What it is
The European catalogue of standard corrugated-board box designs: each has its own code — 0201, 0203 and so on. A shared language between the packaging customer, the technologist and the program.
How we use it
For a cardboard packaging manufacturer we built a die-line library for styles 0200, 0201 and 0203 with blank nesting on a sheet, and restored a catalogue of 325 FEFCO designs with drawings, search and a filter on its website.
Where it helps a business
- A plant receives an order as inner box dimensions and must know the blank size exactly.
- Spreadsheet calculations produce errors that surface only at cutting.
- Customers look for a box by FEFCO code or an everyday name on the manufacturer's website.
How we use it
- Calculation in code. For a cardboard packaging manufacturer we built a C++17 library: from inner dimensions, board thickness, glue flap and flap gap it calculates the blank for styles 0200, 0201 and 0203, the outer dimensions, volumes, and nesting on a corrugated sheet with a 90° rotation. Example: a 300×200×150 mm box in 3 mm board, style 0201, gives a 1047×356 mm blank, and a 2000×1200 mm sheet fits 5 of them using about 77.7% of the area.
- A catalogue on the website. In the move of a cardboard packaging manufacturer's sites to WordPress we restored a catalogue of 325 FEFCO designs with die-line drawings, nine groups, and search by code, everyday names and dimensions.
Common problems
- The creasing allowance. The calculation sets it equal to the board thickness; that is an approximation checked against a specific plant's tooling.
- Not every style at once. Other types, including 0427 and self-assembly boxes, are planned; nesting is still a simple grid that ignores knife width.
When you do not need it
If a plant works with one or two standard boxes whose sizes never change, a separate calculation library is overkill.