Auto-nesting

Auto-nesting for DTF gang sheets.

Drop the order in and the packer lays out the sheet: MaxRects placement with 0/90° rotation, your gap and margin honoured, on the roll you actually run — with the film readout on screen the whole time.

Nest your first sheet — free See the full workflow →

NestSheet canvas with a 43-piece order auto-nested on a 600 mm DTF roll: files rail with print sizes and copy counts on the left, packed sheet in the middle, film readout at the bottom — 43 pieces from ten files, auto-packed on a 600 mm roll.

The engine

What the packer actually does.

Not a shelf-stacker — a MaxRects solver with a batching trick on top.

Identical copies are grouped into row blocks — “SuperRectangles” — before packing, so ×20 of one design lands as tidy rows a slitter can follow, not confetti.
The solver tries four placement heuristics against six sort orders and keeps the tightest layout — you never pick an algorithm, you get the best attempt.
Pieces rotate 0° or 90° when it wins space. Free-angle rotation is not how DTF sheets get slit and pressed, so we don’t pretend to it.
Three refinement passes run after the main pack: a last-row tidy-up, pairwise swaps, and strip compaction.
Gap and margin are honoured exactly — 2 mm between pieces and 5 mm off the edges by default, both yours to change.

One real sheet

The same batch, by hand and by the packer.

Ten files, 43 pieces, one 600 mm roll. The hand-laid grid used 0.72 m of film; the auto-pack closed the same batch at 0.31 m. One real sheet, not an average.

You will notice there are no utilisation percentages on this page. That is deliberate: a public benchmark — with the method and the dataset published next to the results — has to come first. What we can show today is a sheet you can reproduce yourself: put a real order folder through the free plan and read the film numbers off your own layout.

The same 43-piece batch laid out by hand in Manual mode — an operator grid that uses 0.72 m of film on the 600 mm roll — By hand: an honest operator grid — 0.72 m of film.

The same batch after auto-nest: grouped rows and rotated pieces using 0.31 m of film on the same 600 mm roll, same zoom — Auto-packed: the same batch on 0.31 m. One real sheet, not an average.

Your hands on it

Auto-nest is a mode, not a cage.

Auto-nest is on by default; switch to Manual and drag when a job wants your judgement — the packer never overrules a hand you’ve placed in Manual.
Per-file copy counts live in the files rail — bump a design to ×6 and the sheet repacks around it.
Film length, m² and fill stay on the ticket while you work, so the cost of a layout is never a surprise at export time.
Roll presets from 300 to 1800 mm plus A4/A3/A2 sheets — or a custom sheet up to 2000 × 10000 mm.
Sheet height grows with the batch automatically (default roll 600 mm) — you cut the film the order needs, not the length you guessed.

Utilisation

How we measure utilisation — and why there’s no number here.

Utilisation is plain arithmetic: artwork area divided by the film area the sheet actually uses. Change the gap, the margin, the roll width or the mix of piece sizes and the number moves — which is exactly why a single marketing percentage would tell you nothing about your shop.

We are preparing a public benchmark — real order batches, a hand-laid baseline, method and dataset published alongside the results. Until it ships, this site quotes no utilisation figures. Measure your own instead: nest a real order on the free plan and read the sheet, or put your film price into the film savings calculator to see what each point of waste costs in money.

Spec sheet

The nesting parameters, from the code.

Every value below is read from the shipped product, not from a wishlist — the sources are in this page’s code.

Nesting engine parameters as shipped
Parameter	As shipped
Placement engine	MaxRects + SuperRectangles grouping
Attempts per pack	4 placement heuristics × 6 sort orders — tightest kept
Rotation	0° / 90°
Gap between pieces	2 mm default, adjustable
Sheet margin	5 mm default, adjustable
Roll presets	300 / 400 / 600 / 900 / 1200 / 1600 / 1800 mm
Fixed sheets	A4 · A3 · A2
Custom sheet	up to 2000 mm wide × 10000 mm long
Sheet height	grows with the batch (auto, default on)
Modes	Auto-nest (default) / Manual drag

FAQ

The questions operators actually search.

What is a gang sheet?

A gang sheet is one large press-ready file — usually the full width of your DTF roll — with many designs laid out together so they print in a single pass. Shops gang orders to spend less film and less press time per design; the tighter the layout, the cheaper each print.

What size gang sheet do I need?

Start from the roll you actually run. NestSheet ships presets from 300 to 1800 mm wide, plus A4/A3/A2 sheets and custom sizes up to 2000 × 10000 mm. Leave the height on auto — the sheet grows with the batch, so the size question answers itself per order.

How many 10×10 images fit on a 22×60 gang sheet?

Twelve in pure arithmetic — two columns of six. On a real sheet the answer depends on spacing: with NestSheet’s default 2 mm gap and 5 mm margin, ten fit. That is why the canvas shows the layout maths live instead of this page promising you a number.

Can you reuse DTF film?

No — the film’s release coating is spent on the first press, so a second pass gives patchy transfer and risks the printhead. The way to pay less for film is to waste less of it per sheet: pack tighter and print fewer, fuller sheets.

Keep going