Ferrumium planning is visual. You open a factory, place parts of the layout, connect them, and use the planner feedback to see whether the setup makes sense.

This page is about the main planner at /factory-planner. Drafts are related, but they follow a different workflow.

The basic flow

1. Open a factory. Use the Factories menu in the header to open an existing factory or create a new one. A factory is the workspace that holds your layout.
2. Add the main pieces. Most builds start with the right-click menu. That is where you add machines, resources, logistics parts, groups, and subfactories. You can also bring in saved building blocks such as Imported Node, Distribution Trees, and Import Factory.
3. Connect the layout. After placing machines, resources, inputs, or outputs, you link them together. In practice, this usually means adding belt or pipe connections between parts of the plan.
4. Read the planner feedback. Ferrumium shows rates while you work, and it helps you spot missing inputs, blocked outputs, or imbalanced flow. In detailed mode, connection labels also make belt and pipe limits easier to notice.
5. Organize the factory. As the plan grows, you can keep it readable with Groups and Subfactory structures. Groups help with visual organization. A subfactory gives one part of the factory its own internal space.
6. Save, share, or collaborate. Once the factory is in a good state, you can keep editing it, share it, publish it, or use co-op features to work on it with other people.

What matters most while planning

A placed machine is only the start

Dropping a machine into the planner does not finish anything by itself. The important part is what it is connected to, which recipe it uses, and whether the rates around it make sense.

The planner gives feedback while you build

You do not need to wait until the whole layout is finished before checking whether something is wrong. Ferrumium keeps showing you useful information as the plan grows.

That matters because most mistakes start small. One missing input, one overloaded belt, or one wrong recipe can affect a much larger section later.

Structure matters once the layout grows

A small factory can stay loose for a while. A larger one becomes hard to read if every machine, line, and branch stays in the same open space.

This is where Groups and Subfactory become useful. They help you break the plan into parts that are easier to inspect and change.

The result is the layout itself

The planner is not separate from the final plan. What you place, connect, and organize is the result.

That is why layout decisions matter early. A clean structure makes the factory easier to debug, easier to share, and easier to keep building later.

Planner vs. Drafts

The planner is for building the layout directly. You place the parts, connect them, and shape the factory by hand.

Drafts starts from a production target instead. It helps you work backward from the result you want, then turn that plan into a factory later.