Six steps, from a list of parts to a diagram on the wall
This is the whole application. There is no seventh step and nothing hidden behind a menu. The screens below are drawings of what each step looks like, using the kitchen carcass job from the examples so the numbers join up.
Enter the parts you need
Open a new list and type the parts. Label, width, height, quantity, and a grain setting if the part needs one.
Type the parts you have, not the parts you have to cut. Eighteen identical carcass sides are one row with a quantity of 18. A whole kitchen is usually four or five rows.
If you already have the list somewhere, in a spreadsheet or a quote, it will import a CSV with those columns in any order.
Enter the sheets or lengths you have
Add your stock. A sheet size, a material name, and how many you have. Leave the quantity open and the layout will tell you how many you need, which is what you want when you are quoting.
Add any offcuts worth using, with a note saying where they are. Those get used before a new sheet is opened.
If you are cutting lengths rather than sheets, put in a stock length and no width. The same solver handles it.
Set the blade, the trim and the grain
Three numbers. The kerf is the width your blade takes out. The trim is the band around each sheet you refuse to use. The grain direction says which way the figure runs on the sheet you buy.
These are saved with the material rather than the job. If you run one saw and buy one kind of board, you set them once ever.
There is also a minimum offcut size, which is the smallest leftover piece worth putting back on your stock list.
Run the layout
Press the button. On an ordinary job the answer comes back in well under a second, and on the largest job on this site it is still under a second.
You get the sheet count, the yield, the waste, and a comparison with the last time you ran this list, which is the number that tells you whether the change you just made was worth making.
It also tells you how many of your offcuts it managed to use before opening anything new.
Check it and change what you do not like
Look at every sheet. The four checks worth making are in reading a cutting diagram, and they take about two minutes.
If you want a part somewhere else, drag it. If a part will not fit where you have put it, it says so rather than quietly overlapping something.
The most valuable change is usually not moving a part. It is changing a part size by ten millimetres and running it again to see whether the last sheet disappears.
Print the diagram
One sheet per page, portrait, parts labelled with their finished sizes, and a cutting list summary on the last page.
Print it. Do not read it off a screen at the saw, because a printed page can be written on, ticked off and handed to somebody else, and a screen cannot.
Save it as a PDF instead if it is going to somebody else, or export the parts list as a CSV if it is going into a quote.
How long the whole thing takes
Measured on the six jobs written up in the examples, from opening the application to a printed diagram.
| Job | Parts | Typing | Solving | Checking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flooring lengths | 81 | 2 min | under 1 s | 3 min |
| Oak sideboard | 14 | 10 min | under 1 s | 15 min |
| Marine ply launch | 28 | 10 min | under 1 s | 12 min |
| Acrylic letters | 41 | 20 min | under 1 s | 3 min |
| School workshop | 216 | 25 min | about 1 s | 6 min |
| Kitchen carcasses | 108 | 26 min | under 1 s | 4 min |
Typing is the slow part and always will be. It is also the only part that gets faster, because every one of those lists was saved and the second job in the same shape takes four or five minutes end to end.
Read on
What each setting means, and the jobs these steps were used on.