Cut-sheet PDF best practices for sheet-metal fab shops
By Field to Fab Team
A cut sheet is the contract between the office and the shop floor. It needs to be unambiguous, scannable from three feet away, and printable on the same printer as everything else in the building. Here is how we approached the cut-sheet PDF in Field to Fab and why.
Four pieces per page. Anything denser becomes hard to read at the brake; anything looser wastes paper and creates more sheets to lose. Four lets us put a real iso 3D thumbnail next to each piece without shrinking the dims to unreadable type.
Iso plus ortho dims, not iso alone. The iso shows shape and orientation; the ortho shows the numbers the operator brakes against. A pure 3D rendering looks great on a screen and is hostile in a shop where the relevant question is "what is the back length on this elbow."
Auto-derived dimensions are first-class. Throat plus included angle plus depth gives back length on any rect elbow — the operator should not have to do that math at the brake. The cut sheet shows the derived numbers right next to the entered ones.
Black and white only. Shop printers are not color-calibrated and the PDF should look identical whether it is printed on the office laser or the dusty workhorse next to the iron worker. Color highlights on a cut sheet mean the operator has to interpret a color key, and the operator's job is to fold metal, not interpret design.