How Finishes and Top Shapes Print on Your Documents

Decode every finish notation MonuDesk prints, so you can check a document before it reaches your vendor or the family.

Written By Dennis Rodin

Last updated 7 days ago

Every MonuDesk PDF prints the monument's finish, but not always in the same words. This article decodes every form you will see, so you can check a document before it goes to a vendor or to a family.

Finishes are set in Step 3: Items & Configuration, on the Monument tab, in the Finish & Polish card. Each face has its own dropdown, Front Finish, Back Finish, Top Finish and Edges Finish, with the choices Polished, Honed, Steeled, Sawn and Rock Pitched. What you pick there decides which of the forms below prints.

The short codes, and when you get one

When the four faces match a standard combination exactly, the document prints the trade code instead of listing every side:

  • P5: front, back, top and edges all Polished.

  • P3: front, back and top Polished, edges Rock Pitched.

  • P2: front and back Polished, top and edges Rock Pitched.

  • S5, S3, S2: the same three shapes with Steeled in place of Polished.

The preset buttons above the finish dropdowns set all four faces for you in one click.

Why you sometimes get a breakdown instead of P2 or P3. A 2 or a 3 code claims that the faces it does not name are rock. MonuDesk only prints those codes when the unnamed faces really are Rock Pitched, or were left blank. Set the edges to Steeled on an otherwise-P3 stone and the document prints the per-face breakdown instead. That is deliberate: printing "P3" would have told your vendor to rock-pitch an edge you wanted steeled. P5 and S5 have no unnamed faces, so they always print as the code.

Two more codes appear on flat (flush) markers, describing the marker itself:

  • PFT: a flat marker with a Polished top.

  • PFT/BRP: a flat marker with a Polished top and Rock Pitched edges. BRP is balance rock pitched.

Flat markers have a finish slider of their own, and it covers the top and edges only. A flat marker has no separate front and back face to finish, so those two are not offered on it.

On the base row the code is PFT / BRP, printed when the base front, back and edges are Rock Pitched and the base top is Polished. The base preset buttons are PFT / BRP and AP (all polished).

Two further trade codes are available: PFT BRP and STL BRP. Either one can be picked on the base finish slider, on the flat marker finish slider, and on an inventory item, and each prints on your documents as that code.

Turn on Polished Margin and the width rides along inside the code: PFT / BRP ( 2" PM ). A Sub-base row repeats whatever the base finish is.

Gotcha: the margin suffix only attaches to PFT / BRP. If you set the base with AP or by hand and switch the margin on, the documents show the base finish but no PM note. Put the margin in Order Notes so the shop and the vendor still see it.

The wizard also shows a P1 preset, but only on Bevel Marker stones (polished top, everything else rock pitched). P1 is not one of the codes the PDFs print, so a P1 bevel prints the per-face breakdown described next.

Everything else prints face by face

Any finish that is not one of those codes prints as a labeled breakdown, so the shop and the vendor can tell which finish goes where:

F: Polished | B: Steeled | E: Sawn | T: Honed

The key is F front, B back, E edges, T top. A few details worth knowing:

  • Flat markers and bronze markers only carry E and T. Those types have no separate front and back finish, and the wizard hides those two dropdowns.

  • Faces you left blank are dropped from the line. A stone with only the front filled in prints F: Polished and nothing else, rather than padding the line with placeholders.

  • Long lines reflow. If the Finish column is too narrow, the breakdown wraps to two pairs per line, and to one pair per line if it is narrower still.

  • Nothing filled in at all prints Not specified. Finish is an optional field, so this is normal on an early quote. Fill it in from Edit Order and generate the document again.

What happened to "Custom Finish"

MonuDesk used to collapse anything that was not a recognized code into the words Custom Finish, which told the shop that the finish was unusual but not what it actually was. On customer documents that label is gone: the quote, invoice, contract and receipt now print the real per-face breakdown. The shop ticket keeps Custom Finish as a last resort, and only for a finish that is neither a recognized code nor a breakdown it can label.

If you are looking at a PDF that still reads Custom Finish, it was generated before the change. Open the order and generate that document again; the new copy carries the breakdown.

The Purchase Order speaks the vendor's language

The Purchase Order is the one document that renames the faces, because that is how stone vendors read a spec:

  • Slant and bevel markers: Top, Face, Sides, Back. Face is the sloped front, Sides is the shared edge finish. The bottom is not listed, because a slant or bevel bottom is always sawn.

  • Flush (flat) markers: Face and Sides only. Here Face is the top surface.

  • Rock Pitched is spelled out in full. Other documents shorten it to Rock.

  • Uprights keep the P and S codes, but the PO spells the balance out: P2 / BRP and P3 / BRP. P5, S5, S3 and S2 print unchanged.

  • The base row is not renamed. It still reads PFT / BRP or the F/B/E/T breakdown.

Tick Generate in all caps at the bottom of the Purchase Order popup and every value on the PDF, finish included, prints uppercase. Some sandblasters require that.

The purchase-order email reads the same way: when you email a PO to a vendor, the email's line-item summary is built from the same rows as the attached PDF, so its Material & Size and Finish values match the document.

Where a finish appears on each document

The same finish can appear in up to three places, in three different forms:

  • The item table. Every document with a Finish column shows it: invoice, quote, contract, receipt, shop ticket, and purchase order. The Foundation Order is the exception. Its table is Item, Size and Type, with no finish column at all.

  • The Additional Details box on the invoice, contract and quote. It adds a Finishes: line per stone, but only when the finish is not a clean short code (a P5 already reads in the table), and only when the order has no drawings attached. Once a drawing is on the order, the drawing pages take that space and the finish reads in the item table only.

  • The Order Details box on the Shop Ticket, written out per face as Upright: F Polished | B Polished | E Rock | T Polished and a matching Base: line. This grid prints Not specified for a face you left blank rather than dropping it, so your shop can see what is still missing. For a single stone with a clean short code the block is skipped entirely, because the table already says it. On a multi-stone order every stone appears, at least as its code, so no stone reads as missing.

The Receipt carries the finish in its item table only. Its Additional Details box holds inscription content, never finishes.

Top shapes print behind the finish code

The Top Shape picker appears for Upright stones only, in the same Step 3 monument configuration. The options are Flat Top, Serp Top, Triangle Top, Oval Top, Wave Top, Double Heart, Apex and Custom.

On documents the contour is printed in the Finish column, right behind the code, so the shape and the finish read together:

  • With a short code it sits inline: P5 Serp Top.

  • With a per-face breakdown it drops onto its own line underneath, so the cell does not wrap mid-phrase.

Shapes print exactly as the order labels them. Serp Top stays Serp Top; MonuDesk does not rename it to Serpentine.

Custom top shapes: when you pick Custom, a box appears reading "Describe the custom top shape". Whatever you type there is what prints on the documents. Leave it empty and the shape prints as the bare word Custom, which tells your shop nothing. Always type the shape name.

Fixing a finish that reads wrong

Nothing on a generated PDF can be edited in place. Open the order, click Edit Order, correct the faces in Finish & Polish, save, then generate the document again and use the new copy.

If you expected a code and got a breakdown, check the face you were not thinking about. For P2, P3, S2 and S3 the faces the code does not name must be Rock Pitched or blank; a stray Sawn or Steeled on the top or edges is enough to switch the document over to the full per-face list.

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