by Cage Contractor Pro
Send anyone who can read a tape.
Cage Layout Pro turns a guided field measure into a complete shop cut sheet for common pool cages and screen enclosures.
Every bar. Cut lengths to the sixteenth. Angles. End cuts. Punch marks. Hash marks.
Built by a working Florida cage contractor with more than 20 years in the business and five crews in the field.
What's new
Live in Cage Layout Pro now.
- Easy entry for Layout: one question a page, big buttons.
- Whole-wall picture windows with posts, including where the header follows a gable end.
- Every angled-front roof: mansard, half mansard, reverse half mansard, gable, gable A, dome and gable → mansard — standard or picture-window front.
The bottleneck
Measuring is not the hard part. Layout is.
Someone who can read a tape can measure a cage.
The hard part comes afterward: working out every length, angle, end cut and punch location without missing something that sends the shop or field crew backward.
Good layout people are hard to find. They are expensive to replace. When every job has to pass through one person, that person becomes the ceiling on how many cages the company can build.
Cage Layout Pro moves that calculator work into a repeatable process.
Your measurer follows the sheet. The software calculates the layout. Your shop gets the cut sheet.
Three reasons to use it
Send anyone who can read a tape.
The guided measure sheet walks the measurer through every number the layout needs, including measurements people commonly forget.
Take layout off the bottleneck.
Get every bar, cut length, angle, end cut and punch mark without waiting for one person to calculate the entire cage by hand.
Correct measurements without paying twice.
Fix the number and run the same cage again. You pay once per cage, not once per run.
What your shop gets
A field measure goes in. A shop cut sheet comes out.
The finished cut sheet includes:
- The roof plan with the walls folded out around it
- Every bar
- Cut lengths to the sixteenth
- Short-point and long-point marks
- Angles and end degrees
- Punch marks and hash marks
- A complete cut list
It will not print a shop sheet while a post is still unmeasured or the deck's squareness has not been checked, and every sheet checks itself before it prints.
How it works
Draw the deck.
Click out the deck shape in the browser. It does not have to be drawn to scale.
Tape it.
The guided measure sheet walks the measurer through every number the layout needs.
It asks for easy-to-miss measurements, including reading the soffit twice: once at the ground and again at the fascia.
The job is saved as the measure progresses, so it can be picked up where it left off.
See the price.
Before you commit, the software shows the layout's named complexity tier and total price.
No surprise invoice. No unexplained multiplier.
Get the cut sheet.
Cage Layout Pro calculates the bars, cut lengths, angles, end cuts, punch marks and hash marks your shop needs.
Print the finished cut sheet straight from your browser.
Correct it without paying again.
If a field measurement was entered incorrectly, correct it and re-run the same cage free.
You are charged once per cage, not once every time the software runs the layout.
A man who hesitates to re-run a layout is a man shipping a cage he knows is wrong.
Roof styles
Cage Layout Pro lays out these cages. Each one has a checked example cage that prints clean.
| Deck shape | Roofs | Training cage |
|---|---|---|
| Four square sides (a box, square or a few inches out) | Mansard · half mansard · reverse half mansard · gable off the house (the fascia gable) · gable A (hipped ends or gable ends) · dome · mansard with a carry beam across it | T-1, T-2, T-10, T-11 (mansard) · T-5 (half mansard) · T-12 (reverse half mansard) · T-6 (gable) · T-7 (gable A) · T-8 (dome) · T-13 (carry beam) |
| An angled front (a standard or picture-window front) | Mansard · half mansard · reverse half mansard · gable · gable A · dome · gable → mansard | T-15, T-16 (gable) · T-17 (half mansard) · T-19 (reverse half mansard) · T-20 (gable A) · T-21, T-23 (dome) · T-22 (gable → mansard) |
| A corner cut | Mansard | — |
| An L, or a house wall that jogs | Mansard · mansard with a carry beam Where the house steps: a cap tie and two jacks, with one valley bar at the inside corner. Want that corner built another way? Ask us. | T-3 (jogged house) · T-4 (L) |
| A U (the house steps out into the cage) | Mansard | — |
Walls: screen walls, chair rails, picture windows and doors. A combination the engine has not been built for stops with the reason.
Not yet: any roof but mansard or a carry beam on an L or a jogged house; a corner cut; a gable A slope over 200"; a picture window in part of a wall on a transition or carry-beam cage; on a dome end, a part window with a rafter header (a level header works). Cage Layout Pro names the cage and stops before a price, and you are not charged. Gable A with one gable end and one hip end: the 3D Designer draws it, but Cage Layout Pro does not lay it out yet — it stops before a price, and you are not charged. Gable A with two gable ends, or two hipped ends, lays out.
Real cut sheets
Page 1 of the shop sheet, straight from the engine: the drawing and every length. The customer line reads "MEASURED CAGE".
