Cutting Sequence

Cutting Sequence turns a finished plan into an ordered sawing plan: the exact order in which the cuts should be made at the machine, one step at a time. Rather than handing an operator a static diagram and asking them to work out the order themselves, the sequence walks through the job cut by cut, highlighting the active cut on the layout as the operator progresses.

The feature is designed for production environments — a panel saw, a table saw, a chop saw, a cross-cut station. Operators follow the sequence step by step, advancing only when the current cut is complete.

Why Cut Order Matters

On paper, any cut order that produces the correct pieces might seem acceptable. In practice, cut order has a significant effect on safety, accuracy, and material handling.

Panel stability during cutting. When cutting large sheets, the sequence determines how much unsupported material is hanging off the saw at each step. Cutting the sheet into roughly equal halves first — rather than slicing thin strips from one edge — keeps the offcut balanced and reduces the risk of binding or kickback.

Offcut handling. If a large offcut piece is separated from the sheet last, it may be difficult to handle safely. An ordered sequence ensures large sections are broken down early so they remain manageable at every step.

Stop positions instead of arithmetic. On a bar the risk is different: nobody has to decide what to cut next, but somebody has to work out where to stop. Adding part lengths and kerfs in your head, twenty times down a six-metre bar, is exactly where the error creeps in. The plan does that arithmetic once and gives you a number you can set on a stop.

Operator accuracy. Operators working from a static plan must track which cuts have already been made and decide what comes next. That mental load increases the chance of cutting the wrong piece or cutting in the wrong direction. Cutting Sequence eliminates the ambiguity by showing exactly one fence setting at a time.

Training new staff. A step-by-step sequence is far easier to follow for inexperienced operators than a full cutting diagram. New staff can be productive sooner when they can follow the visualisation rather than interpret a technical drawing.

The Plan on a Sheet (2D Panel)

A 2D plan is guillotine-based, so it has a cut tree, and the tree has an execution order.

• A step is one fence setting (by default, see Cut order): all collinear cuts at the same coordinate that the saw makes in the same pass are grouped together. Where a setting makes several cuts across different strips, the readout and the table say so with a · N passes marker, for example · 2 passes, and each pass is numbered with a letter: 3a, 3b.
• Steps run stage by stage. A stage is a run of parallel cuts between two turns of the material; every cut of a later stage sits below only earlier-stage cuts in the tree, so following the sequence can never ask an operator to cross-cut a strip before it has been ripped off the board. Within a stage, a step is also never listed before the step that holds its parent cut, so a step can never name a part that is still attached.
• Every step names the cut direction — horizontal or vertical — and the position of the cut in your working unit.
• Sheets are completed one at a time, and every sheet is numbered 1 to n on its own — in the table, the step readout, the PDF and the Excel tab — the same as on the PDF work pages, so step 3 means step 3 of the sheet in front of you. Shop-mode ticks are not affected.
• If the calibration cut is switched on, it is step 1 on every board, marked · Calibration.

Passes: 3a, 3b

When one fence setting makes the same cut across several strips of the sheet, it is one step — you set the fence once — but several passes of the blade. A step like that is labelled · 2 passes (or 3, 4 …) in the table, the player, the PDF sawing plan and the Excel tab, and each pass carries a letter:

• On the drawing — on the PDF work page and in the Excel work-sheet picture, every pass of such a step carries a number: 3a, 3b and so on, in a pill-shaped badge. A plain single-pass step keeps its plain number.
• In the Result column — it says what each pass frees: 3a → 27 · 3b → 28 on screen and in Excel, 3a: 27 · 3b: 28 in the PDF (the PDF font has no arrow). A pass that frees nothing is left out. Two parts that come off at different passes are therefore never read as one cut freeing both.
• In the player — the readout names the sheet, the step out of the sheet’s total, the direction, the position, the passes and the Result, for example Sheet #9 · Step 3/21 — vertical 24in · 2 passes · 3a → 27 · 3b → 28.

Cut numbers keep clear of each other. A cut-number badge that would land on another cut-number badge — or, in the PDF, on a part number — slides along its own cut line: outward when the cut starts at the sheet edge (never past the edge of the drawing), inward along the cut otherwise, and a short leader line ties it back to the cut. Badges that collide with nothing stay where they were. On a very crowded spot a badge that finds no free place nearby keeps its usual place, and a sheet with more than 45 steps numbers only the first two stages, as before.

