Surface mode plans a paved area — a patio, a path, a driveway. You give it the shape of the area, the paver and the pattern; it lays the pattern, numbers every piece that has to be cut, shows which paver each piece is cut from and turns the result into an order list with the kerb stones.

It is the same engine as the paver calculator on the website, with a drawing editor and the app’s run counting. A plan made on the calculator page opens here with Open in the app.

Opening Surface mode

Click Surface in the mode switcher, next to 2D and 1D. Surface mode opens on its own page; the 2D and 1D tabs there take you back to the panel and bar modes.

Above the form, Pavers | Tiles switches between a paved area and a tiled room (see Tiles: a floor and its walls below). Each opens fresh; a saved plan opens in the one it was made in.

Entering the area

Pick one of four ways to describe the area:

• Rectangle — width and length.
• L-shape — the overall width and length plus the notch (typically the corner of the house).
• Side list — one side per line: the length, then the turn at its end in degrees (90 = left turn, -90 = right turn). The calculator checks that the outline closes and tells you how far it misses if it does not.
• Draw — click to place the corners on the grid (10 cm, or 6 in in feet). With Right angles on, each new edge runs straight across or straight up from the previous corner. Click the first corner to close the shape. Drag a corner to move it; Undo removes the last corner, Clear starts over. Edge lengths are shown on the drawing. The drawing also shows a Rectangle, L-shape or Side list and follows its fields; drag one of its corners and the area becomes a drawing that starts from that outline. A closed shape is shown zoomed to fit.

Tick Manhole / obstacle to cut a square out of the area (size and position from the left and bottom). The drawing shows it as a hatched square with its size and its distances from the left and bottom; in the app you can drag it there to move it, and its position fields follow.

Units are metres or feet; paver and kerb sizes are always in millimetres.

Choosing the paver and the pattern

• Market and product — the catalogue lists products with their sizes read from the manufacturer’s datasheets. If a datasheet gives only the stone size or only the laying size, enter the Joint and the other size is derived from it. My own paver takes your length, width and joint.
• Pattern — stack, running bond ½, herringbone or basket weave, along the edge or at 45° (diagonal).
• Saw cut width — the width your saw or splitter removes; it is left between two pieces cut from one paver.
• Smallest cut piece — optional. There is no default, because no general rule exists; enter yours if you work to one. Narrower pieces are then flagged and the start point avoids them.

Edges and kerbs

Every edge of the area is listed. Set each to Kerb or Wall / house. Kerb stones run along the kerb edges, outside the area: at an outside corner one kerb runs on past the other, at an inside corner it stops short. A corner that is not 90° is flagged, because the kerb lengths there are approximate. Pick a kerb product or enter your own kerb length and width.

Reading the result

Press Calculate (or Ctrl+Enter, Cmd+Enter on a Mac). On a computer, drag the line between the form and the result to make the form wider or narrower (arrow keys work when it has focus; double-click resets it).

• The plan shows whole pavers in grey and cut pieces in orange, each cut piece with a number (E1, E2, …). The start point is chosen so that both opposite edges are cut alike and no trim is too thin to cut.
• Which piece comes from which paver shows every paver that gets cut, with its pieces and the cut lines. Rectangular pieces are packed onto whole pavers; two slanted pieces share a paver when both fit with the saw cut between them. If the product has a factory half stone, a piece that is a half is laid as a half stone instead of being cut.
• The order list counts pavers, half stones and kerb stones, and shows the laid area. Pallets and weight appear only when the datasheet states them.
• The narrowest cut pieces are listed so you can see the smallest cuts.
• Below the plan, in the app, you see everything the PDF prints, with the same numbers: how the plan was optimized (pattern, angle, joint, saw cut, counts, waste, narrowest cut), the plan check, the material summary, the area and its edges, which piece comes from which paver (identical cuts grouped as ×N), the cut piece list and the kerb stones by edge. The page, the drawings and the PDF preview follow the site’s light or dark theme. The pavers are small cards drawn at one scale; filter them by kind of cut and click or tap a card to see it large.

Printing and exporting

Print / PDF opens a PDF preview — the same document family and the same preview as the 2D and 1D cutting plan. The PDF holds a summary page (pavers to buy, whole and cut pieces, half stones, laid area, waste, the material summary — pallets and weight only when the manufacturer’s datasheet states them — and a plan check), the area and its dimensions (every edge length, the edge numbers, kerb and wall edges, a manhole with its size and its distance from the left and the bottom edge), the laying plan with the numbered cut pieces (when a number does not fit on the overview, detail pages follow that number every piece in their part), the cut piece list (each piece, the paver it comes from, the cut), which piece comes from which paver (one card per cut: pavers cut the same way share a card with a ×N badge and are listed with their piece numbers; a card is never split across two pages) and the kerb stones by edge. ⚙ Export & drawing beside the preview switches sections and drawing details on and off — piece numbers, edge dimensions, dimension text size — and remembers your choice; Download PDF saves the file. Black & white PDF, next to Print / PDF, makes the same document for a mono printer. Signed in, the PDF carries your company name, logo and contact details from Settings, with a cover page; on the Free plan without credits it also carries a one-line CutOptim footer, and the paver calculator page’s PDF always carries the CutOptim name and that footer. On a phone or tablet, Open full PDF shows every page in the device’s own viewer. CSV downloads the order lines and every cut piece with its source paver.

