What a cut list optimiser does
Steel bar, pipe, angle and timber come in standard lengths; sheet, plate and plywood come in standard panels. A job needs dozens of pieces in odd sizes. Cut them in the order they appear on the drawing and you end up with a rack of short offcuts and one more bar on the invoice than you needed. The optimiser tries many ways of grouping the pieces and keeps the plan that uses the least stock.
Blade width matters
Every cut turns a few millimetres of metal into swarf. A 3 mm blade taking seven cuts from a bar removes 21 mm, which is often the difference between the last piece fitting and not. Enter your blade or kerf width and the plan allows for it between every pair of pieces. If the stock ends are rough or painted, add a trim and that much is taken off each end before anything is laid out.
Reading the result
Each drawing is one bar or one sheet. Coloured blocks are your parts, labelled with their size; the hatched area is what is left. Identical layouts are grouped, so “× 4” means cut four bars the same way. Under the drawings is a plain cut list to tick off at the saw, and the result can be printed or saved as a spreadsheet file.
Common questions
Is the plan the best possible? For bars, the tool tells you when the plan uses the fewest bars that any plan could. Finding the perfect answer for every list would take longer than anyone wants to wait, so in the hardest cases the plan may be a bar or sheet over the theoretical minimum; it says so.
Can parts be turned on a sheet? Yes, unless you untick “can turn” for a part, which you would do for brushed metal or wood grain that must run one way.
What units can I use? Any. Type every size in the same unit and pick that unit so the labels read correctly. Decimals such as 48.5 are fine.
Are the sheet cuts straight through? Yes. Every layout can be cut with a guillotine, panel saw or track saw making edge-to-edge cuts.