Using SmartFurnace, end to end

How it works

1. Choose Create free account on the home page or Create account on the sign-in page and register with your work e-mail and a password (the page shows the password rules as you type).
2. Open the e-mail we send and press the button on the page it opens — this confirms your address.
3. Your account then waits for an admin’s approval; you are told by e-mail when it is approved.
4. Sign in with your e-mail and password. If you turned on two-step sign-in (Settings), you also type the code from your authenticator app.
5. If your company already has a workspace, ask its owner or an admin to invite you instead (§11) — an invitation skips the approval.

What is here

• VFD, VHTPD and VFA cards — one click into each tool.
• Recent projects — your last saved designs, with a link to the full list.
• On a limited plan, how many calculations are left; in a workspace, a card to invite your team.
• The sidebar is the same on every page: the modules, your workspace (projects, quotes, messages, Memory Book…), and at the bottom your account, settings and the guide.

Typical flow

1. Choose the process (hardening, tempering, annealing, brazing, stress relieving or ageing — or hardening followed by tempering) and the alloy.
2. Enter the load: weight per charge, its dimensions, horizontal or vertical loading, and the process temperature and quench pressure. A daily target is optional.
3. Press Calculate Furnace. The result shows the recommended model and how many, why it was chosen, the power, the cooling tower, buffer tank and emergency tank, and any warnings.
4. Try alternatives with “What if…?” (the last three trials stay side by side), download the PDF report in the language you choose, save the design as a project, request a quote, or send the furnace to the plant planner (VHTPD).

Typical flow

1. Add the furnaces (model, process, quantity; a cycle time for processes the catalogue has none for) and, if you have one, a daily target with your working hours.
2. Set the hall: its size or outline, and its doors. Run the calculation — the plant’s capacity by process (with the bottleneck), electrical and cooling loads, and the auxiliary units it needs.
3. Open the 3D view: drag units, align or space a selection, show labels, find any unit in the equipment list, draw corridors and forbidden zones, or let Auto-layout propose a layout (with its loading aisle).
4. Download the PDF report (with a scaled plan page and the layout check) or the DXF drawing, and save versions with a name and a note to compare options.

The fleet, templates, scenarios and the CAD view

• In the furnace list, Duplicate row puts a copy of a row just below it (its units start at their default places in the layout). Removing a furnace or auxiliary row takes it away at once; Undo in the notice puts it back where it was.
• Start from template opens a plant published by the admins, your company’s or your own; Save as template keeps the plant on screen as one — or writes over a template you may change.
• Start with a sample plant opens a small plant and calculates it at once; nothing saved changes unless you save it.
• From a VFD design, Transfer to Planner brings its furnaces with the alloy, which option (A or B) of a hardening + tempering result they are, the AMS 2750 class and type, and how full the charge is. Fleet from target proposes the furnaces for a daily target.
• Compare scenarios keeps up to four variants of the plant with it — each calculated on its own, printed in the PDF, and put into the plant with Apply this scenario.
• The AVF 3D CAD tab opens the saved plant in the CAD view: what you move there — and machines added or deleted there, or a hall outline changed there — comes back to the plant (a deletion after you confirm it). A machine added there that the plant has no counterpart for stays in the CAD view but does not join the plant. A plant you may only look at (a company viewer, a plan without VHTPD, someone else working on it) opens read-only in every tab. The CAD view comes with the Professional plan. On the Customer plan a workspace holds one plant — archived plants count: a new plant can be calculated only while the workspace has none, plants beyond the first open read-only, the PDF, DXF and bill of materials are for that plant, and you can start from a template but not save one.

