Changelog · Creasekit Box

All user-visible changes to Creasekit. Newest first. Format: one line per change, grouped as Added / Changed / Fixed / Removed.

Unreleased

Added

New website design: works on phones, tablets, laptops and large iMac screens, follows light and dark mode, shows the panel in both Illustrator themes, and has full search and sharing details (sitemap, social card).
The 3D preview prints your artwork on the folded box (select the dieline, then switch the preview to 3D), closes the box step by step, and has Open lid / Close lid to see how it opens and closes.
Settings page: default units and bleed for new boxes, usage stats, licence key, log level (Normal or Detailed) and Copy log for support.
The plan badge shows the trial days left (“Trial · 12 days left”).
3D preview: switch the Preview card to 3D to see the box fold up from the dieline, then drag to turn it (double-click resets the view).
Update artboard as I type (Pro): with a dieline selected, tick the box and the dieline on the artboard follows your sizes as soon as you stop typing.
Project foundation: product plan, design guide, pricing, privacy and logging policy, website plan, decisions log.
Box engine with the three v1.0 box types: Straight tuck end, Reverse tuck end and Roll-end mailer (Auto-lock bottom and Tray are also built, ready for v1.1).
Every dieline has Cut, Crease, Bleed, Safe and Dimension lines; the knife line uses the print-shop spot colour CutContour.
Every box knows its named panels (Front, Back, Top lid…), which way up each one prints, and where the glue goes, ready for live resize, preflight and the panel guide.
Material-thickness compensation (type inside sizes; crease-to-crease sizes are worked out), switchable per box.
Plain-English size checks, e.g. “Height must be at least 2 × tuck flap depth (40 mm)”, shown in mm, inches or points.
Thumb notches on tuck boxes; safe areas keep clear of them.
Live resize engine: artwork follows its panel when the box size changes (keep size, scale with panel, pin to edge; wrap-around backgrounds follow the whole box) and items that no longer fit are flagged.
Packaging preflight engine with 9 checks: crosses a fold, in glue area, outside safe area, missing bleed, text too close to a crease, text too small, hairline stroke, RGB colour, barcode quiet zone.
Illustrator plug-in (Mac, Apple silicon and Intel) with the Creasekit Box panel (Window › Creasekit › Box): pick a box type from tiles, type sizes in mm, inches or points with instant inline error messages, see a live preview, and click Create dieline. The dieline is drawn as real paths on Cut, Crease, Bleed, Safe, Dimensions and Panel guide layers with spot colours, as one undo step.
The panel follows Illustrator’s four brightness levels and switches live.
Live resize from the panel: select a Creasekit dieline, change its sizes and click Apply resize. The dieline is redrawn and every artwork item follows its panel; items that no longer fit are selected for you. One Undo restores everything.
Packaging preflight from the panel: Run preflight lists problems such as text over a fold, missing bleed or tiny text; click an issue to select it and jump to it.
The Panel guide layer names every panel (Front, Top lid, …) turned the way it prints, and the Dimensions layer shows the measurements as numbers.
14-day Pro trial on first launch, no account needed; then the Free plan (straight tuck end, fold and bleed checks) unless a licence key is activated in the panel’s “Licence and privacy” section.
Opt-in anonymous usage stats: the panel asks once; only the fields listed on the privacy page are ever sent, and switching it off deletes anything not yet sent.
“Copy log for support” copies the last 500 log lines to the clipboard.
Box type and sizes are saved inside the .ai file, so selecting a dieline later brings its sizes back into the panel.
Local log file at ~/Library/Logs/Creasekit/creasekit.log (never sent).
creasekit-svg preview tool: draws any box type at any size as an SVG, with panel guide labels and glue areas, plus a live resize before/after and a preflight demo.

Fixed

After Create dieline and after Apply resize the panel now really stays on that dieline, so changing a size and clicking Apply resize resizes it instead of making another dieline. The new dieline is now really selected on the artboard (before, Illustrator dropped the selection a moment later).
Switching the preview to 3D with artwork on the box no longer crashes Illustrator.
Panel names and dimension numbers on the dieline no longer end with a hidden extra character.
Typed sizes were sometimes not picked up inside Illustrator, so Create dieline used the default sizes and the preview did not change. Every keystroke is now caught, and the sizes are read again on Create.
Changing units (mm, inches, points) now works inside Illustrator.
The plug-in now loads in Illustrator 2026 (“Plugin issues detected” is gone): the bundle includes the resource map Illustrator requires.
Development builds no longer need a company code-signing certificate.
The Box panel’s placeholder message is visible again (it was laid out off screen).
Panel colours now meet WCAG AA in all four brightness levels (status text, secondary text and the teal button).

Changed

A licence now works on one Mac at a time. On another Mac, Settings offers “Move licence to this Mac” (up to 3 moves in 30 days). The licence is checked when Illustrator starts and every 6 hours; offline, Pro keeps working for 7 days.
New prices, subscriptions only: Pro $29 a month or $299 a year, Studio $1,399 a year for 5 people. There is no lifetime licence.
The Box panel follows the new approved design: box drawings on 76 pt tiles (Auto-lock and Tray shown as “Soon”), an “Inside sizes” hint, a calmer mm · in · pt switch, field captions above each field, a preview card with face names, a “this way up” arrow, flat size and a line legend, and clearer preflight results (“3 issues to fix”, one row per item with its face, “Ready to print” with what was checked).
A disabled main button now says why underneath (“Fix the height above to create the dieline.”, “Change a size to resize this box.”).
After a resize the panel says how many items moved; “2 need attention” selects just the items that no longer fit.
On the Free plan, selecting a dieline explains that live resize is part of Pro and offers “Create as a new box” instead.
Licence key, usage stats and “Copy log for support” moved into Settings (the ⋯ button in the header). Messages show in the panel, not in pop-ups.
“Update artboard as I type” is now the Live switch in the “Editing the selected box” strip.
After Create dieline or Apply resize the dieline stays selected, so the panel shows Apply resize straight away. Click empty canvas to start a new box.
The usage-stats tick box is now drawn by Creasekit, like the other controls.
Tidier Size section: a small mm · in · pt switch next to the heading, Length, Width and Height on one line, Thickness and Bleed on the next, and a fixed-height preview so the panel is much shorter.
Product plan: Creasekit Box now leads with live resize, packaging preflight, and panel guide (print-shop profiles in v1.1). v1.0 box types reduced to Straight tuck end, Reverse tuck end, and Roll-end mailer.