What is Mechanical Cubed?
Mechanical Cubed is a comprehensive software solution designed for artists and production teams to create mechanicals with enhanced accuracy and efficiency. It facilitates the tracking of preflighting and workflow information through customizable slugs, automates the addition of crop and fold marks for direct mail and collateral, and enables the construction of out-of-home and in-store advertisements to scale. The tool integrates seamlessly with design workflows, allowing for intuitive entry of live, trim, and bleed measurements while automatically updating related information across documents.
This software supports various job ticket integrations, extracting data from PDF forms, Excel spreadsheets, relational databases, or Workfront to pre-fill mechanical setup details. It ensures consistency by automatically updating document elements, slugs, and marks whenever modifications are made, reducing setup time and minimizing errors in production processes.
Features
- Slug & Preflighting: Automatically updates with preflighting information like inks, links, fonts, and document details
- Mechanical Setup: Allows modification of sizing, workflow information, and marks with automatic updates to documents and slugs
- Resizing: Converts between scaled and actual document sizes for out-of-home and in-store ads
- In-Store & OOH: Displays scale ratio, scaled size, and actual size in slugs for accurate ad building
- Collateral & DM: Calculates fold mark positions for direct mail and collateral, with automatic reversal on second spreads
- Job Tickets: Integrates with PDF forms, Excel spreadsheets, databases, or Workfront to pre-fill mechanical setup data
Use Cases
- Creating mechanicals for advertising campaigns
- Building out-of-home and in-store advertisements to scale
- Designing direct mail and collateral with automated fold marks
- Tracking workflow and preflighting information in design projects
- Integrating job ticket data to streamline mechanical setup
