5. Finalising the Cell

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Cell Editor Walkthrough

This tutorial is part 5 of a 5-part walkthrough on creating your first cell in the Autoa Cell Editor. It acts as an introductory guide to cell editor, and it is recommended you complete all 5 walkthrough videos before viewing the proceeding tutorials.

In this tutorial we will exploring the final steps required to finalise our cell so it can be exported and used in AutoaWeld.

Prerequisites and Resources

This walkthrough only requires the cell you completed in part 4 of the walkthrough, a backup of this cell is available here.

Video Tutorial

Timestamps:

Step by Step Guide

Introduction

In this tutorial, we'll be guiding you through the finalising your completed cell to be ready to use in verbotics. Make sure you've completed up to tutorial 4 of the Cell Editor Walkthrough, as we'll be continuing on from the end of that tutorial.

Step 1: Adding Home States

Start by opening the cell problems widget, which you can find at the bottom of your application represented by a warning icon stating a number of problems.

This widget indicates any major issues detected with the cell, and provides information on the issue.

Problems Detected with the Cellï

At this point, if you've correctly followed along with the last 4 parts of this walkthrough, you should find there's only one issue found with the cell which is labelled "Home Group does not exist". This is because while you specified which joints were the robot in part 1, you need to also specify a home state for the robot.

Creating a Home State

Open the model configuration and go to the robot, down the bottom you'll see two empty textboxes. One for the robot's joint group, and one for the joint state. While you've already created the robots joint group, you still need to create the group state.

Model Configuration Home Stateï

Return back to the viewer, and with the Robot joint group selected, go ahead and click the create group state button. Group states allow you to specify a set of jog positions for all revolute/prismatic joints within the selected group. Using this, you can create a custom home position for the robot.

Select the newly created group state, when you do this you'll notice sliders for each joint appear in the properties pane. Similar to how you jog the robot, you can adjust these sliders to the preferred position to be set as the home state.

By default, you won't be able to see a preview of the robots home position when adjusting these sliders. To enable this, click the pin icon next to every slider you want to preview.

Now, adjust each slider until you are satisfied with the home position.

Once complete, return back to the Model configuration and set the robot and state options to the robots joint group and group state respectively.

Robot State Slidersï

Step 2: Additionally Padded Links

Return back the cell problems widget, where you should find a warning regarding the cell not containing any padded links.

Additionally padded links can help reduce planning errors by adding calculated additional padding to the specified links. You can specify which links by first opening the model configuration, then navigating to the link configuration tab in the robots model configuration options.

Often, the optimal links to add padding to are the torch and nozzle links. As such, go ahead and add those links to the list of additionally padded links. Once you've done that, click save and return to the viewer. When you do this, you may have to add the torch and nozzle joints to the robot group.

Additionally Padded Linksï

Once that's done, you should now find that the cell no longer has any identified problems, which means your cell should be ready to use in verbotics weld.

Note

While the cell problems widget may show no issues, your cell may have still issues not identifiable by Autoa Cell Editor, as such, its recommended to examine your cell for any potential errors or mistakes before exporting.

Now that the cell is completed, you can export and use the cell in AutoaWeld.

To use your cell in verbotics weld, simply save the cell, then import the vbmodel file into weld just as you would with any other cell. If you're unsure how to do this, then check out our verbotics weld installation page and walkthrough.

If you've set the position of verbotics weld correctly in the preferences menu, you can also load the cell straight into cell editor using the Open in Weld button found in the ribbon menu.

Open in Weld Optionï

With that, you've now completed the Autoa Cell Editor walkthrough. We'll be delivering more tutorial's which explore each of the options explored in this walkthrough to a greater depth, so for more detail on the cell editor, make sure to watch these tutorials when they become available.

Step 3: Creating a Task

Note

Step 3 is only necessary for creating cells for use in AutoaWeld 2026 or newer releases. If you're creating cells for a legacy build, you can skip this step but you will need to make sure to set your cell format to 0.1x in the general model configuration settings.

With the introduction of support for multi-robot and multi-station cells in AutoaWeld 2026, the model configuration of your cell now needs to specify the different combinations of robots and workstations the cell that will be used to complete welds.

To do this, the model configuration window now includes the ability to create Tasks. Tasks allow you to identify a robot, and a workstation it will control for welding projects. Multiple tasks can be active in a cell at a time, however a workstation can only be controlled by a single robot at any given time.

As such, while you can create multiple tasks for the different robots attached to the same positioner, only one task per station can be active at any given time.

Creating a New Taskï

For the cell in this tutorial, it only uses a single robot and a single workstation. Therefore, it only requires a single task to be created.

To create a task, you'll need to do the following:

Select Tasks from the left column in the Model Configuration menu.
Create a new task by clicking the Add Task button at the bottom of the left column.
In the new task's General properties, specify a name and select the cell's robot and station in the relevant drop down boxes.
Click save to add the task to your cell.