Per Fence Setting or Per Pass

The Cut order setting — Settings → More → Cut plan & machine, 2D only, on every plan — decides how the plan lists collinear cuts:

• Per fence setting (panel saw) — the default. Cuts in one line across several strips are one step (3a, 3b), as a panel saw makes them with one setting.
• Per pass (circular or track saw) — every cut is its own step. A circular or track saw makes each strip as a separate cut, so a plan of 21 steps becomes 23.

Changing it only redraws the sawing plan. The layout is not recomputed and no run is used — the message The plan is already up to date still holds. The setting is saved with the project and the cut. The list of steps changes with it, so shop-mode ticks start afresh after a switch. See Settings.

The Plan on a Bar (1D Linear and Wood)

A bar has no cut tree — it is cut end to end — so the plan is not derived from a tree, it is the running offset: after each part the blade drops at that mark, then advances by the kerf.

The steps on each bar, in the order the operator makes them:

1. The calibration skim, if it is switched on. On a bar it always comes off the head — the start of the bar.
2. The start-trim head cut, if a start trim is set.
3. One step after each part — except a last part that finishes flush with the usable end of the bar when there is no end trim, because there the bar simply stops and no pass is needed.

What a bar step shows. Every step gives a stop position measured from the head of the bar — a number you can set on a stop, not a part length to add up — together with the bar number and the name of the part that cut frees. Head passes name the pass itself (Calibration, Start trim) and leave the order column blank, because they free no part.

What a bar plan does not have. There is no stage number and no cut direction: a bar is crossed the same way every time, and it is never turned. Those columns simply are not there.

Cut length in 1D Linear is opt-in. 2D measures the blade path from the cut tree and Wood knows the cross-section of every material, so both report a sawn length without being asked. Linear stock carries no section, so by default it reports positions and no length — rather than printing a figure that would be a guess.

Supply the missing number and you get the length too: Profile width — Settings → More → Blade & trim, shown in 1D Linear only — is how wide the material is that the blade crosses on one cut. Set it and the sawn length appears on the results header, in the run summary, in the framed key figures under the PDF sawing plan, and in the Excel Cutting Sequence tab. Every counted cut crosses the profile once. Left at 0, the default, nothing changes. If one job mixes several cross-sections, a single width cannot describe it — use Wood mode.

The step count equals the Cuts figure

On a bar every step is one pass, so the number of steps and the Cuts stat in the results header are the same number, in every combination of settings. Measured on the built-in demo job: 29 steps against 29 cuts with no trim; 39 and 39 once a 20 mm start trim is added; 49 and 49 with the start trim and the calibration cut both on. The head passes are real passes that the Cuts figure has always charged for, so listing them is what keeps the plan and that number describing the same job.

The Sequence Table on the Results Page

The player answers what do I do next. The table answers what is the whole job — it is what gets read before starting, and what people screenshot and send to the saw.

It sits in the results panel below the cut list, under the heading Cutting Sequence, and its columns follow the mode:

2D Panel

1D Linear and Wood

Rows are clickable. Clicking a row jumps the player straight to that step, and the active row is highlighted — bold and shaded — as you step through. The table and the player are two views of one list; they cannot drift apart.

A small note sits in the table header, stating the counting convention on the page where it matters:

One row = one fence setting. Parallel cuts made at the same setting count as one step.

The Player and Its Controls

The Cutting Sequence bar sits directly above the sheet or bar diagrams it steps through — not at the top of the whole results panel. In 2D it is above the sheet diagrams, in 1D and Wood above the bar strips, so the control and the thing it controls are in the same place on screen.

What Counts as One Step

By default a step is one fence setting, not one pass of the blade. On a sheet, all collinear cuts at the same coordinate that the saw makes in the same pass are grouped into a single step, because that is how the machine is actually operated: you set the fence once and cut everything that lines up with it. A step that spans several strips is labelled · N passes and its passes are numbered 3a, 3b. If you saw with a circular or track saw, switch Cut order to Per pass and every cut is its own step — see Per Fence Setting or Per Pass.

