A PACKOUT stack earns its keep when every tool has one home and you can see a missing tool at a glance. This guide covers the layout thinking — what goes in organizers, what goes in drawers, how to group by job — and how custom inserts cut from a photo of each tool make the layout stick.
The most common PACKOUT mistake is sorting like a catalog — all drills together, all batteries together — when you actually work in kits. Build each case around a job: the install kit (drill, impact driver, bits, batteries), the plumbing kit, the electrical kit. When a case opens and everything for the next hour is in it, the stack is doing its job. Tools you reach for across every job — a tape, a knife, a multi-bit driver — belong in the case you open first, every time.
Loose tools in a bin rattle, wear against each other, and hide what's missing. A custom insert replaces the rattle with a pocket shaped to the tool itself: the tool drops in one way, sits still in transit, and an empty pocket tells you instantly what got left on the bench. That "shadow board" effect is the whole point of organizing with inserts instead of foam you have to re-cut every time the kit changes.
The daily-driver case. One or two compact tools with their batteries — an impact driver like the 3453-20 or a cut-off tool like the 2522-20 — laid flat, bits along the side. Keep it light: this is the case that leaves the truck on every call.
Room for a two-tool kit with chargers and spares: a drill such as the 2904-20 paired with an impact wrench, batteries standing in their own pockets at one end so the heavy end stays balanced.
Drawers are for tools you grab without unstacking: ratchets like the 2457-20, a soldering iron like the 2488-20, meters and testers. One drawer per trade kit, labeled by the job, not the contents.
The open tray takes the odd shapes — a rotary hammer like the 2508-20 that won't sit flat in a shallow organizer. A walls-only insert keeps it located without eating the tray's depth.
Every case above is a real measured blank in the builder — the insert is cut into the actual interior shape of that case, taper and floor ribs included, so what you download is what drops in.
Batteries and big tools at the bottom of the case and over its center. A case that carries balanced gets carried more.
Orient every tool so the grip faces the lid hinge side you open from. One-motion grabs, no rotating tools in the pocket.
Batteries stored loose migrate and short against metal. Give each pack — 48-11-2420, 48-11-1850 — its own pocket, in every orientation it might sit.
One open corner or a simple shape pocket for the thing you didn't plan: the borrowed tool, the odd fitting, tomorrow's addition.
Cut-in pockets cradle daily drivers. Walls-only rings locate occasional tools while keeping the case light and the layout easy to change.
You don't need CAD to get these pockets. Photograph each tool flat with a sheet of paper or AA batteries beside it, and MakeMyInsert measures and traces the outline, checks it against the manufacturer's published size for that part number, and cuts it into the case blank you picked. The full method is in photo to insert, step by step and the photo guide. Download the STL and print it yourself, or have Mesh3DLab print the finished insert and ship it.