Garment Spec Sheet: What It Is, Spec Sheet vs Tech Pack, and How to Export One

A garment spec sheet is the page of a tech pack that carries the numbers: one line per measurement, a code shared with the sketch, one value per size, the tolerance the factory may deviate by, and a note that says how to measure. People say spec sheet and tech pack as if they were the same thing; they are not, and the confusion costs samples. This article says what a spec sheet is, how it differs from a tech pack, what a good one contains, and how to export one from your tech pack as a PDF, for free, in the studio.

What a spec sheet is

The spec sheet, or specification sheet, is the measurement document of a garment. It lists the points of measure, chest width one centimetre below the armhole, centre back length, sleeve length, shoulder width, and gives each one a value per size. The values from one size to the next are the grading. Beside each value sits a tolerance, the margin the factory is allowed, usually half a centimetre to one and a half depending on the measurement and the fabric. A note per line says how to measure, flat, seam to seam, from the highest point of the shoulder, so that two people get the same number.

The spec sheet is what the pattern maker cuts from and what the quality controller checks the sample against. If a measurement is missing, the factory guesses; if a tolerance is missing, the factory decides; if the measuring note is missing, two people measure two different things.

Spec sheet vs tech pack

A tech pack is the whole file a factory needs to make a garment: header and style identity, description and construction notes, the flat sketch with its callouts, the bill of materials, the colourways, the finish and packing notes, and the spec sheet. The spec sheet is one section of it, the measurement section.

So the difference is scope. A spec sheet alone can be enough to remake a garment the factory already knows; a tech pack is what you send for a new style, or to a new factory. In practice, the two words travel together: the callouts on the flat sketch carry the codes of the spec sheet, CH for the chest width, SW for the shoulder width, so that the drawing and the table describe the same garment. Read what a tech pack is for the full document, section by section.

What a good spec sheet contains

• A code and a name per measurement, the same code as the callout on the sketch.
• One value per size, in the sizes you actually sell, XS to XL, 34 to 44, or numeric.
• The tolerance, per line, in the unit of the table.
• The measuring note, per line, for anything that can be read two ways.
• The unit, centimetres or inches, chosen once for the whole table and printed with it.
• The date and the revision, so the factory and you talk about the same version after the sample.

What it should not contain: prose. A spec sheet is a table; the explanations belong in the construction notes of the tech pack.

How to make one, and export it

In the tech pack studio of The New Black AI, the spec sheet is the Sizes, measurements and grading section of every pack. You can fill it by hand, or start the pack from photos of the garment and let the AI draft it: it proposes the measurements and standard grading for the type of garment, and your fit is yours to correct, cell by cell. Add a row adds a measurement and its callout on the sketch; the unit is set once for the table.

Exporting is free and unlimited: Preview shows the document as it prints, page by page, and Export as PDF builds the file. The spec sheet comes out as a table with the codes, the sizes, the tolerances and the notes, ready to send. Two tech packs are free to build by hand; every plan makes them unlimited and opens the AI draft and the AI review.

The mistakes that cost a sample

• Values without tolerance: the factory sets its own.
• A measurement in the text and not in the table: it is not checked.
• Codes on the sketch that do not match the table.
• Grading copied from another garment with a different fabric.
• Inches on the sketch, centimetres in the table.

Run the AI review before sending: it reads the whole pack like a factory would and lists exactly these.