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Overview

The Layout section lets you build a 2D floor plan of your facility and overlay simulation data onto it. By placing your simulation components on a spatial map, you can visualize where work is happening, how entities move through your facility, and where flow bottlenecks occur in physical terms.

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Building a Layout

A layout belongs to a specific simulation model. To create one, navigate to Layout in the sidebar. The layout canvas is a 2D workspace where you place simulation elements — representations of the components in your model (processes, buffers, resources) positioned as they exist on your actual factory floor. For each simulation element you add:
  • Link it to a component in your model by name
  • Position it on the canvas to match its physical location
  • Optionally assign a custom visual style using a custom element template
Custom element templates let you define reusable shapes and styles for recurring component types — for example, a standard icon for CNC machines that you can apply to each machine in your layout without configuring each one individually.

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Spaghetti Diagram

The spaghetti diagram is a flow analysis tool built on top of your layout. It runs a simulation using your model’s current configuration, then overlays the entity movement paths onto the floor plan as noodles — lines connecting the components that entities travel between, weighted by volume. Thick noodles indicate high entity flow between two points; thin noodles indicate low flow. This makes it immediately clear:
  • Which paths carry the most traffic
  • Where congestion is likely given the physical distances involved
  • Whether your layout is optimized for your actual flow patterns

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Running a Spaghetti Diagram

Click Generate in the Layout view. ProDex runs a simulation in the background using the model’s current checkpoint and, optionally, a production schedule you specify. When complete, the noodles appear on the canvas. Spaghetti results are live data — they reflect the current model state. Re-run after making model changes to see how the flow pattern shifts.

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Adjusting Noodle Paths

By default, noodles draw straight lines between components. If components are arranged in a way that makes straight lines misleading (e.g., crossing walls), you can drag noodle anchor points to route them along realistic paths. Customized anchor points are saved to the layout.

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Layouts and Models

Each layout is tied to one model. If you have multiple models in your factory (e.g., a current state and a future state), each can have its own layout. The spaghetti diagram always uses the model the layout belongs to.