A detailed description of the use of this program and all its settings can be found on my website.

Select all the details in the assembly and call the Lay command. If before call selected nothing the program query to select. Selection may be saved after working command (see Common Options).

 Next step select insertion point. The point query contains a setting option: 

• SwitchStyle: Quickly switch between options-set by it number. 

• TUNE: This option open dialog window or next query to select setting.

In the settings dialog you will find all the same options as in the options of -Lay command. And besides, in the dialog are available the  Common Options of all A>V>C> plug-ins. 

After inputting insertion point the program will process all solids. The program looks for the front of the solid (see Metric of solid) and believes that it should be in the plane XY, front down. You can set the program to lay the front up or choose where the front will be laid out, depending on the manufacturing technology. See the settings in the "Lay the front" section. The front is considered the largest plane, ignoring curved surfaces. Please note that the dadoes can cut a large surface of the part into pieces and the program may make the wrong choice. In any case, you can force the program to consider any flat surface as a front - for this you need to mark this surface with a color (usually indexed color #30 is used).

In addition, the part is rotated around Z so that the longest edge of the solid is extended along the X axis. For most parts that are not too complex, this ensures that the length of the part is extended along the X axis. You can reconfigure the program to rotate all parts along the Y. You can adjust individual parts rotate along Y using the solid property Texture = Across. When searching for the longest edge, the priority of right angles is taken into account. That is, a right triangle will not be laid out along the hypotenuse.

In this laid out and expanded form, the part is measured and the Metric is written to XData.

If a solid is assigned a Rod or Volume material and the largest surface is a cylinder, the solid is considered a round pipe and the cylinder axis is laid out along X. The program will look for transverse holes and grooves in the pipe and try to lay them out upwards along Z. For very short pipe trims, the cylinder surface must be marked as a front. For curved pipes, the largest surface will be a torus. Such pipes are laid out with the major axis of the torus along Z. Each pipeline segment must be a separate solid. NURBS surfaces are not considered pipes.

All the A>V>C> programs that need the dimensions of the parts - SolSize, Sawing Table and so on, lay out the details in the same way. Only they do not save the laid out copy of the solid.

If the part is marked as "Mirror", then the program will mirror the part about the horizontal axis.

Command “–Lay”

This command has a few console options inside the “select point” query. I hope you know to call options by first litter or by dropdown menu.

After any options, the input program will query for the point again. And you can use other options. Thus you can adjust the program at any call. It makes it possible to create macros and buttons in different ways using the command LAY.

The installer that ran when you downloaded this app/plug-in from the Autodesk App Store will start installing the app/plug-in. OR, simply double-click the downloaded installer to install the app/plugin. You may need to restart the Autodesk product to activate the app/plug-in. To uninstall this plug-in, exit the Autodesk product if you are currently running it, simply rerun the installer, and select the "Uninstall" button. OR, click Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features (Windows 7/8.1/10/11) and uninstall as you would any other application from your system.