Materials and Quick Sets

What it does

Materials is the shop's list of stock. A material is a roll on a shelf. Beside its name it holds the Quick Set your RIP rips it with, its material type, the press it is loaded on, the products it can make, its roll size and width, whether it is on a liner, its finishes (each may have a Quick Set of its own) and a default finish, its opening size, the lowest DPI it will take, the smallest piece the cutter can cut on it and the smallest gutter the blade can separate.

It saves to your shop's account. Everyone in the shop sees the same list, and a supervisor keeps it. A plain person sees it to read.

Why it matters for your shop

• A missing Quick Set is caught on your screen. Without one, the press has no media profile and the job cannot be ripped. The preflight stops a job on a stock with none.
• Quick Sets ship blank, on purpose. A Quick Set's name exists on your RIP and nowhere else, and a plausible-looking guess is how a job gets ripped on the wrong media.
• The limits travel with the stock. A design under the cutter's minimum, a gap the blade cannot separate and a sheet wider than the roll are all stopped because the stock says so.
• New stock is an afternoon's work. Type it into Materials and it works the same day.

Studio can catch a missing Quick Set. It cannot catch one that is misspelled, because it cannot see your RIP's list. The box offers names your shop has already used. Copy the name from your RIP.

How to use it

1. Press Materials in the column, or Press, then Materials….
2. Add a material, or open one that is there.
3. Type the Quick Set exactly as it is named in your RIP.
4. Add any finish that rips differently, with its Quick Set.
5. Press Done.

Learn more

Give each stock its Quick Set is the how-to guide.