Dieline Editor lets you make parametric dielines from scratch. This user manual explains the dieline creation step by step, so you can make your own dieline easily.
At the top of the editor there is a toolbar with all the tools available for dieline editing. On the right - there is a panel that displays the parameters of the currently selected element or the project parameters if nothing is selected. You can switch between the panels using the buttons at the right of the toolbar.
From the left to the right, the toolbar has the following buttons:
The rest of the screen is the working area where you create dielines. You can drag it by pressing the left mouse button and dragging the mouse. You can zoom it by using the mouse wheel.
Point is the main element of the parametric dieline. Almost everything is made around the points in the editor and it is essential to understand how they work.
There are two types of points in the editor: absolute and relative. Absolute point is defined by its coordinates, relative point is defined by the offset from another point (either absolute or relative). Both coordinates and offsets can be numbers or formulas and this enables all the flexibility and parameterization of the dieline.
All the numeric values for positions and offsets in the dieline editor are measured in points (pt).
When the absolute point is selected you see it as a green dot without any additional graphics in the dieline and the panel on the right shows point position parameters as “Absolute X” and “Absolute Y”. When the relative point is selected, you see a blue arrow showing the offset between the parent of this point and the point itself. The right panel displays the point position using “Relative X” and “Relative Y” parameters (relative to the parent point).
In order to change the point type you need to click the “Reparent point” button in the toolbar, having the point in question selected. Once the button is clicked the editor switches to reparenting mode and the next point you click will become a parent of the selected one. If you click the background, the selected point will become absolute point. If you need to cancel this mode, click the “Cancel” button in the toolbar. When the editor re-parents points it sets its position parameters to numeric values according to their current positions. If you have formulas there — they will be replaced with numbers.
The right panel lets you navigate to the parent and children points of the selected point using the special buttons. This way you can traverse the dieline point to point to make sure that everything is configured as needed.
Try making some points, define their positions and offsets using plain numeric values. Try re-parenting them and see how it works. You might find the “Zoom to Fit” button in the toolbar useful to see the whole project after making changes. Do not try entering formulas so far, we’ll go to that a little later. Also there is no need to edit other parameters f the point at the moment, we again return to that below.
Once you made some points, you can join them using lines. Make sure you have at least two points in your scene and click the “Add Line” button. The editor will be switched to the line adding mode and will ask you to select the first point of the line. Once you do this, you will be asked to select the second point and then the line between these points will be created.
The right panel displays the properties of the selected line if one is selected. There you can switch between cut and crease lines, assign angles and names to the lines (that makes sense for crease lines only).
Adding curves works the same way: make sure you have at least four points (begin, end and two control points), click the “Add Curve” button, then select the first point of the curve, then first and second control points and finally the end point of the curve. Once the fourth point is selected, the editor will create a bezier curve according to these points.
So far everything we’ve done looks like drawing vectors manually without using a mouse and didn’t make much sense, but from now we’re going to utilize the main feature of the dieline editor: formulas.
In order to use formulas instead of plain numbers for our dieline, we need to create a parameter. Parameter is a variable of the project that contains a number that is used by the dieline elements and can be easily changed later. Some good examples of parameters would be width, depth and height of the box.
To create a parameter switch the right panel to the project settings by clicking the “Project” button on the right of the toolbar or by clicking the dieline background. You will see two sections there: “Parameters” and “Variables”, you need the first one. There is a “+” button there, click it and you will get a new parameter added to the project.
Each parameter has a few options:
As an example you can make a parameter with display name “Box Width”, variable name “width”, value 200 (points) and Min/Max values set to 50 and 1000. Once done you can select a relative point and put the “width” into its “Relative X” parameter. From there, as soon as you change the “Box Width” parameter in the project properties, that point will move to the offset defined by the parameter.
That’s it! That’s how you make parametric dielines: you create parameters for all the dimensions of the box, add more parameters for other options and then configure points using these parameters instead of using numbers. You then connect points using lines and get a dieline that follows the dimensions you define in project parameters. Easy!
There is a section below the “Parameters” in the project settings named “Variables”. Variable is a second-class parameter. It is not displayed to the user, doesn’t have minimum or maximum values and lets you simplify formulas. For instance, you might find yourself using half of the width way too often in the project. In order to not write “width/2” many times in multiple places (which may lead to errors) you can make a variable named “w2” and set it to “width / 2”, then every time you need that half width value you can simply write “w2” instead of “width / 2”.
