
Plans and sections as PDF, IFC for BIM coordination, DXF, the parts list and a link to the agreed state.
Most of them are the same building blocks as in configurators and drawings, so the planning model does not end up as a dead end.
Draw walls, rooms, openings and dimensions in the floor plan editor, or generate halls, platforms and steel structures from rows: grid, heights, roof and cladding.
Robot cells, conveyors, racks and workstations as reusable sub-Sheets. The same cell can appear several times in a layout, each with its own values.
A collision check highlights overlapping parts in 3D. Your own rules – clearances, footprints, door widths, loads – are formulas whose result is shown as a status.
Floor plans, sections and elevations with axis grid and level marks, IFC export for BIM coordination, DXF, parts lists and camera flights for presentations.
Not a slide deck that ages, but a model that answers the next question as well.
Start with the hall dimensions and one cell, and add detail where a decision depends on it.