How to Make a Factory-Ready Tech Pack

Published: 12/24/2025

If you’re on a fast-moving ecom team—say $5–$20M/year, a lean design team (2–5 designers), and you’re dropping product constantly—tech packs can turn into a bottleneck fast.

Not because you don’t know what you’re doing… but because the workflow is messy:

measurements in one place
callouts in another
Illustrator files floating around
“final_final_v7.pdf” getting emailed back and forth
factories asking the same questions because they’re staring at the wrong version

That’s exactly why we built AI Tech Packs: not just to generate a tech pack, but to make the whole thing editable, factory-friendly, and version-proof.

Watch the full video walkthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To7V1CiwbJA

What you’ll learn in this walkthrough

Here’s the exact workflow I show in the video:

Generate a tech pack from front/back images
Add anchor measurements, materials, and size ranges
Edit flat sketches, measurement lines, and placement callouts
Clean up your BOM and generate artwork references
Add colorways (and keep order info consistent)
Fix global issues (like cm vs inches) using Tech Pack Mama
Share the tech pack with a factory using a live link (no version confusion)
Export to PDF, Excel, and Illustrator when you need to

Quick definition (for anyone new here)

A tech pack is the document your factory uses to produce your garment—measurements, construction notes, materials, callouts, and colorways. AI Tech Packs is tech pack software that helps you generate and edit all of that in one place, with AI layered on top so your team moves faster without losing clarity.

Who this workflow is for

This is for:

Fast-growing DTC / ecommerce brands
Teams doing a lot of SKUs and iterations
Design teams who need a tech pack system that doesn’t collapse under speed

If you’re shipping weekly/bi-weekly and juggling multiple styles at once, this will feel familiar.

Step 1: Upload clean front + back images

The best AI outputs come from clean inputs. I always start with:

a clean front image
a clean back image

Then I add the text data that matters:

the core measurements I already took (anchor measurements)
material details (fabric, composition, trims, etc.)
size range (XS–XL, etc.)

Why anchor measurements matter: they give the tech pack structure. Feed the system 2–3 strong reference points and everything becomes easier to generate—and easier to sanity-check.

Then I hit Generate.

Step 2: Skim the generated tech pack PDF (always)

Before I touch anything, I flip through the generated PDF.

I’m not reading like a lawyer. I’m scanning like a designer:

Does the tech pack look structurally right?
Are measurements showing up in the right sections?
Any obvious errors (wrong units, missing callouts, weird crops)?

This 60-second scan saves you from editing the wrong thing.

Step 3: Use Tech Pack Mama to verify and fix issues fast

Once I’m ready to edit, I open Tech Pack Mama.

Tech Pack Mama is basically a chatbot that understands the entire tech pack. It can:

verify whether the tech pack followed your rules
catch inconsistencies (units, rounding, missing notes)
make edits across multiple pages
regenerate visuals when you need updates

In the walkthrough, I ask her to verify the tech pack followed what I requested:

I provided custom measurements
I added material details

If something’s off, I can either:

have Tech Pack Mama fix it automatically, or
do it manually

In this example, the output was mostly correct—just small rounding/cleanup suggestions.

Step 4: Edit the flat sketch (regenerate, tweak, move on)

A common situation when you’re moving fast: the tech pack is fine, but the flat sketch needs a tweak.

Inside the flat sketch editor, you can:

confirm sample size (ex: if measurements were taken in XS, set sample size to XS)
regenerate the sketch using prompts
download SVG/PNG if you want to touch it up elsewhere
upload your own flat sketch if you already have one

Version history is built in, so you can experiment without fear. If a regen is worse, revert instantly.

Step 5: Adjust measurement lines (AI helps, you stay precise)

Here’s something I love: the app will hide measurement lines when it detects they’re inaccurate.

Instead of leaving messy lines in your tech pack, you get a clean base… and then you can:

unhide a line
drag endpoints to the correct spots
clean it up visually

If a measurement line is missing, you can draw it—and it automatically links to your measurement table.

This matters for production because it keeps spec + visual aligned.

