Quick start
Give it one die shape and a sheet up to B2, and it finds the layout that cuts the most pieces. It nests by the real outline rather than the bounding box, so a tag, a carton blank or a triangle can drop into the notch of the row next to it. Then it writes the imposed artwork, the cut file and a DXF for the die maker or the cutter.
- Drop the die-line PDF on the window — or switch to Simple shape and type a rectangle, rounded rectangle or circle / oval, or open one of the built-in Samples.
- Pick the cutter and the sheet. The margins, gap and bleed fill in from the cutter; change any of them.
- Choose a layout. The best one is picked for you; the others are listed with their up count and yield.
The online edition runs in your browser: your files are never uploaded, and everything it saves is marked as a demo and downloaded.
The die shape
Page 1 is read (pick another page if the PDF has more). Lines are sorted by color family, the same way the Die Line Reader does it, so the CMYK magenta Illustrator gives you for "red" still counts as red.
| Line | Auto reads it as |
|---|
| ■ Cut | Solid lines in the color with the most solid line on the page (red / magenta wins a close call). If nothing on the page is colored, plain black solid lines are the cut. |
| ■ Crease | Green lines, or dashed lines in the cut color. |
| ■ Perf | Dashed cyan / blue lines. |
If Auto picks the wrong thing, set each color by hand. The note under the counts says the piece size, its area, and how much cut, crease and perf one piece needs.
Loose segments are fine. A carton die is often drawn as dozens of separate straight lines rather than one closed path. The outside of the piece is found by flooding in from the edge of the drawing, so anything the lines enclose counts as the piece, joined or not. If the cut line truly does not close, you are told, pieces are spaced by their outline only, and art is clipped to the box.
Cutter, sheet & margins
Width is the edge across the feed; length is the edge that feeds. The lead edge is the top of the drawing.
| Cutter | What it sets |
|---|
DSM-1000 B2
platen, steel rule | From the DSM-1000 Instruction Manual (2023). Sheets 279–530 × 279–750 mm, with one side at least 420 mm. The sheet runs with its reference edge on the conveyance belt: the press area starts 25 mm in from that edge and the blade must sit 10 mm inside the press area, so nothing is cut within 35 mm (1.38") of the reference edge, and the blade reaches no further than 515 mm from it (the 480 mm cutting width). 10 mm is recommended at the lead, the trail and the operator's side. Each punch cuts at most 710 mm down the sheet. Choose which edge of the drawing is the reference edge — Left edge of the drawing or Right edge of the drawing — and it is hatched in the preview. (The press area is 500 × 730 mm and the die board 820 × 520 mm in 18 mm plywood.) With the Registration Mark Kit on, the Imposer's DSM-1000 marks are added and the operator's side is kept 18 mm clear for the moving-side mark. Default gap 3 mm. |
Digital knife / laser
dieless | Sheets up to B2 (500 × 707 mm), 12 mm margins, and locator marks for the cutter's camera. Default gap 2 mm. |
| Custom | Only the margins you type. No marks. |
Locator marks (digital cutters)
The cutter's locator camera finds black circles or black crosses, from 3 to 20 mm across; 6 mm and 10 mm circles are recommended. The marks go round the sheet edge, 5 mm in, outside the pieces, spaced no more than 40 cm and no less than 4.3 cm apart — set Most apart lower for more marks on a long sheet. The cutting area is kept 3 mm clear of them (14 mm from the edge with 6 mm marks). The pattern does not have to be symmetrical: One extra mark near the lead corner adds one beside the lead / left corner so a sheet fed the wrong way round is caught. The marks print in 100% black on the art PDF and the cut file, and the DXF carries them on the MARKS layer — circles as true circles.
