This document will help you get started with the functionality in Flows, in particular, the order creation process all the way to scheduling runs and looking at traceability reports. There's a short summary below, followed by a longer version with more detail.

This Guide is intended to help get you started, not to be comprehensive. Look around the other guides (especially the Setup Guide, if that's what you're after) and the platform itself for more details, as well as reaching out to your Customer Success associate. To review supported browsers and operating systems for the app, please look here.

Summary

To summarize the process, here are the 6 key steps to creating an Order and scheduling a Run within Flows:

1. Click on Add Order on the Flows Home Page (top right corner).

2. Enter the Order details with the relevant order and customer information. Click Add Line Item (bottom right corner)

3. Upload the CAD models as individual Line Items or select them from the Model Library / Digital Design Warehouse. Click Add Product.

4. Select Material, Quantity and Production Workflow, alongside any other relevant parameters. Click Save Line Item Details. The Line Item will move into a status of Pending when background processing is complete.

5. Review production estimates, adjust any Line Item parameters and set the Line Item status to Confirmed. Click Save Line Item.

6. Go to Plan > Runs and click on Add Run.

7. Select the printer specified in the Line Item's workflow, then select the parts that are to be manufactured in this printing run. Click Add [n] Pieces. To complete the run, click on Save Run.

8. Flows will create the production runs, automatically scheduling the earliest time available based on priority and current machine availability. You can Manually Schedule the run to specify the exact time the run will start, or you can choose to set it as the next run by selecting Schedule as Next Print.

You have now created an Order and the Production Runs to manufacture the pieces attached to it! You can visualize all the steps of the Run, which are dictated by the selected workflow, in the Track > Machine Queues page.

Walkthrough Guide

Let’s get into the details of what the workflow actually looks like:

Login

Opening the platform, you’ll find yourself on the login page. Go ahead and input the email and password with which you’re registered and click Sign In.

Home Page / Add Order

You should now have landed on the Home Page page. To start creating your first order, click on the Add Order button.

New Order

This is the order creation page, or New Order page, as you can see in the breadcrumb trail below the menu bar at the top of the page. Here you can enter the business details of your order, which will then be pulled through to other parts of the system as relevant. The following fields are mandatory by default, though your bureau might have some custom modifications:

• Order Name (free text field)

• Priority (Low / Normal / High / Critical) - Set to Normal by default

• Shipping Type

All these fields are able to be edited as you progress, with additional information able to be added or modified as necessary.

We also have the ability to enable fields to be completed automatically, by connecting with our API endpoints to other software systems or your website. This document shows an example of interoperability to other hardware and software systems.

Once you have finished adding the Order’s details, proceed by clicking on the Save Order button on the top right, or the Add Line Items button at the bottom right of the page.

New Line Item

We’ve now created the order itself. After clicking the Save Order button you’ll find yourself in that specific Order Page, with all the details you added previously, which can be added to or amended as needed. As you add Line Items, the estimates shown on the right hand side will update.

From this bare skeleton of an order, you can add your parts that you want to be manufactured. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see the Add Product section.

From here, there are three ways you can add parts - Upload Without Design (no model file is attached to the Line Item), Choose Model from Library / Digital Design Warehouse (models are able to be selected from your Company Library), or Upload Products (upload model file from your computer). See the What are your Usage Limits and File Conversion Module help pages for more details about file uploads.

Once you have selected the CAD file to upload, click Add Product.

Once the model has been uploaded, it will be appended to the Order as a Line Item. The model file (if one is selected) will render at the top of the Line Item Details section. You can enter the required fields Material, File Units, Quantity and Production Workflow (the options available will change based on the material selected). The Production Workflow selected will determine the type of printer, post processor and shipping steps that these pieces will follow in production. It is this information that drives the part's estimates in terms of production time and cost.

The part name will be populated with the selected file name by default, and the due date for the Line Item will be pulled down from the Order details above. As with the Order, all these details are able to be added to and amended as needed.

When you have filled in the details, click on Save Line Item Details to proceed.

To show 3D render of file click on the model image. You can then amend the printing orientation of the model manually.

Review Order

Once the file has been uploaded and processed by Flows (this may take a page reload for large files), you’ll be able to review the newly added Line Item below the order summary. This includes a render of the CAD model, estimates of the printing time and cost as well as all the details we previously added to the part.

The Production Workflow selected can be customized to match this specific Line Item. For instance, if a particular customer requires a bespoke Quality Review process, or a specific machine to be used for a specific production step, this can all be edited within the template Workflow.

Clicking View and Edit Work Instructions enables you to review and customize the Production Steps and associated Work Instructions. Here you can see the Printer Type used for the workflow (you will need information when creating your production runs).

Within the Line Item, confirm that the uploaded model is deemed serviceable by the platform in the Mesh Quality line. After that, take a look at the Estimates tab on the left. The estimates you see take into account the variables we’ve set in the last step: material, support material, quantity, layer thickness, model units, and ultimately the chosen workflow as it will not only include the printer details but also the post-processing steps. Review the estimates carefully as they can reveal mistakes in the variables’ setup.

Once you are confident with the results and ready to push the line item into production, change the status to Confirmed and click on Save CAD File.

