About Box Blanks
A parametric packaging dieline generator. Enter three dimensions, pick a board, download a cutting file.
Why it exists
Getting a dieline out of most tools is slower than it should be. You sign up, you work out which of several near-identical style names is the box you mean, you enter dimensions without being told whether they are inside or outside, and what comes back is a flat drawing you have to interpret before you know whether it is right.
Box Blanks is built the other way round. Type three dimensions and you get a live blank, a fold you can scrub from flat to assembled, and files in the formats a converter actually asks for. Change a dimension and everything redraws — because a template here is a description of how panels hinge together, not a picture that gets stretched.
It also says what it does not know. Every template carries a badge showing whether its blank has been compared against the published standard's own drawing, so you can tell a checked style from an unchecked one before you commit to anything.
What you get
| Format | Use |
|---|---|
PDF | True 1:1 vector. Print at 100% and cut against it. |
SVG | Illustrator, Figma, Inkscape, laser cutters. |
DXF | CAD, cutting tables and die-makers. R12, with CUT / CREASE / PERF on separate layers. |
Every template has a live 2D preview and a 3D fold you can scrub from flat to assembled, which is usually the fastest way to tell whether a style is the one you had in mind.
How it works
A template is not a drawing. It declares panels and hinges — which panel folds against which — and everything else is derived:
- the cut outline comes from cancelling shared edges across the panel graph: an edge between two panels appears twice in opposite directions and cancels, and what survives is the boundary
- the creases are exactly those cancelled edges
- the 3D fold is that same graph walked outward from a fixed panel
That is why changing a dimension redraws everything correctly instead of stretching a picture, and why a flap hinged to a wall hinged to a base folds properly with no per-template 3D work.
Where the standards come from
Codes and constructions are taken from the FEFCO Code, 12th Edition (2022) and ECMA Codes EN 2022 — the current published catalogues for corrugated and folding carton design. Codes shown are real ones from those documents; automated checks prevent an invented code being displayed. Where a construction is a common industry design with no standard code — a magnetic gift box, a carrier bag, a counter display unit — it carries a descriptive name and claims no standard.
How accurate is this? Honestly: the geometry is generated from our own parametric code, informed by the published plates. Templates marked “Checked against the plate” have been compared side by side with the standard's drawing. Templates marked “Not yet plate-checked” fold correctly and export cleanly, but the blank has not yet been matched to the drawing in detail — and detail is where dielines go wrong.
Whichever badge it carries: cut and fold a sample before committing to a die. That advice is not boilerplate. Board caliper, slot widths and corner clearances all shift the fit, and a five-minute paper mock-up costs nothing next to a wrong tool.
Dimensions and board
You can enter dimensions as inside, crease-to-crease or outside, and the app shows you the other two readings as you type. Board caliper is selected from a table covering corrugated flutes, cartonboard and greyboard, or typed in directly. Allowances, slot widths, glue laps and corner clearances are all exposed as parameters rather than buried, because that is exactly where a dieline stops fitting.
Open the generator