Saving to your projects

On Pro and Workshop, Save in the toolbar at the top of the result puts the plan into one of your projects (or a new one) under a name you give it — saving projects is part of Pro, exactly as in 2D and 1D; without it, Print / PDF and CSV keep a plan. The plan appears in the app’s project list with a 🧱 icon; clicking it opens Surface mode with the saved inputs and recalculates the layout — opening a saved plan is not a run. Once a plan is open, Save stores your changes over it and Save as new keeps it as a separate plan.

The Projects panel (the folder button in the top bar; open by default on a computer when you are signed in) lists your projects as in 2D and 1D. A 🧱 Surface plan opens right here; a 2D or 1D cut opens the 2D/1D app. + Project starts a project with the plan on screen as its first cut, + New cut saves the plan on screen into that project, and ✏ / 🗑 rename and delete (a project shared with you from your workspace has no delete). Creating projects is part of Pro, as in 2D and 1D.

Tiles: a floor and its walls

Tiles (the address ends in ?product=tile) plans a tiled room as one project. The tile calculator on the website plans one floor or one wall; its Plan the whole bathroom in the app button opens that surface and tile here (once, within 10 minutes).

Surfaces. The list starts with a bathroom: Floor and Wall 1 to Wall 4. Click a surface to edit it; + Wall adds a wall, ✕ removes a surface (a project keeps at least one and holds up to 12). Under Room, enter the room width, depth, tiled wall height and a door; Make floor + 4 walls from the room replaces the list with the floor and four walls of that room (walls 1 and 3 as wide as the room, walls 2 and 4 as deep, the door on wall 1). Give a surface its own name if you like.

A wall is its width and tiled height, seen from inside the room: widths from the left corner, heights from the finished floor. Add windows, doors and a bath or shower tray as openings; a door and a bath reach the floor. Drag an opening on the drawing to move it (it snaps to 1 cm or ½ in and stays on the wall; a door or a bath moves sideways only), or select it and use the arrow keys (Shift moves ten steps). Its fields follow, and while you move it the drawing shows its distance from the left corner and its height above the floor. Start row: best fit, or the bottom of the first full row at a height you give (in metres or feet, like the other sizes). Centre the tiling on: no line (best fit), the wall’s centre line or an opening’s centre line; with straight or running bond along the edge, On that line puts a joint or the middle of a tile exactly on it, with the other patterns the cuts are balanced around it.

A floor is a rectangle or an L-shape, with an optional perimeter gap to the walls (0 unless you enter one).

The tiles. The project has a Floor tile and a Wall tile, each with its own pattern: straight, running bond (½, ⅓ or ¼), herringbone or basket weave, along the edge or at 45°. Pick a tile from the market’s catalogue (real size, minimum joint and box contents from the manufacturer’s datasheet) or My own tile with your size, joint and, optionally, tiles and m² per box. The joint starts from the datasheet minimum; when a datasheet gives none, you enter it. Only the opening example starts with an example joint of 3 mm where its catalogue tile gives none (so that it calculates in every language); the form marks it as an example to check against your tile. Laid turns the long side horizontal or vertical.

The project settings. Saw cut width, smallest cut piece (optional, no default) and a breakage reserve in percent (0 unless you enter one, shown as its own row). Same row height on every wall (on by default) gives the walls with the same tile one common row height, so the horizontal joints run round the room; a wall with its own start row keeps it. After Calculate the app lays the project once more with the other choice and shows both tile counts, as Same row height on every wall: … tiles · each wall on its own: … tiles. That second layout is part of the same calculation, not a second run. On a large project, where one layout takes several seconds, the app offers it as a button, Compare: each wall on its own, instead of starting it by itself. Reuse offcuts across surfaces (on by default) pairs the cut pieces of every surface per tile; it is used only when it saves tiles.

The result. Tabs above the plan show each surface’s laying plan; the counts below it are for the whole project. Under them you see everything the PDF prints: the summary, the plan check, the setting-out sheet (per surface: the bottom edge of the first full row above the floor, the first vertical joint from the left corner, and whether the wall shares the row height), the order list per tile (tiles per surface, reserve, boxes, m² bought; pallets and weight only when the datasheet states them), the surfaces, which piece comes from which tile and the cut piece list. Piece numbers carry their surface: W2:E3 is piece E3 of wall 2.

PDF and CSV. Print / PDF makes a tiling plan: the summary with the order list and the plan check, the contents, the setting-out sheet (the table plus a sketch of every surface with the first full row and the first vertical joint dimensioned), then for every surface its area and dimensions (openings with size and position) and its laying plan (with detail pages when a number does not fit), the cards and the cut piece list. ⚙ Export & drawing and Black & white PDF work as for pavers. CSV downloads the order lines per surface and every cut piece with its surface and source tile.

Size. A project of more than 12 000 tiles is refused with a message; split it into two plans or use a larger tile. A layout that takes too long is stopped with the same advice instead of freezing the page.

Unsaved changes. Removing a surface and Make floor + 4 walls from the room ask first. Switching to Pavers and leaving the page ask when the project has changes that are not saved.

Saving. Saving works as for pavers (Pro and Workshop). A saved tile project opens in Tiles with all its surfaces and recalculates; paver plans saved before tiles existed open as paver plans, unchanged.

Runs and plans

Each Calculate is one run, counted exactly like a 2D or 1D run on your plan; for tiles the whole project (every surface, and the row-height comparison) is one run. The example shown when the page opens is not counted. Without an account the guest runs apply; when they are used up, the page offers a free account. On a plan whose monthly runs are used up, it links to the plans.

What Surface mode does not do yet

• Adhesive, grout and waterproofing quantities, skirting tiles, and floor joints lined up with the wall joints.
• Chevron, hexagons, interlocking shapes, fan and random patterns.
• Curved edges as true curves (draw them as short straight edges).