Database Driven Packaging Design and Manufacturing Software

Impact is the packaging industry’s most versatile program for the design of paper-based packaging, point of sale displays and production tooling. Whether you’re an independent or a multi-national enterprise; involved in short run or high volume production; work with solid board, in corrugated or in plastics; Impact has all you need to set your company apart from the competition.

The Designers' Choice

Impact is the system of choice for a growing number of the world’s leading packaging and display manufacturers who understand that the key to successful structural design is differentiation and innovation. Packaging and point of sale displays need to communicate the brand owner’s message effectively, which is why Impact bundles come complete with the packaging industry’s most automated and powerful features for structural design, product development and virtual 3D sampling. Together these features provide designers with all the tools they need to deliver creative solutions that meet the combined demands of structure, product and environment perfectly.

Impact features a set of fully interactive drawing tools as well as a wide range of reusable design components, which make the creation of custom drawings much faster than with any other packaging design software. Impact design components are parametrically driven and feature built-in intelligence, which includes the ability to automatically re-size when positioned. Large and comprehensive libraries of pre-programmed, reusable parametric design styles are also included to enable speedy drawing and sample turnaround. Impact standard libraries include corrugated (FEFCO), folding carton (ECMA), point of purchase display, rigid paper composite and media wallet variations.

Impact’s automatic layout feature is capable of calculating one, or multiple, interlocking nesting patterns simultaneously to ensure maximum on-press efficiency and minimum material waste. This feature keeps track of material type and flute/grain direction to ensure that packaging designs maintain the correct orientation when added to a sheet.

Structural design is as much about experimentation as it is imagination, and Impact’s powerful 3D features enable users to combine both. 2D to 3D conversion is quick and easy and Impact’s advanced technology allows the production of realistic 3D prototypes.
Impact supports the importing of a wide range of industry standard 3D solid objects, the creation of custom 3D product shapes, and the production of video animations.

The Diemakers' Choice

Impact’s world renowned diemaking features are borne out of Arden Software’s intimate knowledge of the manufacturing process and capable of delivering all the automation, speed, and accuracy a diemaker needs for the production of high quality flatbed and rotary dieboards, strippers, counters, blankers and ejection rubber parts. No other CAD/CAM application comes close to matching the range, power and flexibility of Impact’s diemaking toolset, so it’s little wonder that it’s the number one choice amongst the world’s diemaking community.

Customisable tool settings enable customer specifications to be stored and re-used for maximum productivity and guaranteed quality control. As a result, the process of turning a production layout into a die board is fully automated, and very fast, because it features the simultaneous positioning of stripping knives, balance knives, alignment notches, mounting holes, gripper fingers, and laser text. Impact includes an extensive range of pre-defined machine settings from all of the industry’s leading press manufacturers, such as Bobst and Sanwa. Machine settings are fully customisable, which means that users can easily add their own variations.

Impact’s automated stripper feature incorporates sophisticated routines that facilitate the fast design of male, female, and front edge strippers. A single click operation locates and replicates offset geometry for internal and external waste areas and automatically sends the separated data to the relevant layer in the Impact project.

An intelligent mix of automation and manual control is applied to the production of counter plates. Customisable parameters determine the support of partial cuts, reverse cuts and creases, embossing, tool angles and widths, treatment of periphery and chamfer, and location of mounting pin holes. Impact incorporates advanced editing and nesting features for the creation of ejection rubber parts and is capable of controlling virtually any form of rubber cutting technology.

Features and benefits

The industry’s most powerful and only fully integrated database, delivering maximum performance in virtually any network environment including LANs, WANs and VPNs

Supports SQL and Oracle

Interactive drawing toolset that enhances usability and boosts productivity

Extensive library of reusable parametric designs styles for optimal drawing and sample turnaround including corrugated (FEFCO), folding carton (ECMA), point of sale displays, rigid paper composite and CD/DVD wallets

Drag and drop design components that reduce design time

Advanced 3D modeling and animation tools for fast prototyping and enhanced innovation in presentation

Powerful and efficient layout and tooling design features created by people who understand diemaking

Fully integrated COM interface building technology

Maximum scope to streamline inefficient workflows through integration with enterprise wide business systems

Extensive range of industry standard, data interchange options, for maximum interoperability with third party software applications and machinery