The 2D Plan and the building

• The 2D Plan tab shows the plant like a CAD drawing: the hall and its walls hatched, the machines coloured by type and numbered (the same numbers as the PDF’s table), and the dimensions in mm — the hall’s sides and size, the column grid’s chain. While you move a machine or a column, its distance to the nearest wall, column or machine on each side shows.
• Draw what is inside the hall: Wall, Room (With its walls or without), Named area, Column, Door and Text; walls meeting at a corner are joined. Pick a door’s leaf (single, double, sliding, sectional, roller shutter) and which way it opens (Outward or Inward) in its panel; a door can go on an interior wall too. Column grid puts a column on every crossing of the spacing you type.
• Floor plan… lays the architect’s DXF or a picture under the hall, Measure sets its scale, and it is saved with the plant; a DXF’s blocks, hatches, ellipses and splines are drawn, and its layers can be hidden one by one. Angle turns the plan by any angle; measure one of its walls and press Align the measured line to an axis to set it square to the hall. DXF layers off or frozen in the file start hidden. With a DXF underlay, the 2D Plan’s DXF (floor plan coordinates) and the results’ Write in the floor plan’s coordinates write the plan so it lands in place on the architect’s drawing.
• Walls and columns count in the rules: Auto-layout keeps units off them, the overlap check sees them, and the escape distance is measured around the walls and through the doors.
• Classic 3D and the 2D Plan are the same plant: whatever you do in one — drawing (Draw building in 3D), moving, reshaping by a corner, deleting, undoing — works in the other and shows there; what you selected stays selected when you switch tabs.
• Keyboard on the 3D view and the 2D Plan: Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Ctrl+D copy, paste and duplicate walls, rooms, columns and texts (from one view to the other too); the arrow keys move the selection; ? lists every control.

Drawing precisely

• Snapping: a point you draw snaps to ends, the middles of walls and sides, intersections, the perpendicular, the column grid’s axes, machine corners, wall faces and the lines of a DXF floor plan; a mark and its name say which (Shift lets go).
• Or type the next corner and press Enter: 6.5 a length toward the pointer, 6.5<30 a length and an angle (degrees counter-clockwise from east, north up), 12;4.5 a point x;y, @3;-2 an offset from the last corner. The same in 3D’s Draw building.
• Equipment setting-out, under Layers, adds each machine’s position: its centre measured from the nearest column axes or, without a grid, from the hall’s bottom-left corner on the plan. It is off on the 2D Plan until you turn it on, on in the DXF, and not in the PDF.
• Walk from here and Escape route take a spot by a click or by keyboard: the arrow keys move a cursor (Shift in smaller steps), Enter takes it, Esc cancels.

Controls

• Horizontal / Vertical — switch the furnace model; the exploded-view slider pulls the parts apart along their assembly direction.
• Click a part to select it; drag to rotate, scroll to zoom, right-drag to pan.
• The view tools: camera angles, section cut, measuring, X-ray, a picture of the view and a link that opens the same view.
• On a part’s card: its stock and the suppliers that have it, Send Question, Request Quote, add it to the cart, or ask to be told when it is back in stock.

What you can do

• See each step’s status and dates; filter late steps, steps in progress, approvals waiting for you, or unread messages.
• Download shared documents and see the checklist of each step.
• Message the team from the project; new messages are marked until you read them.
• Approve or reject a factory or site acceptance test (FAT / SAT) — a rejection asks for a note. The step’s documents (with their versions) are recorded with your decision.
• Open your furnace model in the 3D assembler from the project.
• On the team’s steps, a start or target date you change is a proposal: it shows under the date as “Proposed”, with “awaiting approval”, until the team accepts it (you get a notification either way). The completion date is entered by the team. On sub-steps you added, you change the dates yourself.
• The plan refreshes itself while it is open: a step the team changes shows within a minute, without reloading the page.
• The Gantt view draws the delivery date as a line and marks FAT / SAT steps with their approval state.
• The progress percentage weighs the steps by their planned duration: a long step counts more than a short one, and an unfinished step counts as much of it as its finished sub-steps. When the plan’s last target date is after the delivery date, the status card says by how many days.
• When the team freezes the plan as the baseline, each step shows under its target date how many days it moved against the baseline, the Gantt draws a thin baseline line under the step, and the status card shows the whole plan’s slip.
• The Export menu downloads the delivery and FAT / SAT days (or every step’s target) as an .ics file for your calendar; download and open it again later and the same entries in your calendar are updated.
• The PDF also has a timeline, each step’s checklist count and the history of target date changes.
• The Service records part lists the incidents and maintenance plans linked to this furnace; once the furnace is handed over (the last step done or the SAT approved) it suggests creating a maintenance plan in the Memory Book.

