How to Reduce Waste in Printing with Smart Nesting
Real-world tips for wide-format printers
Smart nesting is more than just squeezing shapes together. For a real print shop, the best layout balances efficiency with clarity: prints must be easy to cut, label, and deliver. This article explains how smarter nesting strategies, supported by tools like Total Print, can help you reduce waste while keeping production smooth.
Look beyond a single job
Many operators think about nesting on a job-by-job basis, but waste often appears when several small jobs are printed separately. By viewing a group of compatible jobs together, you can create combined layouts that use more of the roll and cut down on offcuts. Total Print makes it easy to explore these grouped layouts before you commit to a print run.
In the Artboard Layout Calculator inside Total Print, you can drag multiple PDF, AI, PSD, PNG and JPG files into a single project, set copies per page, and choose a roll width and spacing. The app then uses its MaxRects-based nesting engine to build one combined roll layout and reports total printed area, roll length needed and how many pieces were placed.
Respect cutting and finishing
An aggressively nested layout is useless if the finishing team cannot cut it cleanly. Smart nesting keeps realistic gaps between items, aligns groups to make trimming easier, and considers labels or barcodes where needed. When planning layouts, think about the person at the cutting table and how they will handle the job.
Measure and learn from your waste
The first step to reducing waste is to measure it. Track how much media is left on each roll and where offcuts are created most often. Over time you will notice patterns: certain product sizes always leave the same leftover strip, or some materials are regularly underutilized. With a layout tool like Total Print you can adjust your standard sizes or quantity breaks to better match your most efficient layouts.
Turn nesting into a repeatable process
Instead of treating every layout as a one-off puzzle, aim to build a repeatable process: choose preferred roll widths, define typical spacing, and document how you group common product types. Total Print supports this with dedicated desktop calculators for roll area, roll capacity and artboard layouts, plus a Saved Calculations page where you can revisit previous area and capacity jobs and apply the same nesting logic to future orders.
By combining consistent nesting habits with the right planning tools, wide-format print shops can lower material costs, simplify production, and deliver more predictable results to their customers.