Exports and packets
Last updated 6 August 2026
Three things come out of a plan, and they are reached from three different places, which is worth knowing because the Export menu is not all of it.
The Export menu
| Item | What it produces |
|---|---|
| AS9102 FAI (Form 1, 2, 3) | Opens the Export Center, where you complete and generate a first article report. |
| Operator packet (PDF) | One PDF: every marked-up print, then a control plan sheet for each operation, in the order the part travels. |
The operator packet takes tens of seconds on a large plan because every page is rendered properly rather than screenshotted, so the button reports its progress as a percentage. The control plan pages are produced from the same markup that printing uses, which is what stops the packet and the printed sheet drifting apart.
The packet is a working copy for the floor. It is not the controlled artifact and does not pretend to be.
Printed control plans
A controlled sheet for a single operation is printed from the Control Plan tab, not from the Export menu. That is where you choose the operation and get the print preview.
The plan file itself
Saving is the other export, and the most important one. A .cplan.zip holds the plan, the drawings and the inspection records in an open format you can read without ctrlPlanner.
What is not built
CSV, Excel and PPAP exports are not in the product. They have been asked about, so it is worth saying plainly rather than leaving somebody to hunt for a menu item that is not there.
In the meantime, the Power Editor copies a selected range as tab-separated text with a header row, which pastes directly into Excel or Sheets and covers most of what a CSV export would be used for.
A full workspace backup as JSON exists but is an administrative control rather than a general feature, and it is not how you move a plan between machines. The plan file is.