Free tools
Imposition calculator
How many pieces fit on a sheet? Enter the sheet and the finished size, and compare straight, rotated and mixed layouts with a diagram. This is the same engine Sheetwise uses inside carton quotes.
Sheet and piece
The mixed layout fits 2 more than the best grid (4 → 6), 50% more pieces from the same paper.
Straight
4per sheet
Utilisation 47%
Rotated
4per sheet
Utilisation 47%
Mixed
Best6per sheet
Utilisation 71%
How the calculator works
The printable area is the sheet minus a gripper margin on the long edge and a small margin on the other edges. Each piece is enlarged by the bleed on every side. The calculator then fills the printable area three ways and reports the count and paper utilisation for each.
- Straight: every piece in the same orientation as you entered it.
- Rotated: every piece turned 90°.
- Mixed: a guillotine layout that mixes both orientations while keeping every cut a straight, edge-to-edge cut a paper cutter can follow.
When mixed layouts win
Mixed layouts help when the leftover strip of a grid layout is wide enough for the piece in its other orientation. On long, narrow pieces such as hang tags and some carton blanks the gain is often one or two extra pieces per sheet, which on a 5,000-sheet run is several hundred pieces of free paper.
What it does not do
- It imposes rectangles, which is how sheet-fed carton and commercial work is normally estimated. Irregular nesting is not attempted.
- It does not know your press. Inside a Sheetwise quote, the same engine runs for every sheet size and press you own and picks the cheapest total, not just the most pieces.
Frequently asked questions
How is utilisation calculated?
Finished piece area × count ÷ full sheet area. Bleed, gripper and margins count as waste.
Which gripper margin should I use?
Use what your press needs; 10 to 12 mm is typical for sheet-fed offset. The calculator reserves it on the long edge.
Does grain direction matter?
For paperboard it often does. If your job must run in one orientation, compare only the straight or only the rotated result.
See it with your own products
Open a workspace in a minute. It comes with a full set of default pricing parameters, so you can quote a carton before you configure anything.
Keep reading
- All featuresEverything Sheetwise does for a print or packaging business: instant quotes from your own pricing, automatic imposition, tier pricing with margin control, online ordering and ERP hand-off.
- Instant quotingCustomers pick specs and get an accurate price for cartons, bags, catalog products and signage. Calculated live in the browser, recalculated on the server at checkout.
- Automatic impositionEvery custom carton or bag quote is imposed automatically: each sheet size, cut and press is compared by total cost, using straight, rotated and mixed layouts.
- ERP integrationApproved orders are pushed to your ERP as production orders over signed webhooks, with retries and manual re-push. The ERP writes back production, shipping and tracking status.
- Margin controlSales reps quote on a customer's behalf and discount from the system price, but only within a discount cap and a gross-margin floor the server enforces. Costs stay internal.