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Oversized work

Using the assembly map

A pile of panels with no map is a puzzle at the bench. The CSV written beside them says where each one's cut sits in the finished piece, and which of its sides are seams.

3 min read

The assembly map is written by the panelling tool, which runs from the command line rather than in the web app. It appears beside the panels as a file, not on a screen.

Splitting a piece across panels produces one PDF per panel. On their own they are ambiguous: two middle panels of a long banner can look almost identical, and the one thing you cannot recover from the pages is which order they go in.

What it is

A CSV named NAME_assembly.csv, written beside the panels. One row per panel, carrying its position, its size, and which of its sides are seams — L, R, T or B.

That last column is the one that earns its place at the bench. A side marked as a seam is a side that meets a neighbour and is cut dead straight; a side that is not marked carries the silhouette and is the finished edge of the piece.

The assembly CSV beside the piece it describes. The table lists three rows, P1of3, P2of3 and P3of3, each 80 by 63 cm, at x 0, 80 and 160 cm, with the seams column reading R, LR and L. Beside it the finished 240 cm piece is drawn as one rectangle divided by two magenta seam lines into P1/3, P2/3 and P3/3, the offsets 0 cm, 80 cm and 160 cm marked underneath.
One row per page, and the seams column is the one read at the bench. The middle panel is marked LR because both its sides meet a neighbour; the outer two are marked on one side only, and the side not marked is the finished outline.

How to use it

  1. Lay the panels out in the order the rows give, before anything is trimmed.
  2. Check each panel's seam sides against its neighbours: two panels that meet should each be marked on the side that faces the other.
  3. Trim the seam edges only. The bleed is the artwork printed past the cut for exactly this, and the sides not marked as seams are already the finished outline.
  4. Add the panel widths back up against the finished size you asked for.

The panel filenames carry a tag of their own — NAME_TAG_Hh_Wb.pdf — so a page can be matched to its row without opening it.

Read the plan before you print it

Panelling can be asked for the plan alone. It measures the job, prints how many panels it will be and where every seam falls, and writes no files. It is the cheapest possible way to find that out, and it costs nothing to ask before the job is committed.

The report also carries a resolution verdict for the panels against the px/cm floor — soft or fine — which is worth reading before three sheets are printed rather than after.

The rest of the settings are in splitting across panels, and the joins themselves in seam bleed and why gaps happen.

Something not adding up?

Send the assembly CSV and the finished size you were aiming for.

Contact support See how it works