Quick start

From a STEP file to a four-ply laminate

Everything below happens in your browser. AddPly keeps your projects in this browser at this address; nothing is uploaded, and the only file the product writes is one you asked it to export or print.

Before you start

• A desktop browser. The workbench needs a mouse and room for a 3D view.
• A STEP file of your mould or tool.
• Storage enabled for this site. A private window usually refuses it — the workbench will say so plainly and let you work and export, rather than pretending to save.

1 · Import the mould

Open the workbench, open the CAD laminate workspace, and choose your STEP file under Source geometry. OpenCascade reads it in a Web Worker, so the window stays responsive while a large mould is measured. You get the list of trimmed faces with the kernel’s exact areas and surface types.

An import always starts a new, unsaved design. It never writes over the project you had open.

2 · Group the faces that are tooling

Click faces in the view, or tick them in the list — Ctrl or Shift to add and remove. Name the group and create it. A tooling group is the set of faces one laminate region may be cut across.

3 · Draw the boundary and cut the region

Choose a projection plane (XY, XZ or YZ), turn on sketch mode, and click at least three points to close a polygon. Applying it asks the kernel for the exact intersection of that swept polygon with the group’s faces.

The result reports its exact clipped area and how many fragments it came out in, and names any group faces that fell outside the boundary. A boundary that crosses none of them is refused, and the region you already had is left alone.

The limit worth knowing: the polygon is swept along the plane’s normal. It is a direction you chose to cut along — not a curve drawn on the surface, not a geodesic, not a flat pattern.

4 · Stack the plies

For each ply: a name, a material name and reference, a thickness in millimetres, an orientation in degrees, and the region it belongs to. The orientation is declared against the projection reference you cut with.

The panel shows each region’s declared stack thickness separately, because plies on different regions do not stack on top of each other and one summed number would be misleading.

5 · Save, and come back

• Save project keeps the design in this browser under the project name. It reports success only after the browser has committed the write — never before.
• Export project… downloads a portable file carrying the exact CAD geometry inline. This is the copy that travels; it does not change what the browser holds.
• Projects lists what this browser holds — name, when it was last saved, plies and regions — and reopens any of them, rebuilding the geometry from the stored BRep.

After the first save, committed changes are written again on a short delay. Renaming counts as a change. If a write fails, the workbench says so and keeps the last good revision; it never shows a failed save as saved.

Moving work between machines or addresses

Browser storage belongs to one browser at one site address. A project saved at one address is not visible at another — including moving from a local address to a hosted one.

Export project… on the first, Open file… on the second. The file is fully revalidated and its geometry rebuilt before it becomes a project there, and the file you opened is never modified.

When something is refused

A refusal means nothing changed. The design you had is the design you still have. The workbench names what it refused and why:

• A boundary that crosses nothing — no region is created, and the previous one is untouched.
• A face that no longer matches — a project whose stored geometry does not rebuild to the same faces is not opened, because plies would otherwise be re-associated with a different face.
• A project saved elsewhere since you opened it — another tab moved it on. You are offered the saved revision, or keeping yours as a separate project. Saving again is not offered, because it would only repeat the refusal.
• A stored project that will not read back — the revision saved before it is offered, as a preview that writes nothing until you choose to keep it separately or repair the project.

What AddPly is for, and what it is not

AddPly is browser-based laminate design on imported CAD: multi-face tooling surfaces, boundaries drawn across face seams, declared plies, local browser persistence, and a printable revision-stamped schedule and plybook.

It is not a drape simulation, it solves no fibre paths, it carries no certified material properties, and it has no cloud backup or cross-device sync. AddPly does not plan fibre placement paths; connectors to the upcoming browser-based planner and to AddPath, the separate Addcomposites path-planning product, are on the roadmap and are not implemented.