How to Float the Machines That Matter in the EDGEBIC Planner View

To float the machines that matter in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, click an operation's bar on the Planner board. The machine block re-sorts around that operation, bringing the machines you might move it to directly underneath the job lanes. Click the same bar again to release.

When you are deciding where an operation should go, the machines you care about are rarely next to each other in the lane list. Clicking the bar brings them to you instead of making you go find them. For the board this gesture lives on, see the Planner view explained.

Before You Start

• The Schedule View switched to the Planner lane mode. Open Schedule, then Schedule View, then the Configuration sub-tab, set View by: to Planner on the General tab, and click Apply & Save.
• At least one job scheduled, so there are bars to click.
• Ideally your interchangeable machines already grouped, because the group members are what float first. See EDGEBIC work center groups explained and how to create a work center group.

Step by Step

1. Go to the Scheduler sub-tab of the Schedule View.
2. Click any operation's bar. Either block works, the job lane bar or the machine lane bar.
3. Watch the machine block re-sort. Straight underneath the job lanes you now get, in this order:
   • the machine the operation currently runs on;
   • then the other active members of that machine's work center group, which are the machines the step could legally run on, one drag away;
   • then the other machines that job's routing passes through, in the order it runs them.
4. Read the markers. Each floated lane is marked with a small triangle in front of its caption, so you can see at a glance why it moved.
5. Read the status line under the toolbar. It names what you are looking at, telling you the group whose members are being shown first, prompting you to drag the operation onto a workcenter lane to assign it, and reminding you to click the bar again to release.
6. Drag the operation onto one of the floated machine lanes if you want to assign it there. The gesture is the ordinary one from how to assign an operation to a machine.
7. Click the same bar again to release. The machine block returns to its saved sequence and the triangle markers disappear.

What Changes When You Click

Nothing is saved and nothing is written. The lanes on the board are re-ordered for as long as you are looking at them, and that is the whole effect.

Three specific reassurances follow from that:

• Your configuration is untouched. Clicking a bar never marks the configuration as changed, so Apply & Save will not light up just because you looked at something.
• Your pending drags survive. Staged but unsaved changes are not disturbed by the re-sort. They are still pending, still counted, still ready to save.
• You cannot get stuck. A second click on the same bar always releases the ordering, so there is no state where the board is re-sorted and you have no way back to your saved sequence.

This is intentionally the same treatment expanded group lanes get, and for the same reason: a look-at-it gesture must never dirty a saved setting. More on that reasoning in why Planner view focus is never saved.

How to Check It Worked

The triangle markers in the lane captions are the confirmation. If they are there, the block is focused; if they are gone, it is back to your saved order.

Cross-check the order itself against what you expect. The clicked operation's own machine should be the first floated lane. If your interchangeable machines are grouped correctly, the rest of that group's active members should be immediately below it. If a machine you believe is an alternative does not float, its membership is probably inactive or missing, which is worth fixing in the group before you plan around it. See how to add a machine to a pool.

Common Mistakes

• Clicking a different bar to release. Only clicking the same bar releases the ordering. Clicking a different operation focuses the board on that one instead.
• Expecting the order to persist. It never does, by design. If you want a lasting lane order, set Seq.No in the Detail Schedule Resources grid on the Configuration sub-tab and click Apply & Save.
• Treating every floated lane as a legal target. The floated block mixes two things: the group's active members, which are legal assignment targets, and the rest of the job's routing, which are not necessarily members of anything. A group-bound step may only be assigned to an active member of its own group, and other drops are refused. See why EDGEBIC refuses a drop.
• Skipping the click before a long drag. Dragging a bar while scrolling a long lane list is where mis-drops happen. Click first, then drag one row.
• Assuming the machine list changed. No lane appeared or disappeared. The same machines are on the board in a different order.

Where to Go Next

With the alternatives in view, the next steps are the drag itself in how to assign an operation to a machine, and the staging rules in staged changes on the Planner board. If you want machines to become genuinely interchangeable so more of them float as options, tune the pool with how to set a pool selection strategy. The full platform is at EDGEBIC, with more recipes in the EDGEBIC How-To Library.