A DSM-1000 die carries at most 5,000 mm of rule — cut, crease and perf together. The way round it is to punch the sheet more than once: the DSM-1000 can punch the same die up to 3 times per sheet, so the die only has to carry a third (or half) of the sheet.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|
| Punches per sheet | Best of 1, 2 or 3 (the default) tries all three and lists each one that gets more pieces. With 2 or 3 punches, the cutting area is split into equal bands down the feed; the die is laid out for one band, and the same die is punched again further down, a gap apart. Pieces do not interlock across punches. The manual's progressive-pressing limits are kept: 2 punches need a sheet at least 396 mm long and a punch interval of 120–370 mm; 3 punches need 516 mm and 120–237 mm. When two layouts cut the same number of pieces, the one with fewer punches wins, because it runs faster. |
| Waste separation (DSM-SP) | Tick it when the DSM-SP will strip the scrap. Its rollers run down the sheet in the lanes between columns of pieces, so the layout becomes a straight grid with the manual's minimums: a scrap frame of 35 mm at both sides and 50 mm at the lead and trail, at least 20 mm between columns, 50 mm between pieces down the sheet and between punches. Lanes are widened when needed so separation units and margin guides stay 61 mm apart, and the grid is held to 8 columns because one unit rides each lane and the DSM-SP takes 7 (3 standard plus up to 4 ADDITIONAL SEPARATION UNITs). The preview draws each margin guide (G) and separation unit (SP); Production shows how many units the die needs and the run time at 2,250 sheets/hr (3,100 without separation). Nick guidance from the manual is shown with it: 0.3 mm nicks up to 209.7 g/m², 0.5 mm heavier, kept out of the first 130 mm and last 20 mm of each piece. |
| Keep each die within the rule limit | On by default. A die that would need more than 5,000 mm is cut back row by row from the lead edge, and the list shows it as, for example, 12 of 30. Untick it to see the full layout with a warning. |
A T-shaped 90 × 100 mm tag on B2 shows why it matters: one punch is held to 12 pieces by the rule limit, three punches of an 11-piece die give 33. Production shows Punches per sheet, Pieces per punch, the Rule on the die, and the punches needed for the quantity. The preview draws a dashed box around each punch. The cut file PDF shows every punch on the sheet; the DXF is the die itself, with the other punches on a REPEAT layer for reference.
How the layout is found
The shape is looked at from above, below and both sides — its silhouette. That says how close two copies can sit side by side, and for every sideways offset of the next row, how close that row can come. The gap is added the way a disc would roll around the outline, so the gap is kept in every direction, not only straight down.
| Layout | What it is |
|---|
| Grid | Rows and columns. Best for rectangles, and the easiest die to build. |
| Staggered | Each row shifted sideways — circles pack like a honeycomb this way. |
| Interlocked | Alternate rows (or columns) turned 180° so shapes nest into each other — triangles, T-shaped tags, carton tabs. |
Each is tried upright and turned 90°, running across the sheet and down it, then laid on the real cutting area and counted exactly. A staggered or interlocked layout is only listed if it gets more pieces than a plain grid.
Place the layout decides where the finished block of pieces sits inside the cutting area — Centred in the cutting area, or Tight to the lead edge. Centred is the safer default because it leaves equal slack at both ends; tight to the lead edge is what you want when the sheet is close to the cutter’s length limit and every millimetre at the trail matters.
Untick Pieces may be turned when grain or print direction matters, and Alternate rows may be turned 180° when every piece has to face the same way.
Gap 0 means shared cut lines. Touching pieces share an edge, and each shared straight rule is cut once — the report shows how much rule that saved. On a steel-rule die that is also the only way the die can be built.
True-shape nesting
The row layouts above repeat one pattern across the sheet. True-shape nesting does not: it places each piece wherever its real outline fits — into the notch of a neighbour, into the strip left at the end of a row, at whatever turn you allow — one piece after another, each as close to the lead edge and the reference edge as it will go. It is what a shape with a hook, a corner cut-out, a tab or a slant needs, because those leave room that no repeating row can use.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|
| Nesting method | Best of both (the default) works out the row layouts and the true-shape ones, and offers a true-shape layout only when it fits more pieces than any row layout — so a plain card or a circle still gets its plain grid or honeycomb, and an L-shape, a slanted bar or a crescent gets the free layout. Rows & interlock only is the quickest and is how earlier versions worked. True-shape nesting only lists only the free layouts. |
| True-shape turning | Quarter turns tries 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°. Any angle in 45°, 30°, 15°, 10° or 5° steps also tries every angle in between — a bar drawn at 30° is turned back to square, and pieces can lean into each other's slopes. Smaller steps try more angles and take longer. Turning follows your tick boxes: untick Pieces may be turned and every piece stays upright (or turned 180° if that is ticked). |
Two ways of building the layout are tried and the one that fits more pieces is offered. From scratch: pieces are placed one by one, scanning across the sheet and down it, with all the turns, with quarter turns only, and with a pair of opposite turns. Around a row layout: the best row layouts are kept exactly as they are and every gap, notch and leftover strip around them is filled with more pieces — the layout's name then says how many were fitted into the gaps. A true-shape layout is therefore never worse than the row layout it grew from.
