Area-based pricing
Glass, mirror and panel merchants do not price per piece — they price per unit of area. The customer brings a size, the shop multiplies it by a rate per square foot or per square metre, and quotes the total.
CutOptim has always worked out the area for you. Area-based pricing does the multiplication as well, so you stop reaching for a calculator once per piece.
2D Panel only. Area is the trade measure for sheet goods. A bar or a length of timber is sold by the running metre, so the control is hidden in 1D Linear and Wood mode.
Set it up once
- 1
Turn it on
Open More in the left sidebar. Area-based pricing is a switch in the top group, next to Material-specific mode and Edge Banding — it is off by default, and once you switch it on it stays visible there even after you collapse More, so an active setting is never hidden. Switching it on reveals the price columns, so the rates have somewhere to land, and the Material column, because the rate lives on a material. And because the rate lives on a material, it also switches on Material-specific mode: the Material-specific toggle lights up, every stock and part row must carry a material, the optimizer packs each material separately, and the job will not run until every row has one.
- 2
Open the Material inventory
Use the 📦 button above the stock table. This is where your materials live: brown glass, clear glass, 18 mm oak — whatever you actually stock.
- 3
Put the rate on the material
Press the ⚙ button on a material's row. Two fields appear: Selling price per area and Purchase price per area. Type your rate. The label shows the unit you are working in — /ft² in inch mode, /m² in millimetres and centimetres.
- 4
Assign the material to your rows
In the parts table, pick that material in the Material column. Do the same on the stock rows if you want the board cost filled in too. This is the step people miss: the rate lives on the material, so a row with no material has no rate.
- 5
Read the prices
Each part's Selling price is now worked out from its own width × height. Each stock sheet's Material price comes from the board size. Change a size and the price follows.
Once a material carries a rate it keeps it. Tomorrow’s job is step 4 onwards.
The two rates, and what each one fills
The rate belongs to the material, not to the job — brown glass and clear glass are different prices, and they stay different from one order to the next.
| Field on the material | Fills | Which is |
|---|---|---|
| Selling price per area | the part’s Selling price | what you charge the customer, per finished piece |
| Purchase price per area | the stock sheet’s Material price | what the board costs you, from its own size |
Fill in one, the other, or both. An empty rate is not zero — it means this material says
nothing about that side, so nothing is filled in and whatever you typed yourself is left alone. A
rate of 0 is a real answer, and CutOptim treats it as one.
Do not confuse the parts table’s two money columns. Price/pc is an extra cost you incur per finished piece — machining, edge banding — and it never appears on the customer quotation. Selling price is what you bill. Area-based pricing fills the second one.
A worked example
A glass shop quotes brown glass at 395 per square foot. A customer wants a piece 38.4″ × 24.5″.
- Area: 38.4 × 24.5 = 940.8 in²
- In square feet: 940.8 ÷ 144 = 6.5333 ft²
- Price: 6.5333 × 395 = 2580.67
Set the rate once and that is the number in the Selling price column — for that piece and for every other piece of brown glass on the job.
If you do this by hand, do not round the area first. Rounding 6.5333 to 6.53 before multiplying gives 2579.35 — short by 1.32 on a single piece, and it drifts further across a multi-piece order. CutOptim carries the full value and rounds only the final price.
The purchase side works the same way from the board’s own size: a 2440 × 1220 mm sheet is 2.9768 m², so at a purchase rate of 120 per m² its Material price fills in as 357.22.
Rates and units
The rate is typed in whatever unit you are working in, and the field label always says which: /ft² in inch mode, /m² in millimetres and centimetres.
Those are two ways of writing the same rate — 395 per square foot is 4251.74 per square metre. So switching units re-labels the field and re-states the number, but never changes a single price. Your dimensions convert; the money stays put.
A price you typed is yours
Auto-filling stops the moment you type in a price field yourself. From then on that row is yours:
- resizing the piece does not overwrite it
- changing the material’s rate does not overwrite it
- clearing the field hands the row back to the calculator, which fills it in again
That is on purpose. A negotiated price, or one rounded to something you are willing to say out loud, is a decision — and losing it silently on the next size tweak would be worse than showing a stale number.
On your quotation and exports
The rates a plan was priced with are printed in the How we optimised summary on both the PDF and the Excel export, so a customer can check area × rate rather than take the total on trust.
The rate is recorded when you run the job, not when you print it — so a plan you cut last week still shows the price it was quoted at, even if you have raised your rates since.
The per-piece selling prices themselves are what the Quotation PDF bills in its per-product mode. See Quotation PDF for that document.
It switches on Material-specific mode
A rate lives on a material, so area pricing only means something once every row carries one. Switching it on therefore also switches on Material-specific mode: the Material-specific toggle lights up, every stock and part row must carry a material, and the optimizer packs each material only against stock of the same material. That does change the layout, and the job will not run — you get “Select a material for every row” — until every row has a material assigned. Switching area pricing off again leaves Material-specific mode as it is; turn that toggle off yourself if you no longer want it.
What it does not do
Being explicit, because these are the reasonable assumptions people make:
- If you want price to decide the layout — which boards are chosen so you spend the least — that is the separate Minimize cost goal in Settings, not this. Area pricing fills in numbers; Minimize cost changes the plan for money.
- It does not apply discounts, minimums, tiered rates or waste surcharges. One rate per material, multiplied by the real area of the piece.
- It does not price offcuts or waste. It prices the parts you asked for.
- It is not available in 1D Linear or Wood mode.
If a price does not appear
| What you see | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| No price columns at all | Show price columns is off — or turn on Area-based pricing, which reveals them |
| No Material column to pick from | Area-based pricing is off. Turning it on reveals the column and switches on Material-specific mode |
| The toggle is missing from the sidebar | You are in 1D Linear or Wood mode; it is 2D Panel only |
| The run is blocked with “Select a material for every row” | Area pricing switched on Material-specific mode — assign a material to every stock and part row, or switch area pricing off |
| Some rows priced, others blank | The blank rows have no material assigned in the Material column |
| A whole material’s rows are blank | That material has no rate — check the ⚙ panel on its row |
| One row will not update | You typed in that field earlier, so it is yours; clear it to hand it back |
| The rate looks ten times wrong | Check the field’s unit label — /ft² and /m² are different numbers for the same price |
Area-based pricing needs an account and is free on every signed-in plan, Free included — the same as the price columns and the Material inventory. Guests are asked to register. The customer Quotation PDF is the one part that is Workshop-plan only.