Add a day's files at once

A shop handed forty files for one job should not add them one by one. Import reads what the file names say and shows you what it understood before anything is laid out.

Why it matters for your shop

• Forty files are one drop, not forty adds. They come in as runs, one for each press set-up and roll.
• Nothing is guessed. What could not be read is marked, and a file name is never taken as an instruction to a press without showing you.
• Several files added at once are recorded as a bulk order, with a job for each run.

Bring the files in

Use File → Import a folder… or File → Import a zip…, or Open artwork… and choose many files. Drop two files and they go straight on the sheet. Three or more, a folder or a zip open Import, because more than two is a batch.

What Import reads

Import reads the file names the way a shop writes them:

• Quantity: x50, qty-50, 50pcs or, as a last resort, a bare number. A year is never a quantity: retro-2024-badge_x8 is eight, and 2024 stays in the name.
• Size: 3x3.
• Stock and finish: a material or finish named anywhere in the name, matched against what your shop actually stocks.

So acme-logo_White Vinyl_x50_3x3.png comes in as acme logo, fifty copies, three inches square, on White Vinyl.

Runs

Files are grouped into runs: everything on one material in one finish, because that is one press set-up and one roll.

Every row shows what was read, and where each value came from, before anything is laid out. Nothing is assumed silently. A file name is a note somebody typed in a hurry, and treating one as an instruction to a press is how a thousand of the wrong sticker get made.

What could not be read is marked, not guessed. Files whose stock was not named land in their own run under a heading that says what is missing, and Open this run stays dimmed, with the reason beside it, until you choose a stock and finish. Studio never quietly picks the first stock in your list.

A size under the stock's smallest piece is lifted to the smallest size the stock takes, in its own shape, and the size cell says so.

Open a run

Press Open this run. You land on the question What are you making on…, with the stock and the finish filled in and the files waiting. Choosing the product puts them on the sheet. Cancel leaves you where you were.

The Ticket box holds the customer and order number for the whole drop. It starts as the job number and company you typed when you started the job, if you did.

Several files added at once are recorded as a bulk order with one job for each run. The first save of a sheet from one offers that run's name. See Jobs, orders and bulk orders.