Sheets, rolls, margins and equipment

The Production tab starts with the job's media, then its cutter and printer. The media decides where pieces may go; the equipment decides the cut and print times and the prices in the Report.

Sheet or roll#

Pick Sheet or Roll at the top of the Media card, then set the sheet size or the roll width. Pieces are placed inside the margins, with the spacing between them.

• Sheet: set Width and Height, or pick one of the Presets… (Letter, Tabloid, SRA3, 12 × 18, 13 × 19, 20 × 29, 28 × 40, 48 × 96 in). Swap turns the sheet.
• Roll: set the Roll width, and the Lead-in and Lead-out, the blank length before the first piece and after the last. A roll layout is one long strip; the Report shows its length instead of sheets.

N-up and offset runs need sheets. Switching a job to a roll moves N-up to Auto and Offset to Digital.

Margins, spacing and bleed#

Margins

Nothing is placed in the margins. A sheet has four (Top, Bottom, Left, Right); a roll has a left and right side margin. The margins must leave some printable area.

Spacing

The gap the nest keeps between pieces, measured between their bleed edges. N-up with shared cuts butts pieces together instead (see Methods: Auto, True shape, N-up, Strips).

Bleed

The bleed of every artwork whose Bleed is None (job default).

Media grain

The grain of the stock: None, Horizontal or Vertical. Artworks with a grain are turned to match it (see Jobs and artwork).

Default rotation

The rotation of every artwork set to Job default.

Max sheets

Sheets only: the most sheets a digital run may use. Pieces that don't fit stay unplaced. 0 means unlimited.

Under Advanced, Contour padding and Contour margin grow the traced outline of artworks in Pixel contour shape mode.

Cutter#

The Cutter card picks the cutting machine: Team default uses your team's default machine. Its speeds give the cut time, and its rates the cut price. Machines are set up on the Equipment page: Open Equipment.

The card warns when the media is wider than the cutter's working area, or when a sheet is longer than the bed of a cutter without a conveyor.

Bed boundaries#

Flatbed cutters with a conveyor cut a roll one bed at a time. Bed boundaries decides whether a piece may cross from one bed to the next:

• Cutter's setting uses the machine's own setting. A conveyor flatbed keeps parts within beds unless you set it otherwise.
• Keep parts within one bed leaves a clear band at each bed boundary, so every piece is cut in one pass.
• Parts may span beds uses the roll fully. The cutter's software then has to split the contours that cross a feed (see Cutting files and registration).

The choice shows for roll jobs on a cutter with a bed length, and for sheets longer than a conveyor cutter's bed. The cutter's own setting is described on Cutting machines, and how the nest keeps pieces within beds on Rolls, beds and lanes.

Strips can't keep pieces within beds yet: with Keep parts within one bed, use True shape, or let pieces span beds.

Printer#

The Printer card picks the printer and its Print mode, which give the print time and price. Turn Printed off for jobs that are only cut: they have no print time. The card warns when the media is wider than the printer's maximum print width.

Costs#

Sheet cost (per sheet) or, for a roll, Roll cost (per sq ft) sets the material cost shown in the Report. On an offset run the sheet cost moves to the Press run card with the plate cost (see Offset press runs).

What makes layouts out of date#

Changing the media (size, margins, spacing, bleed, grain or max sheets), an artwork's shape, quantity, angles, bleed, file or page makes the existing layouts out of date. On a roll, so does anything that changes how beds are kept: the Bed boundaries choice, or picking a cutter with a different bed length or bed boundaries setting. On an offset job the press run fields and costs do too. Changing the method, its settings, digital costs or the time budget doesn't, and neither does the equipment on a sheet job: those layouts stay valid. See Troubleshooting runs.