Software for creating shipping cartons?

[Mayo]

I'm frequently having to ship things out of state. Invariably either because of the quantity of items or the unique shape of the items I have to ship, I don't have a shipping carton in stock that will accommodate the items. And it's not cost effective or space effective to stock tons of cartons of various sizes. I order from a company that has thousands of sizes available but the shipping charge is a killer on small orders. So usually I will take a carton that's too large, and cut it down.

This takes a lot of time for me because I don't find it easy to visualize (or draw) a 3 dimensional carton as a flat object with folds and cuts at the right places for producing a specific size.

I looked online for carton making software and it seems like all I could find was designed for big companies with big budgets and huge production requirements with database capabilities, etc. I just want a simple software that I can enter the dimensions of the carton I want to produce, and it will create a drawing file with the over all shape including the cut lines and the fold lines. Then my drawing software can import or open, (in case I just want to edit an already created carton) and then I can output to have my Shopbot draw the carton shape on a large flat sheet of corrugated. Since I don't have a knife/razor blade in the Shopbot, I will then manually cut and fold the carton.

Have any of you found existing software like this?

[geometree]

I'm not sure this is exactly what you are looking for, but this site has some very cool carton vectors you could scale to fit your needs. http://cartonus.com (http://cartonus.com/)

[curtiss]

Seems like if you had access to the basic corrigated cardboard, one could lay it out flat on the table, and use some sort of roller/ caster wheel mounted in the collet to crease the cardboard where you wanted it.

A bit of knife work and ship it out.

Creating the linework should not be too difficult.

[myxpykalix]

go to

http://www.phlatforum.com/ what iv've seen is is is for like flat pack items, i think they cut and notch foam but maybe cardborad also?

also i believe steve knight had a thread about cutting cardboard and came up with a solution of sorts, do a search for "cutting cardboard" because as i recall there were some pretty innovative solutions bantered about.

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/images/misc/progress.gif

[knight_toolworks]

I made a swivel knife that would cut 1/2" thick cardboard. it works well but it will not do 90 degree corners so all straight lines need to be straight lines and all the start points need to be going the same direction. it is a pain to setup toolpaths the first time. myself unless you need really oddball boxes there are places that sell about any size and they would cost far less. there are a lot of places that would make them and I bet it would cost less in the long run. you can cut it with a 1/8" bit fairly cleanly. I find the smaller the bit the cleaner it cuts.

[Mayo]

Thanks for the replies so far.
I had previously seen the cartonus.com web site and they have some cool looking and more decorative line drawings for boxes and cartons.

I've also been to phlatforum - their machine is mostly for cutting thin styrofoam sheets for people into model airplane building and rc control stuff. They rely on sketchup and a custom script to output to their machine. Sketchup might be a good program to do this in but the two or three times I tried the free version of it, I never figured out how to get specific dimensions for what I wanted to design. Maybe I'll look further into learning it.

I can draw my own shapes, and I have done it several times just to figure out how to make a carton a specific size, and then hand drawn it on corrugated. But for me, it would be tons faster if there was a "simple" program - perhaps not that different than cabinet box software - where I just enter the size I need and it automatically draws out the design in flat form just like a cabinet. Perhaps a dotted or different color line for folds and a solid or bold line for cuts.

I don't really need the Shopbot to cut the cardboard - I'd be content just having software create the shape and then have the Shopbot just draw it on, and then I'd manually cut it. I don't need tons of custom cartons but I do find myself creating a few every month.

[dougo]

This is a nice program and price is not bad. Will even output dxf files if you want to cut out your box with your Shopbot.

http://www.packmeister.com/

[Mayo]

Thanks for that link Doug - I had not seen that program yet.
It looks good - I'm going to download the trial version and see how it goes.

[dougo]

You are welcome. I use the program and works fine for me. Very useful.

[Mayo]

Doug, you mentioned it will output DXF files.
Maybe the trial version is different but I can't locate where to export or save to DXF. The help files didn't mention this option. Any ideas?

[dougo]

I'm sorry Mayo. The program does not output dxf files. Hope you didn't spend to much time trying to figure that part out. It had been a while since I used the program and forgot how I had used the Shopbot to cut out boxes. After designing the box I would print the drawing to a pdf file. I then imported the pdf file into Aspire and and scaled the drawing to full size. Then I just saved the file to the Shopbot post processor and cut out the box (or boxes) I was needing.

There are different ways to do this:
If you print to a PDF file, then open the .pdf in Adobe Illustrator, the drawing will be in scaleable vector format which you will be able to scale to full size, save in Illustrator or re-export to Autocad etc.


Not as hard as it sounds and only takes a minute or so after you do it a couple of times. Maybe this option to export to dxf will be a future upgrade.



Again, I am sorry for steering you in the wrong direction.

[Mayo]

No problem at all Doug.
I emailed their support and they said the same thing - to just print to a PDF file and then work with it that way. I'll get to try it out this coming week and then I'll decide if I'm going to purchase it.

Thanks again for the link.