Another good option for variables is limiting values to some range. Say a flap should be 1⁄3 of the width, but not less than 20 points and not more than 100 points. In order to do that you can make a variable named “flap” and set it to “max(20, min(100, width / 3))” and use the “flap” variable everywhere you need the flap size in formulas.
A formula is a mathematical expression made of numbers, operators and variables that can be computed to a number. Some examples of formulas are: “10 + 20”, “sin(1)”, “height / 2”, “(width + height) * 3” etc.
Dieline editor supports 4 basic math operators: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It also supports brackets and some constants and functions listed below:
Note that the parameters of trigonometric functions like “sin(x)” and “cos(x)” are measured in radians. If you have an angle in degrees, you can convert it to radians by dividing it by 180 and multiplying by PI: “sin(angle / 180 * pi)”.
At this point you should be able to create inter-connected points and configure their relative positions using formulas with parameters. That’s enough to make quite complex parametric dielines.
However, it might be pretty boring to make that flap element again and again. The good news is that the dieline editor lets you embed dielines into each other, so you can have sub-projects inside your projects. You can make a perfect flap once and every time you need one, you can simply embed the one you already have!
Not any dieline can be embedded. In order to embed the dieline, it needs to have an “anchor” point. The one that is used to position the embedded dieline against the main one.
If you select a point, you’ll see the “Anchor point” option on the right. You need to check it to make the point an anchor. Only one point can be anchor and if a dieline has multiple anchors, the behavior of the dieline may become unpredictable. Do not make more than one point an anchor.
When the project is embedded, you cannot access its points directly, as you do with the normal points of your project. Embedded dieline is positioned by its anchor point, then you can define its rotation and flips and also configure its parameters using the ones you have in the project, but you will not see the points of embedded dieline and will not be able to draw lines from them.
Except for the public points. You can see that “Public point” option on the right next to the “Anchor point” one. When enabled, the point becomes accessible to the parent dieline when the project is embedded. You cannot change its position (it is still controlled by the embedded dieline), but you can link other points and lines to it.
As a test, make a simple project of a few lines: a simple flap, rectangle or even a triangle. Make one point an anchor, make another point public. Then save that project and make a new one or go to the existing one and click the “Embed Dieline” button in the toolbar. You will see a popup panel with the list of embeddable dielines and you should see your recently created dieline there. If not — double-check that you made one point an anchor there.
When you click the dieline in the popup panel, it will be added to your project. If you click it, it will be selected as a whole, but only anchor and public points will be highlighted. The anchor point will have a red dot in the middle, the public points will be gray. You can select the anchor point or the whole subproject and click the “Reparent” button in the toolbar to assign a parent point for the subproject. From there you adjust it pretty much the same way as any other point. You adjust the anchor point and the subproject follows it.
When the subproject is selected, there are two more groups of parameters on the right. The first is called “Embedding options” at it lets you rotate and flip the embedded dieline. The second one is “Embedded item parameters” and it contains the list of parameters of the embedded project. Yes, the ones that were explained above. Here you can assign your current project values and parameters to configure the embedded project.
Say you made a flap project that has width and height parameters. When you embed id to your box dieline project which also has width and height parameters, but for the box, you can position the flap to its place and then assign the “Width” parameter of the embedded project the “width” value of the current project, so the flap is resized properly.
Embedded dieline adjusts itself by using the parameters you provide. There is no way you can “go inside” and change anything in the embedded project. You only provide the parameters that it accepts, that’s it. This also applies to the public points of the embedded dieline. When the embedded dieline resizes itself, its public points also move. And if you link another point to it, or added a line using that point — they will follow.
Marker is an Origami-specific concept and you only need them if you use the dielines with Origami. Markers let Origami understand which part of the shape is bottom, which is front and so on.
You can make any point of your project a marker by selecting a non-empty option at the “Marker point” field on the right.
As most of the points are used for controlling dieline lines, it might be a good idea to make a separate point, move it inside the dieline panel a bit and make it a marker. This way you can make sure that the marker is placed inside the panel, not on its edge. As a bonus, your marker point is always visible as it has no lines connected to it.
Once done (but better more often) you can click the “Save” or “Save As” button to save the dieline. You can now use it to generate dielines with our generator.