Step 6: Placement guides & callouts (make the factory understand you fast)

This section is where you win or lose with a factory.

In AI Tech Packs, you can:

reposition callouts (drag/drop)
crop from garment to get clean detail images
regenerate the placement guide background if you need to show a new feature

In the walkthrough, I add a left chest pocket using a prompt so the background matches the flat sketch. Then I add a new callout by:

hovering where I want it
clicking
editing the callout info and crop

It’s quick. And it stays clean.

Step 7: BOM cleanup + artwork references

Fast-growing brands are always adding trims, swapping materials, and updating details mid-cycle.

In BOM, I noticed duplicate items (example: “main fabric” repeated). I delete one.

Then I add the new pocket as a BOM item—and generate an artwork reference image for it.

You can generate artwork references for every BOM item you care about, which makes the tech pack more factory-friendly without extra manual work.

Step 8: Fix units across the entire tech pack (without reading everything)

This is the kind of thing that kills time: one section says inches, another says centimeters.

Instead of manually hunting through the entire document, I ask Tech Pack Mama:

“Find any references to centimeters and change them to inches.”

She flags changes and asks for confirmation before applying them. That’s exactly the kind of cleanup AI should do for you.

Step 9: Add colorways without rebuilding the tech pack

For ecommerce brands, colorways are constant. Tech packs are rarely “one and done.”

In the color sheet page, I ask Tech Pack Mama to add variants:

red
blue

She updates visuals and relevant fields. If something bugs out (like order sheet values), you can do it manually:

add color
update the SVG color
“fill all”

Then the system suggests Pantone + HEX codes, and you choose whether to apply them.

That’s the vibe: AI helps, but you’re always in control.

Step 10: Export options (PDF, Excel, Illustrator)

Sometimes you need to work outside the platform—totally normal.

AI Tech Packs supports:

PDF export
Excel export (easy copy/paste edits)
Illustrator plugin (Studio Plan) that opens a layered, deconstructed file

The Illustrator file is what you’d expect:

everything separated into layers
editable measurement lines
full control if you prefer Adobe

How to send a tech pack to a factory (without version confusion)

This is one of the biggest pain points for growing brands: factories working off outdated PDFs.

Instead of sending files back and forth, AI Tech Packs gives you a Share to Factory link.

That link:

always shows the latest version
acts like a lightweight webpage the factory can read
includes purchase/order overview
allows factory comments
can be password protected
tracks views + time spent reading

Factories can still download the PDF from the link—but the key is: you’re not sending “final_final.pdf” anymore. You’re sending one link that stays current.

Organize tech packs at scale (30, 40, 100+)

Most teams don’t have 3 tech packs. They have 30… 40… 100.

So we built collections:

bulk add tech packs
color code collections
track status through production stages
create custom statuses (QC, Sampling, Approved, etc.)

It’s basically a production pipeline for tech packs—not a file cabinet.

Templates (we don’t do classic templates — here’s what we do instead)

People ask this all the time: “Do you support templates?”

Not traditional templates.

But here’s what teams actually do in real life:

duplicate the tech pack
update it into a variation

That’s exactly the workflow inside AI Tech Packs.

In the walkthrough, I duplicate a tech pack and tell Tech Pack Mama:

“Make this a red-only version.”

She updates images and text. I review. Accept or reject. That’s the loop.

Common tech pack mistakes this workflow prevents

If you’re moving fast, these are the mistakes that sneak in:

wrong units (cm vs inches)
missing or unclear callouts
duplicate BOM items
flat sketch not matching the actual design
colorways not reflected in order sheet info
factories working off the wrong PDF version

This workflow is basically designed to kill those problems.

TL;DR: built for speed and control

If you’re a fast-growing ecom brand, you don’t need “a tech pack generator.” You need a system where tech packs are:

fast to create
easy to edit
easy to share
impossible to version-confuse
flexible for constant iteration

That’s what AI Tech Packs is.

Full video walkthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To7V1CiwbJA

If you want to follow along: start with a clean front/back image + 2–3 anchor measurements, then generate and iterate from there.