Checked cages
What was taped, and the cut list the engine made from it.
Deck shapes
Wall styles
Choose the construction wall by wall:
- Standard screen walls on posts with chair rails
- Clearview walls without chair rails
- A picture window across a full wall, using a header on 4x4 legs
- Picture windows in part of a straight wall, under a gable or a dome too (not yet on a transition or carry-beam cage)
- Screen transoms standing on the gutter
- Picture-window transoms standing on the gutter
- Eave returns closing the wall under the soffit back to the house
Wall styles can be mixed on the same cage. A cage can have a picture-window front with clearview sides, for example.
Real field conditions
Cage Layout Pro accounts for:
- Uneven decks, using laser readings at every corner and post so the post tops land level
- House walls that lean in or out, using readings at the top, chair rail and bottom
- Different gutter heights on different sides of the house
- Tall walls checked against the 156-inch screen roll using the actual opening and member sizes
- Narrow bays that can be screened sideways
- The engineer's member schedule, with member sizes set for the whole cage, one line or one piece
Unsupported designs
The software does not pretend it can lay out every cage.
If the design is not supported, Cage Layout Pro tells you what stopped the layout. It refuses the job instead of handing your shop a sheet based on a guess — and you are not charged for it.
If there is a cage style you need regularly, contact Curtis to discuss adding support for it.
Contact CurtisPricing
Pay for the calculator work.
Every layout receives a named tier based on the number of distinct lengths and angles that must be calculated.
Standard
$100A normal cage. The same numbers repeat through most of it.
Cut up
$200Angles, jogs and many individual numbers.
Custom
$300Heavy custom work. The most any cage costs.
One flat price per cage. No square-footage charge. No cage costs more than $300.
With the Estimator and the Designer on the same job: 15% off. The material takeoff is free with a layout.
See all pricingWhy it is priced this way
Square footage does not do the calculator work.
A plain 4,000 sq ft cage may repeat the same lengths and angles across most of the job.
A cut-up 2,000 sq ft cage can have angled walls, jogs and individual pieces that each require their own calculation.
Every contractor knows which one takes longer to lay out.
That is why Cage Layout Pro prices the calculator work, not just the size of the cage.
Pricing was calibrated on 237 real completed cage layouts from a working Florida cage company.
Built in the cage business
I have spent more than 20 years running a licensed Florida aluminum and screen-enclosure company. Today, I run five field crews.
I did not build Cage Layout Pro because cage layout looked like an interesting software problem. I built it because layout is the bottleneck in my own business.
The measuring can be taught. The calculator work is where the time, experience and risk live.
So I built a process that collects the measurements, calculates the layout and gives the shop a cut sheet it can use.
Cage Layout Pro was built by a working contractor, not a software company.
Who it is for
Pool-cage and screen-enclosure contractors who have more cages to build than their layout person can keep up with; want measurements collected the same way on every job; need shop cut information without calculating every piece by hand; want to send a less-experienced employee to measure without asking that employee to lay out the cage; want to see the price before committing to a layout.
Who it is not for
Cage Layout Pro is not an engineering service, a replacement for your engineer or permitting process, a sealed plan or permit set, or a promise to lay out every possible custom cage.
Common questions
Is the cut sheet an engineered drawing?
No. It is a shop layout and cut sheet. Engineering and permits remain with the contractor and the contractor's engineer.
What happens if a measurement is wrong?
Correct the measurement and re-run the same cage free.
A correction is free within 14 days of the charge, when it is a measuring fix: the same cage, with no more than 5 side or height readings changed in all, none of them by more than 24 inches. Changing a gutter or a member size is also free. More than that is more than a measuring fix: email [email protected] and tell us what happened — we look at each one. A different cage on the same job is a new layout.
Made an honest mistake that falls outside that, such as a number written down backwards? Email [email protected], tell us what happened, and we will look at it and can reset the correction for that cage.
What happens if the design is unsupported?
The software names the unsupported condition and stops instead of guessing. You are not charged for it.
Is my company's data separate from other contractors?
Yes. Every customer's data is completely separate from every other customer's data. That separation has been tested.
Take layout off the bottleneck.
Send anyone who can read a tape. Follow the measure sheet. See the price. Get the shop cut sheet.
Start a layoutCage Contractor Pro
Cage Layout Pro, the 3D Designer and the Estimator share one account and one job. See the whole platform.
Cage Layout Pro produces shop layouts and cut sheets. Its output is not an engineered drawing, sealed plan, permit set or statement of code compliance. Engineering, permitting, structural design, field verification and all required approvals remain the responsibility of the contractor and the contractor's engineer.
Cage Layout Pro supports specified cage types only. Unsupported designs are identified by the software rather than calculated. Contractors must verify all field measurements and review every cut sheet before ordering, cutting or fabricating material.