About Factory
Factory is a remake of the brilliant AutoMake AddOn by Oren Ben-Kiki. Factory was written completely from scratch, but there were some peeking into the code of AutoMake for the frame next to the trade skill window and for scanning inventory/bank.
It adds a frame next to the trade skill window where it lists all the items you've added to the "workbench" (items you'd like to produce), which intermediate steps you need to do (such as "Copper Bar", which is how the trade skill "Smelt Copper" is shown. It is shown like this so it's easier to see what you can get instead of the reagents further down on the list) and how many times you need to do that step in order to create parts required for the item on the workbench, and which reagents you'll need to get. It will also list how many items of the steps/reagents that can be found in your bank and in the guild bank after the step/reagent.
It's really rather easy to use, there's no configuration. Just find the item you'd like to produce in a trade skill window, set the amount you'd like to produce and click "Add". When you got all or some of the reagents you just open the trade skill window again and click "Produce". Factory will always produce the easiest step first (there are some corner cases when production involves multiple trade skills, though), so it's fairly safe to use for leveling a profession.
Caveats
Having reagents or intermediate step items in inventory affects the production list
To make it easier to see what you're missing Factory won't list reagents or intermediate step items you've got enough of in your inventory. Such items found in bank or guild bank won't affect the list, those will only be listed after the reagent/item itself. Do note that getting an intermediate step item will affect the reagent list.
Workbench item or intermediate step item says "reagents not known"
When scanning a profession you don't always get the reagents listed. If you add an item to the workbench and it says this either for the item itself or for some of the intermediate step items then just find that item in your trade skill window and click on it and Factory should figure it out.
No way to remove a single item from the workbench
Currently you can only clear the entire workbench from the user interface. It's rarely been a large issue, hence I haven't fixed this.
Having two professions creating the same item confuse Factory
Both Alchemy and Mining can create Gold Bar (and some other items), if you happen to have Mining and Alchemy (granted, a curious combination) or two other professions that can create the same item then Factory will probably be quite confused and I honestly don't know what will happen if you try to make a such item. It may choose one of the professions to make that item, it may choose both (and thus telling you to get both Gold Ore and Iron Bar in the case of Gold Bar), or it may simply give you an error. Fixing this currently got a low priority, let me know if this happens to you :)
About the author
Hello, I'm canidae. Nice to meet you!
Several years ago I wrote an AddOn called Healer. This later became Healer/Nuker, before I rewrote it from scratch and called it Genesis. After Genesis someone else picked it up, sadly I don't remember his name, but it was released under the name Heart. At this time I quit WoW, but I later heard it was continued as RedHeart by yet another person. I think this AddOn is dead now, it heavily relied on that AddOns back in the days could cast spells, and I don't see how it could be much useful after this was made impossible.
I've also written some other AddOns, such as DropRate (simply gave you the drop rate of items from given mobs) and STFU (checked the level of people whispering you, ignoring level 1 players. Name caused some reactions, but not as many as when a WoW update caused it to ignore pretty much everyone).