Incidents

1. Report an incident: the furnace, the component if you know it, what happened and how severe it is.
2. Follow its status as the team works on it: open, investigating, waiting for parts, resolved, closed.
3. Add notes and files while it is open; once resolved or closed it stays as it was, as a clean record.
4. Link your order to an incident waiting for parts under Linked orders: when every linked order has arrived, the incident goes back under investigation and you are told.

Maintenance

• Each schedule shows as Overdue, Due Soon or Up to Date, worked out from its next date.
• You are told a week before a maintenance is due, and again if it is overdue.
• Expand a schedule to see every past maintenance; Add to calendar (.ics) puts the next dates in your calendar.

What is here

• Open a project to load it back with all its inputs; rename it, archive it or restore it.
• Each save keeps a version: name a version, add a note, compare two side by side, or open an older one.
• In a company workspace your colleagues see the same projects. While someone edits a project it is locked for the others, and a viewer can only read.
• Duplicate makes a new project from a saved one (“… (copy)”) under the same rules as a new save — the Free plan’s project limit counts it; the version history is not copied.
• Each row shows the current version and one state: Being edited (open in an editor now), Older rules (its saved result was calculated with older rules — calculate it again), Quote requested (a quote was asked for from this VFD design), Draft (no saved result yet) or Calculated.
• An unsaved VFD design or VHTPD plant (with its layout) is kept in this browser: when you open the module again, a strip offers Restore — it comes back into the form, still unsaved, so save it — or Delete. It is cleared when you save, open another project or start a new one; a draft older than two weeks is not offered.
• A project can carry a Note — what it is for, decisions, open points: write it when you save, or with the note button in its row; it shows folded under the row and under the module’s title. When you update, Version note adds a note to the version that update writes.
• Ctrl+S (⌘S on a Mac) saves the open VFD design or VHTPD plant, as Save Project / Update Project does, whenever that button may act.

A part quote’s statuses

What is here

• Profile, password, two-step sign-in, and signing out on every device.
• E-mail notifications, the parts you watch, a copy or the deletion of your data, and becoming a supplier. My plan shows your plan and your subscription requests.
• Team: invite colleagues by e-mail with a role (admin, designer, viewer — a viewer can only read), change roles, and switch between your workspaces. The owner can hand the workspace to a member.

How it works

1. Press Vacuo and write your question in your own words — for a furnace the process, alloy, temperature, charge weight and quench pressure; for a plant the furnaces and the daily target.
2. If something is missing, Vacuo asks for it. It calculates only with the values you wrote, never with “typical” ones.
3. The answer comes with a card: the engine’s result and buttons such as Apply to VFD form, Load plant into VHTPD, Request a quote, Add to cart or Show in 3D.
4. Nothing is saved or sent until you press the button and then save or send on the screen it opens.

What else it can do

• Your records: the state of your quote requests and orders, which offer for the same part is cheapest or fastest, overdue maintenance, recent faults, your saved designs and what is new for you.
• Memory Book: describe a fault and Vacuo drafts the record — Open the fault record fills in the form; you check it and save. It also names the parts worth checking (a list to check, not a diagnosis).
• VHTPD layout: with a saved plant open, ask whether its layout has a problem. Vacuo checks the saved layout the way the PDF report does; Fix moves a unit to the nearest free place (Undo takes it back; save the plant to keep it).
• Guide and documents: “how do I…” questions are answered from this guide, with Open in the guide; the reports and manuals we share are answered with page numbers and Open the document.
• Suppliers: an approved supplier asks about the requests forwarded to them and gets a draft offer note — Open in the offer form; the price, delivery time and validity are written by the supplier.

Good to know