IMPORTANT: Line Items can NOT be scheduled for runs unless their status is "Confirmed"

Quick Run Creation

If you wish to quickly move this piece into production, you can click the Schedule This button, found next to the status field. This will move you to the Run Creation Page and quickly auto-select the fields for printer and material, and move the full quantity of the line item into the build plate selection field (we will look at how to achieve this manually in the next section).

As we will see in the next section, you can then add or remove other parts to the build plate.

Creating New Production Run

To create and schedule Production Runs for your newly created Order & Line Items, go back to the Homepage by clicking on the Top Left corner of the page (it will either be your company logo or company name), or the Home link.

To jump into the Run Creation page, click Add Run on the top right hand side of the page.

Create Run

The Run Creation page will be empty at first. The Select a Printer section is a dropdown that lists the printers that have been added within your bureau. First, select a printer that you want to manufacture the pieces selected. This printer needs to be of the same Printer Type as was specified in the workflow chosen for that Line Item.

Note - If you want to go back to your order and double-check what workflow (and thus printer type) you chose for your order, please click on Plan > Orders in the header. Scroll down to your Line Item to review the Production Workflow (see Review Order section above for more details).

Tip: Open the Order page in a new tab to easily toggle between these pages. Use Tab Groupings in your browser functionality to easily Name and Identify which page is which. This can be helpful to easily jump between pages when you are undertaking several processes within Flows.

Once the required Printer has been selected, the Select Line Items section will populate with all of the parts whose workflow includes a printing step with the selected printer's type. These will be order chronologically, with the most recent Line Items at the top of the list.

Add the prints you’d like to include in this printing run. This can be done by either selecting them in the Select Line Items list and then clicking Add Pieces, or by simply dragging and dropping the models across to the Order table within the Build Plate section on the left hand side. Note: This is a multi-select list so you can use the Shift and CTRL keys to select multiple prints before clicking the Add Pieces button.

If there are multiple copies of each Line Item, the system will ask you to specify how many of the pieces you would like to move to the Build Plate (enabling The pieces will move across to the Build Plate section, with size information and the percentage of printing bed fill for each.

Any specimens that need to be added (determined by Workflow) will also be added automatically to the Build Plate. Once a Line Item has been added, the system will automatically filter out non-matching materials (preventing any risk of a piece with a different material being accidentally added). Continue until all pieces have been added to the Build Plate.

You are then able to manually change the Run Name (defaults to name of Order) and can update the estimated Duration and Weight. To generate and schedule the production runs, click on Save Run.

Review Run

Once Flows has finished processing the Production Runs, you can open the Primary Run and review the production Estimates on the left. Flows will schedule the build and any subsequent post-processing and shipping steps to the earliest available time slot. If you wish to adjust the schedule, you can do this manually through the Manually Schedule button or choose to set it up as the next print in the queue with the Schedule As Next Print button.

From the Production Run page, you can also export the packed build files (either as an STL or 3MF) by clicking their hyperlinks. These can be loaded directly into your desired print prep software to ease with the build prep process. Do not forget to reupload any tweaked build models so that the system has the final file on record!

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can expand the Run Item Overview section. This gives you a visual of the packed build plate, as well as being able to see the Line Items and Pieces that make up the build. The pieces view gives more detail, including direct links back to the Order, Production Workflow Overview and links to the Previous / Next Production Runs.

Production Travelers

Within the Production Run, you can print the Production Travelers for the Operations Team to scan within our QR App. These can be printed onto paper or labels, based on your requirements. Using Print Settings, multiple pages can be printed on a single page to reduce paper wastage.

• Standard Travelers - Show additional details about the part, including Material, Workflow etc.

• Compact Travelers - Only display Piece Name with QR or Flat Barcode

Piece Traceability Report

Once production starts, data will be captured as Work Instructions are completed by the Production Operatives and Engineers. Every change that relates to a specific piece from the moment of Order Creation through to it being sent to the Customer is captured within the Piece Traceability Report.

This can be easily be accessed by clicking on the Piece hyperlink, either from

• the Piece View in the Run Item Overview section, or

• the Piece section within the Line Item on the Order page.

From the Piece Page, you can see all information related to the manufacture of that piece. The Piece Details Section gives an overview of the piece, with the Production Workflow capturing the progression of the manufacturing process. As work instructions are completed and additional documents added, these will be easily accessible directly from this page.

If you scroll down the page, you can see the Traceablility Report, which captures historical changes as they are made, including timestamps and the user that undertook that change. This can be downloaded by clicking Export Report, and your Customer Success partner will work with you to create Dashboards from our API data so you can easily see the most important information at a glance.

Machine Queues

Once the Production Run has been scheduled, it will be visible within the Machine Queues page (your Production GANTT chart). This can be accessed from the Track menu, by selected Track > Machine Queues.

Clicking on any of these runs will jump you into the specific Production Run. If you hover your mouse over any of the runs, you can see more details about the run and can click the Reschedule button to move the order of the runs.

The status colors of runs can be seen by clicking Queue Color Legend button in the top right of the page.

You should now be able to create Orders and Line Items, and move those into Production Runs that can be worked on by the Operations Team. If you have any questions, reach out to our Customer Success team by emailing support@authentise.com.