Concepts

A carton is packaging you keep on a shelf: a box, bag, mailer, tube or envelope. An item is a SKU you ship.

Each is a catalog keyed by SKU, with its own plan limit. A pack request lists items, and the cartonizer picks the cartons.

Interior dimensions decide what fits. Exterior dimensions decide what the carrier bills. Corrugated walls make them different by a quarter inch or more per axis.

Leave the exterior blank and the interior is used instead, so dimensional weight comes out too low.

Padding is space kept for void fill against every inside wall, so each dimension loses it twice: 0.25 padding turns 12 into 11.5.

Padding is set per carton; the default is your organization’s setting. Saving fails if padding would use up any inside dimension.

A rectangular item has six orientations. The lock sets which are allowed. If two sides are equal, duplicate orientations are tried once.

FLAT puts the shortest axis up, UPRIGHT the longest, and THIS_SIDE_UP keeps the cataloged height vertical.

stackable: false means nothing may rest on the item. maxStackWeight is the most weight that may rest on it; 0 means no limit.

A placement is rejected if it would overload any item anywhere below it.

nestIncrement is the height each extra unit adds when units slide into one another. A stack of k units packs as one block, height + (k − 1) × nestIncrement tall.

maxNestQuantity caps the units in one stack. Leave it empty and the carton’s size and weight limit decide. THIS_SIDE_UP keeps a stack upright.

Nothing is placed on a fragile item. It is packed late, but still goes on the carton floor when there is room.

Set fragile on the item, or send fragile: true on an order line for that order only.

Bags, mailers and envelopes have no rigid cavity, so they are checked by volume instead of 3D placement. Contents may use fillFactor of the cavity’s volume, and the bag may grow up to maxBulge taller.

The 3D view shows one way the contents fit, not an exact bag layout. Every flexible carton carries a warning saying so.

Dimensional weight is the parcel’s outer volume divided by the carrier’s divisor. Carriers bill the higher of dimensional weight and gross weight.

The default divisor is 139 in³ per lb, or 5000 cm³ per kg. Change it in settings, or per request with dimWeightDivisor.

Or set carrier to use that carrier’s rounding, minimums and limits; see Carriers.

On Pro, Business and Enterprise, strategy 6 (group-clustered) packs lines with the same groupKey, such as a kit or BOM set, one after another.

A group can still split across cartons, and the result then carries a warning. If one carton holds the whole order, it is used rather than splitting a group. keepGroupsTogether: false turns off the warning and this rule.

Items whose keepApart values differ never share a carton, such as Firearm and Ammunition. An item with no value shares with either.

With allowMultipleCartons: false, the items that cannot join the one carton are left unpacked, with the reason.

length runs along x, height along y, width along z. Down is −y.

A placement’s position is its bottom-back-left corner, measured from the bottom-back-left corner of the cavity inside the padding.