Cut List Optimizer — Free, No Signup, Instant Cutting Plans

Stop Wasting Material — Let an Algorithm Do the Math

Every furniture workshop knows the frustration: you draw up a cut list for a kitchen with 120 parts, grab a pencil, and start sketching layouts on the back of a delivery note. An hour later you think it fits on 14 sheets — then you discover one part was forgotten and you need a 15th. The offcut bin overflows, the material bill creeps up, and the margin you quoted to the client shrinks.

A cut list optimizer — also written cutlist optimizer, or cut list optimiser in British English, and searched for as a cut list calculator or cutting list calculator — eliminates that entire process. You paste your parts — names, widths, heights, quantities — choose your stock sheet sizes, and the nesting algorithm returns a labeled cutting diagram (often called a cut sheet or cutting plan) in seconds — which is why the same tool also goes by sheet optimizer or cut sheet optimizer. No pencil, no guesswork, no wasted sheets.

CutOptim is a free online cut list optimizer built for professional woodworkers and DIY builders alike. It handles hundreds of parts, multiple board sizes, blade kerf deduction, grain direction constraints, and exports production-ready PDF diagrams you can hand to the saw operator.

How Much Material Can You Save?

That depends on the job, so here is one measured job instead of a promise. Ten base cabinets and six wall cabinets in 18 mm white melamine — 90 carcass parts, 21.34 m² of parts — cut from 2800 × 2070 mm sheets with a 3 mm kerf, run through the same optimizer as the calculator above:

Four sheets is the area minimum: no layout can do it with three. On the 2440 × 1220 mm (4 × 8 ft) size the same job needs 9 sheets, against an area minimum of 8. Your own jobs will land elsewhere; our published benchmarks show how close the optimizer gets to the minimum across 1,200+ public test jobs.

This Calculator vs. the Full App

The calculator above is a quick check: sheets, parts, kerf, a layout. When the job is real, open it in the full app — the parts and sheets you typed here come with you, nothing to retype. The app adds:

• PDF and CSV export of the cutting diagrams, with no account.
• Inches and centimetres as well as millimetres (this calculator works in mm).
• Cut counts and total cut length, plus a Which sheet? comparison that runs your list on every sheet size you buy.
• With a free account: part labels, the cutting sequence, Excel, DXF and SVG export, material-specific runs and an offcut inventory.

How to Optimize Your Cut List — Step by Step

1. Paste or type your parts list

   Enter each part with its name, width, height, and quantity. Working from a spreadsheet? Copy the rows from Excel or Google Sheets and paste directly — CutOptim auto-parses tab-separated and CSV data. No reformatting needed.

2. Choose your stock sheet sizes

   Add one or more stock sheet dimensions from your supplier. Common EU sizes: 2800 × 2070 mm (Egger, Kronospan) and 2440 × 1220 mm. Got leftover offcuts? Keep them in the Offcut inventory — with Use off-cuts automatically on, they are used before new sheets.

3. Set blade kerf and grain direction

   Enter your saw blade kerf (3 mm for a standard panel saw, 0 mm for CNC with compensation). For veneered or patterned boards, untick rotation on the visible parts (the R column here; in the app, the Grain icon at the end of each row) so the face pattern stays consistent.

4. Click Optimize and review

   The algorithm arranges every part across the minimum number of sheets. Each piece is labeled on the visual diagram. Review waste percentage, total sheet count, and the cut sequence.

5. Export for the workshop

   Download a PDF with labeled cutting diagrams (with a free account: add your company logo), a CSV summary for costing, or a DXF file for direct CNC import. Print it, hand it to the saw operator, done.

Standard EU Sheet Sizes — Quick Reference

Not sure which stock size to enter? Here are the most common panels available from European suppliers:

Outside Europe, the common panel is 4 × 8 ft (2440 × 1220 mm, entered as 96 × 48 in in the app’s inch mode); 5 × 5 ft (1525 × 1525 mm) is the usual Baltic birch size.

Who Uses a Cut List Optimizer?

Cabinet makers and kitchen fitters

A standard kitchen has 15–30 cabinet boxes — each box needs a top, bottom, two sides, a back, and often a shelf. That is 100–180 parts from melamine or plywood. Without optimization, workshops buy 2–3 extra sheets “just in case” and throw away the surplus later. With CutOptim, you know the exact count before you place the material order. Parts from two concurrent projects can even share sheets when schedules allow, squeezing every square centimetre out of your stock.

Furniture manufacturers and batch producers

Desks, bookcases, wardrobes — batch production means repeating dimensions. The optimizer groups identical parts and rotates them for the tightest fit, often saving a full sheet on every 10-unit batch. Save the project (Pro), and when the next order comes in, reload it, adjust quantities, re-optimize — done in under a minute.

Shopfitters and exhibition builders

Tight deadlines and premium materials (acrylic-faced MDF, fire-rated panels at €80+/sheet) make waste reduction critical. Import the cut list from your CAD export, optimize, and send the labeled PDF to the CNC operator. No back-and-forth, no ambiguity.

DIY builders and home renovators

Even a single built-in wardrobe with 15 parts benefits from optimization. The cutting diagram tells you exactly how many sheets to buy before you drive to the hardware store — preventing the dreaded second trip for “one more board.”

Pro Tips for Better Cut List Results

• Account for edge banding. Edge tape is glued onto the cut edge, so it makes the part larger. If your list holds finished sizes, cut the panel smaller by the tape thickness on each banded edge — a 600 mm finished part with 2 mm tape on both ends is cut at 596 mm.
• Keep leftover offcuts in the Offcut inventory. Save usable offcuts from previous jobs there rather than typing them in as extra stock sheets. With Use off-cuts automatically on, the optimizer packs parts onto them before opening a new sheet; a piece you move into the stock table with ↑ is starred and used first, never more than its quantity. A leftover typed in as a stock row is used first only with Limited supply and a ★ — with Unlimited supply it counts as a size you can buy again.
• Save your projects. Pro users can save and reload projects in the cloud. When a client changes quantities or you need to recut a damaged part, just update the list and re-run — no re-entry needed.
• Use labels consistently. Name your parts clearly (e.g., “Cab-01 Left Side”, “Cab-01 Shelf”). The labels appear on the PDF cutting diagram and make assembly straightforward.

Free vs. Pro — What Do You Get?