This is why, in the default Cut order, the step count matches the Cuts figure in the results header, and why the smaller saw passes number under it can be higher in 2D — that one counts every strip crossed separately. Both numbers describe the same plan; see Reading your results.

On a bar the two conventions collapse into one: a cut across a bar is a single pass, so steps, cuts and passes are the same count.

Reading the Visualisation

As you move through the sequence, the cut markers drawn over the layout change state — the same three states on a sheet diagram and on a bar strip:

• Current step — drawn solid and thicker, in the accent colour. This is the cut to make now. Where the step sets the fence for several parallel cuts, all of them light up together.
• Completed steps — faded but still visible, so the material reads as progressively divided.
• Upcoming steps — hidden, so the operator is not distracted by cuts they have not reached yet.

Availability

The Cutting Sequence appears once a run has produced a result — sheets or bars, in any of the three modes — on every signed-in plan, including Free. Without an account the bar is replaced by a locked row that asks you to create a free account. The rest of the result is not gated: yield, waste, the cut counts, the cut length and per-side trim are shown on every plan, guests included.

Why the Sequence Follows the Cut Order

In its default saw mode, CutOptim’s 2D optimizer is guillotine-based, and that is exactly what makes a clean step-by-step sequence possible. A plan made with CNC mode (free placement) has no saw cuts and therefore no cutting sequence.

Guillotine optimization builds a binary cut tree: the full sheet is split by a single straight line, producing two sections; each section is then split again; and so on until all parts are separated. This tree structure has a well-defined execution order that maps directly to physical cuts on a saw — so the sawing plan simply groups the cuts that share a fence setting and walks the stages in order.

On a bar the same guarantee comes for free: the parts sit one after another along the length, so the offset order is the cut order.

Nothing about the plan itself is stored with your project — it is rebuilt from the result on every render, so a project saved months ago replays with the kerf and trim it was optimised under. The only thing saved is your Cut order choice.

The Same Plan in Your Exports

The sequence is not screen-only. See Exports & Downloads for the full detail:

• PDF — a Sawing plan page of its own, in all three modes, listing every step in execution order, with the counting convention stated under the title and a framed strip of key figures under the table (cuts, saw passes, cut length, stages). In 2D the steps are numbered per sheet and a multi-strip step reads · 2 passes. Each 2D work page also carries that sheet’s own cut sequence: every pass is numbered (3a, 3b) on the drawing, and a multi-strip step gets one sub-row per pass that frees something (3a, that pass’s length, its part numbers). On a crowded sheet this becomes one compact row per step (3a: 27 · 3b: 28), so the sequence never spills onto an extra page.
• Excel (.xlsx) — a Cutting Sequence tab, inserted directly after the Cut list tab, with the totals repeated at the bottom so the tab stands alone when it is the only page taken to the saw. Steps are numbered per sheet, a multi-strip step reads · 2 passes with its Result given per pass, and the work-sheet picture numbers every pass 3a, 3b.

Both follow the on-screen player: the PDF Sawing plan page and the Excel workbook need an account, and signing in unlocks them on every plan, Free included. A PDF exported without an account is still complete, just without the Sawing plan page.

Tips

Use Play for orientation, then step manually on the floor. Before starting a job, run through the full sequence with ▶ Play to understand the overall cut strategy. Then press ⏮ Restart and use ▶ at the machine, advancing only after each cut is confirmed complete.

Jump with the table, not the arrows. If you are picking a job back up halfway through, click the row you stopped on rather than clicking ▶ twenty times — the player follows the table.

Display on a shared screen or tablet. Mount a tablet or position a monitor near the saw so the operator can see the layout without leaving the machine. The highlighted cut is readable from a metre or more away.

Cap the stages if your saw needs it. On the Workshop plan, Max. cutting stages limits how many times the material is turned, which shortens the plan you are stepping through. It applies to 2D only. See Settings.

Use Cutting Sequence for operator training. Walk new operators through a job with Play before they touch the material. Seeing the sequence animated makes the cut logic intuitive and reduces mistakes on the first real job.

Print a static backup. Before starting a complex job, export the PDF — the sawing plan page is the same list in the same order. If the screen is unavailable mid-job, the operator can still finish from paper.