Overview
This article will provide information about how to place foldable/compressed items into a box for space savings.
BlackBox supports efficient packing of products that are larger than your available container sizes by allowing you to define compression attributes on a per-product basis. This feature is particularly useful for items like pillows, duvets, or other flexible products that can be folded or compressed to reduce their size for shipping. By specifying how much a product can be compressed (for example, reducing its length by 50%), BlackBox applies this adjustment during the packing process and fits the item into the most suitable container.
Requirements
- BlackBox 5.1.9 or higher.
- At least one container large enough to fit the compressed product.
Product Information
To enable this feature, define the compressionlength, compressionwidth, or compressionheight attributes for your product(s) in the <products> section of your XML request.
When an item's dimensions exceeds your available containers, setting a compression attribute tells BlackBox that the product can be folded or compressed to fit. For example, a pillow that is normally 6 units long, but can be folded in half, would use compressionlength="50".
Sample XML: <products> <product productid="PL0002|EA|76543886|" length="6" width="3" height="3" compressionlength="50" weight="0.20" turnable="true" flatok="true" sideupok="true" endupok="true" bottomonly="false" toponly="false" maxinlayer="90" nofitems="1" type="Box" useorientations="false" deletewithload="true" defaultgroup="1"/> </products>
NOTE:
-
compressionlength="50"means the product can be reduced to 50% of its original length during packing. - If the product is still too large after compression, BlackBox will be unable to pack it. There is no dedicated "overflow" container feature; compression is the only way to force fit.
Assistance
If any further assistance is needed, please contact our Support team.
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