Send anyone who can read a tape.

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

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.

Layouts have also been checked against real engineered CAD drawings of cages.

How it works

1. Draw the deck.

   Click out the deck shape in the browser. It does not have to be drawn to scale.

2. 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.

3. See the price.

   Before you commit, the software shows the layout's named complexity tier and total price.

   No surprise invoice. No unexplained multiplier.

4. 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.

5. 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 currently lays out:

• Mansard roofs with corner jacks and down purlins
• Half mansard roofs, including hips down one or both sides
• Reverse half mansard roofs
• Gable roofs with the ridge placed where the job requires, including different eave heights and optional wind bracing
• Dome roofs with beams following the curve
• Gable-to-mansard transitions
• A carry beam splitting a large cage into two sections

If a design is not supported, the software identifies it by name and stops instead of guessing.

Deck shapes

Cage Layout Pro currently handles:

• Rectangular decks, with beams running either way
• Out-of-square decks where a wall kicks out on an angle
• L-shaped cages with inside corners
• Jogged house walls

For out-of-square work, the bays are split from the actual field measurements and each angled cut receives its degree.

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
• 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.

Pricing

Pay for the calculator work.

Every layout receives a named tier based on the number of distinct lengths and angles that must be calculated.

For cages larger than 2,000 sq ft, add $0.15 per square foot over 2,000 sq ft.

The median cage comes in at about $300.

Why 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.

Take layout off the bottleneck.

Send anyone who can read a tape. Follow the measure sheet. See the price. Get the shop cut sheet.

Open a company account by October 31, 2026, and receive 50% off your first three pay-as-you-go layouts. One offer per company account. Use all three discounted layouts within 30 days of opening the account.