RotoScheduler manual › Start here
A first look at a plan
Describes RotoScheduler 0.3.3 · checked 2026-10-16 D5
Ten minutes with the sample factory: the plan line, the three time spans, the phases of one machine, a mold run and a single cycle. Every later page starts from here. The sample is built from the trial workbook's 24 molds, one copy each, on the six machines of the sample factory.
1. The plan line and the work still waiting
Above the board, the sample says 845 of 868 good pieces planned. These are planned pieces, not completed production. The same line shows Required good pieces unmet: 23, 125 late (453 piece-days) and Machine-days: 41. A machine-day is one machine on one date; the count is the machine-days the plan uses, so it leaves out the days a machine stands idle and the sample's closed day.
Click Attention beside Jobs and exceptions. Three sample orders remain: JOB-0025, with 41 of 51 good pieces planned, JOB-0013, with 1 of 8, and JOB-0019, with 12 of 18. None is an exception: each is short because its mold has one copy and the two weeks hold no more cycles for it. Click JOB-0025 to read its pieces to make, planned and not placed on the right. Click All to return to the full list, and press Esc to clear the selection.
2. Week, Day and Month
Click the arrow beside RM-4 to show arms A, B and C. Each arm carries three molds at once in this sample. Try the three shortcuts above the board:
| Control | What you see |
|---|---|
Week |
A week of working dates, for seeing which molds stay on each arm. |
Day |
One date's working window, with individual cycles where there is room to draw them. |
Month |
A calendar month. Dates outside the sample's two-week plan are blank. |
These are three shortcuts on the same board. Zooming changes how much detail you can read; it does not change the plan. To return to a date, double-click its day box, or focus the box and press Enter: the board opens that day and unfolds its machine.
3. Six hours, and the oven order
Return to September 7 in Day, with RM-4 unfolded. Move the slider to the right until the ruler covers about 08:00 to 14:00. At this span none of the three shortcut buttons is highlighted; the ruler's last labelled tick is 13:30. Time, machines, arms and cycles lists every way to zoom and pan.
The first heating begins on arm A at 08:32, on B at 09:04 and on C at 09:36. Hover an orange strip to read Heating, its clock times and its duration. Light blue is cooling; grey is work at the service station, dotted where a mold is mounted or removed. The three arms move between stations together but do different work during each stop; a lighter tail is an arm waiting for the others.
4. A mold run
Return to September 7 in Day, with RM-4 unfolded, and unfold its arm A. The arm row grows to the size of its spider, and each of its molds, DEMO-M07, DEMO-M09 and DEMO-M17, is a coloured band with the name on it. Hover a band to read its mold and the cycles it is planned for.
Click the DEMO-M09 band at cycle 1, without Ctrl, to select a mold run. The inspector names the mold, machine and arm. A click on a run selects it from that cycle to its end on that date, with every copy it shows: here cycles 1 to 5, which Start cycle and End cycle state, with the run's clock span above them: 08:00 – 16:57.
The band's height is the room the mold takes on the spider. A mold mounted twice would be twice as tall, with the count ×2 written after the name, and Copies would take fewer; every mold of this sample has one copy. The selected copies move together, as one step to undo, and a move that does not fit them all is refused whole.
5. One cycle and its timing
Press Esc, keep RM-4 unfolded and return to about six hours on September 7. Hold Ctrl and click the first cycle on arm A.
The inspector shows Capacity scope, with the date, machine, arm, cycle number and time: 08:00 – 09:57 for this cycle. Below it, the day's working hours, 08:00 to 18:00, the day's timing status, Conflict, and the recipes it timed with, the defaults.
Read the sentences under the status as well as the clock. On this date every cycle of RM-4's three arms reads Heating residence exceeds the known maximum: the three molds of each arm ride the turret together, and an arm waits in the oven for the others, longer than the sample's default heating recipe allows. A second group of sentences says what each cycle takes in a full pipeline against the machine's nominal 75 minutes. The sample's allowed minimum and maximum process times are defaults, not measured values. A drawn plan is not proof that the day's timing is acceptable; Phases and timing says what each status means.
What to read next
- Move a run, then undo, Keep a named version, Save and reopen a plan and Export a machine-day or a week continue the walk.
- The chapter on reading the board explains what the sample showed.
Comments and questions
The app's rules are our reading of the physics; where your plant knows better, the app changes.