Managing Workcells

Workcells created and saved with Cell Editor consist of several files and folders that make up the entirety of your cell.

Depending on how you save your cell, these file will either be compressed into a .vbmodel file, the standard form for Verbotics workcells, or if you’ve opted to save as a directory, will be saved to the selected folder as individual files and folders.

You can create a new workcell by either using the New Button in the ribbon menu, or navigating to File->New

VBModels (default)

Most of the workcells you would have imported into Verbotics Weld will have been .vbmodel files. This is the standard format for verbotics workcells and is the easiest format to use when sharing a workcell across devices, and for reducing the size of the workcell on your storage drive.

You can open any .vbmodel file in Cell Editor by using either the Open Button found in ribbon menu, or by navigating to File->Open.

You can also save a workcell as a .vbmodel using the Save Button located next to open in the ribbon menu, or by using the navigating to File->Save.

In addition to a standard save, there are also additional options in the File menu for saving a new version of the current cell separate to the currently saved cell by using File->Save As to save a new copy of the current workcell and continue to work on this new copy, or File->Save a Copy to save a copy of the current workcell but continue to work on and save to the original save location of the current workcell.

Directories

While .vbmodel files are useful for storing and sharing cells, when creating a new workcell and frequently testing the cell with Verbotics Weld, it can be much more useful to instead save your workcell as a Directory.

Workcells saved as a directory won’t be compressed into a .vbmodel, and instead will store each individual file making up the workcell in a designated folder.

Workcells can also be imported into Verbotics Weld as a directory. When doing this, Verbotics will refer to the location of the directory instead of storing the workcell internally. This means that any changes made to the workcell in Cell Editor will be immediately reflected in Verbotics Weld upon saving.

This streamlines the process of testing and finalising a workcell for use in Weld.

Note

If you’ve made changes to a workcell then return a weld project using such workcell, you will be prompted to reload the project. To update the project to reflect the new changes, you will need to accept and reload the project.

You can save a workcell as a directory by navigating to File->Save as Directory. Make sure that the target folder is empty, as otherwise the workcell won’t be able to be saved to the desired location.

A workcell saved as a directory can also be opened by navigating to File->Open Directory.