- The gap is always kept. Every piece is at least the gap away from every other piece in every direction, measured on the real outlines. The sheet is worked out on a fine grid (a fraction of a millimetre) and always rounds toward more room, so a finished layout can be a fraction of a millimetre looser than perfect, never tighter.
- Zero gap. Pieces in a true-shape layout end up about one grid cell apart rather than sharing a cut line. When you need shared cut lines, use the row layouts — they are still listed.
- Art turns with the piece. The imposed art, the bleed clip and the cut file all follow the turn, at any angle. If print or grain direction matters, keep the turning on quarter turns or switch turning off.
- Machine limits still apply. The margins, the reference edge, the marks, the rule limit and the punches per sheet work the same way. Waste separation (DSM-SP) needs straight columns, so when it is ticked the nesting method is hidden and the row grid is used.
- Time. Expect a second or two, longer with a small turning step. Compare sheet sizes uses a quicker setting so it stays responsive.
Samples
Seven sample die lines are built in, each with its artwork on the same page: jigsaw pieces, hang tags with a punched hole, lightning bolts, star badges, plus badges, pine tree tags and gingerbread people. Pick one from Samples… at the top of the window, or from the tiles on the start screen. Each opens on the cutter, sheet and nesting settings where true-shape nesting beats the best row layout — 2 to 6 more pieces per sheet — and the Die shape card says by how much. Opening a sample changes the cutter, sheet, gap and nesting settings to the sample's; change them back, or open your own die line, when you are done. They make good demos for a customer: export the imposed art and cut file just as you would for a real job.
A quick way to see what it buys you. Load an L-shaped or slanted piece, leave the method on Best of both, and compare the top true-shape layout with the best Interlocked one in the list: the up count and the yield are side by side.
Safety check. Before anything is shown, every layout is painted into a separate grid and checked for pieces that overlap. If one ever does, the pieces are outlined in red and export asks before it goes ahead.
Artwork & bleed
Art can be the die-line PDF itself (art and die on the same page), a separate artwork PDF, or nothing at all when you only need the cut file. A separate art page is placed centred on the die page — right when the art file simply has more bleed than the die file — or top-left corners together. With a simple shape, separate art is centred on the piece.
Each piece's art is clipped to its cut line pushed out by the bleed. The bleed is held to half the gap, so one piece's bleed can never print on the next one. At a zero gap there is no room for bleed, and art stops at the cut.
Numbers, compare & export
Production shows pieces per sheet, yield (finished piece area against the whole sheet), sheets for the quantity with and without overs, rule per sheet and waste.
Compare sheet sizes lays the same die on every standard sheet from SRA3 to B2 (plus 20 × 28 in, flagged when the cutter cannot take it) and highlights the best use of stock. Click a row to switch to it.
| Export | What you get |
|---|
| Imposed art PDF | The press sheet with the art stepped out, the marks, and a slug line in the trail. Tick Also print the die line to add it as a CutContour spot for proofing. |
| Cut file PDF | Every rule as a named spot color: CutContour, Crease (dashed), Perf (dotted), with the sheet edge and cutting area in DieInfo and the marks in black. Same size as the press sheet, so it registers to the art. |
| DXF | R12, millimetres, one layer each for CUT, CREASE, PERF, SHEET and MARKS, plus CUTAREA (the DSM-1000's 480 × 710 mm cutting area) — for a die maker or a cutter that imports CAD. |
| Print report | A one-page drawing of the sheet with every number above, for the job bag or the die order. Choose Microsoft Print to PDF to keep it as a file. |
The last cutter, sheet, margins, gap and bleed are remembered on this machine and carried by the Suite backup.
Templates
The Templates card at the top of the settings saves everything on screen under a name you choose: the cutter (for example DSM-1000 B2), the sheet, margins and reference edge, registration or locator marks, punches per sheet, rule limit, waste separation, gap, turning and nesting method, artwork placement and bleed, line colours, the simple shape and the quantity and overs. Type a name and click Save as template; pick it from Saved templates to put all of it back and lay the sheet out again. Update with current settings replaces the chosen template, and Delete removes it. The die line and artwork files are not part of a template, so one template serves every job of that kind.
Export… saves the chosen template as a small .iqdiecut file and Import… loads one, so a template moves between computers, and between the Suite and the online edition. In the Suite, templates are kept on this computer and carried by the Suite backup; online, they are kept in your browser.
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