Guide
Everything the optimiser can do, setting by setting. For what happens under the hood, see how it works.
Settings
Kerf / blade width
The material your saw turns to dust on every cut. Typical drop saw blades eat 2 to 3 mm; thin metal discs 1 to 2 mm; an 1/8" blade in inch mode is just 1/8. The plan allows one kerf between every pair of parts. Leave at 0 for shears or snap cutting.
Trim both ends
For stock that arrives rough, painted or out of square. Every length gets one blade width taken off both ends before parts are measured, and the allowance shows in the saw-waste numbers.
Unit
Mostly a label: use any unit consistently. The exception is inches (fractions), which lets you type 15 3/4, 3/8 or 1' 3 3/4 in any field, and shows results and PDFs as fractions too.
Min useful offcut
The shortest leftover you'd keep. Set 300 and a 450 mm remnant is reported under "offcuts after this job" instead of waste, with the true-waste stat excluding it. 0 counts every leftover as waste.
Material groups
Mixing materials that must not share bars? Switch on and tag stock, offcuts and cuts with material names; each material is optimised separately inside one plan, and results come back grouped.
Angle / miter cuts
For mitered ends. Each cut gets left and right angles (bottom angles; a top angle goes in as a negative: 120 and -60 are the same cut). Give the material width and axial symmetry, and matching mitres nest so one saw cut makes both edges.
Optimisation methods
Five methods, and they are not five flavours of the same answer: each one minimises a different thing, so the same job comes back cut a different way. The question is what the job is costing you. Money? Material? Rack space? An afternoon at the saw?
Balanced ★
Buys the fewest bars, and only reaches for an offcut when doing so saves a purchase. Where identical layouts can be merged for free, it merges them.
Pick it when: you don't have a reason to pick another. It is the default for a reason.
Least waste
Minimises material lost rather than bars bought: the offcut pile and the sawdust, taken together. It will leave your rack offcuts untouched if using them would make the total worse.
Pick it when: the material is dear and the offcuts are worth keeping whole. Expensive alloy, hardwood, anything you'd rather store than skip.
Use offcuts first
Empties the rack before it touches new stock, accepting a little more waste to do it. The scrap you already paid for gets spent before the scrap you haven't.
Pick it when: the rack is overflowing, or the offcuts have been sitting long enough that they're about to become someone's problem.
Cutter's Dream
The same bars, rearranged for the person holding the saw. Identical lengths are grouped so a run comes off one setup, repeated patterns collapse into one, and every bar is laid out longest to shortest. It never buys more stock than Balanced; occasionally it accepts a little more waste to save you a setup. On our 960-piece benchmark job it cut the setups from 147 to 102, on the same 315 bars and the same waste.
Pick it when: the cutting takes longer than the buying. Big repetitive jobs, or anyone paid by the hour.
Cheapest ($)
Minimises dollars, which is not the same as minimising bars. Choosing it reveals a price column on your stock rows; price each length and it will happily buy more bars if the cheaper ones come out ahead.
Pick it when: your supplier sells several lengths at prices that aren't proportional, which is most suppliers. Nothing else here optimises money, on purpose.
Stock, offcuts and cuts
Stock you can buy
One row per length your supplier sells. Leave qty empty for unlimited supply, or set it when only so many are on hand.
Offcuts you already have
Free lengths on your rack: never counted as purchases, used only when they help. The ★ marks items to use up first whenever plans are otherwise equal.
Required parts
Every piece with a quantity and an optional label; labels follow the parts onto results and PDF cutting sheets.
Paste list (bulk import)
Alt+P or the Paste list button: one cut per line as length quantity label. Two columns copied straight from Excel work as-is, or paste multi-line text into any length field.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Tab past a row's last field | adds the next row |
| Enter in any field | jumps down the column, adding a row at the end |
| Alt+N | add a cut row |
| Alt+P | open the paste-list panel |
| Ctrl/Cmd+Enter | calculate |
Results and exports
The plan
Stock to buy (with costs when priced), yield and true waste, offcuts after the job, and every layout drawn to scale with kerf marks and hatched waste. Compare runs the other strategies side-by-side.
Share links
Copy link produces a URL that opens the plan on its own page, with an "Open in calculator" button. The whole job travels inside the link; nothing is stored on our servers.
PDF cutting sheets
Page 1 is a job summary for whoever pays for the steel; the following pages are for the saw, with cut positions from the end of the bar, piece labels, and a tick box per bar.
CSV and history
CSV exports purchases, layouts and stats for quoting sheets. Your last 10 plans stay on this device under History, reopening with form and results together.