What's new

Better cut plans mean less wasted material and fewer boards bought. This update rebuilds the engine behind linear and wood cutting, packs 2D sheets more tightly, and makes sure the PDF tells the whole story.

Smarter linear and wood cutting

• Several strategies, best result wins. The linear and wood optimizer now runs multiple packing strategies for each job and keeps the one that uses the least material — instead of relying on a single approach.
• Strong on repetitive jobs. For orders with many identical pieces, a new pattern-based method finds near-optimal layouts that were previously out of reach.
• The same job, fewer offcuts. In practice this means shorter bars and boards left over, and often one less length to buy.

Fuller sheets in 2D

• No more wasted edges. The 2D packer now fills in pieces that span the full width or full height of a sheet, using space along the edges that used to go to waste.
• A real example. A layout that previously needed two sheets — each barely half used — now fits on a single sheet at 94% utilisation.

Nothing gets lost in the PDF

• Every part accounted for. If a piece doesn’t fit or you run short of stock, the exported PDF now lists it clearly in all three modes (2D, linear and wood), so nothing quietly disappears between the screen and the workshop.
• Faster, more private exports. PDF generation is now fully self-hosted — no third-party CDN — so exports are quicker and load nothing from outside CutOptim.

What’s next

Off-cut auto-include and assembly groups are next on the list.

Have a feature request or hit a bug? Reply to any CutOptim email or use the contact form.

Sometimes you just want a quick answer without digging through the docs. CutOptim now has a built-in assistant that can explain features, clarify pricing and point you to the right guide — right where you are, in your language.

Ask anything, in your language

• Available where you need it. A small chat bubble sits in the corner of the marketing pages, the documentation and inside the app. Open it, ask a question, and get a straight answer.
• Speaks all eight CutOptim languages. Ask in English, Hungarian, German, Italian, French, Romanian, Polish or Czech — the assistant replies in the same language.
• Points you to the source. Answers link to the relevant guide or doc page, so you can read the full details when you want them.

Grounded and honest by design

• Answers from the real documentation. The assistant is grounded in CutOptim’s own guides, pricing and help articles — it doesn’t make up features that don’t exist, and it declines questions that aren’t about CutOptim.
• It doesn’t see your project data. The helper answers general “how do I…” and “what does this do…” questions. It has no access to your saved projects or cut lists.
• A human is one click away. If the assistant can’t help, it offers a direct link to reach a real person, and each answer has a quick 👍 / 👎 so you can tell us what landed.

On your terms

• Keeps its place as you browse. Your conversation carries over from page to page, so you don’t lose the thread.
• Hide it whenever you like. A toggle in your dashboard — and a “don’t show again” link in the widget — keeps it out of the way if you’d rather work in silence.

What’s next

A data-aware in-app helper that can reason about your actual cut list is on the roadmap.

Have a feature request or hit a bug? Reply to any CutOptim email or use the contact form.

This update is about staying in control when material is tight. A new Limited stock mode treats your quantities as a hard limit and mixes the formats you actually own, and Priority pieces let you guarantee the cuts you can’t afford to drop. Both work across 2D panels, linear and wood — alongside editable piece colours and clearer PDFs.

Limited stock, honest plans

By default, CutOptim assumes you can get as many boards as a plan needs. Now you can tell it what’s really on your shelf.

• Switch supply to Limited. A new Unlimited | Limited toggle sits in the stock section, in every mode. In Limited mode, the quantities you enter become a hard cap.
• Your real formats, mixed for you. Instead of leaning on the single biggest format, the optimizer combines the sheet and bar sizes you actually stock to fit as much as possible — and shows the exact breakdown of formats used.
• An honest shortage notice. If you run short, a clear “Not enough stock” panel lists what’s missing, and separates a part that’s simply too big for any format from stock you’ve genuinely run out of — so you know whether to buy more or rethink the part.

Priority cuts come first

When not everything fits, you decide what’s guaranteed — not the algorithm.

• Flag the must-haves with ⚑. In Limited mode, a priority (⚑) column appears in the parts table. Mark the pieces that absolutely have to be cut for this order.
• Priority pieces get first pick of the material, so the urgent parts are cut and low-priority filler is what drops.
• A clear result. A green ✓ confirms every priority piece was cut, or a red ⚠ tells you exactly how many didn’t fit — in 2D, linear and wood alike.

Your colours, clearer PDFs

• Editable piece colours in every mode. Each part now has its own colour picker — including linear cutting, which never had one. Your colours flow through the on-screen diagram, the legend and every export.
• Priority pieces stand out in the PDF. Must-cut parts get a clear (!) marker and a footnote in the cut list, plus a dedicated “Priority pieces” block right under the optimization summary — so whoever’s at the saw sees what matters first.

What’s next

Off-cut auto-include and assembly groups are next on the list.

Have a feature request or hit a bug? Reply to any CutOptim email or use the contact form.

This batch is more than polish. Imperial units arrive across the entire app, the 2D panel optimizer was rebuilt to waste less material, it now tells you when something doesn’t fit, and your unsaved work is protected from accidental loss.

Work in millimetres — or inches

CutOptim now speaks imperial as fluently as metric.

• A simple mm / in switch sits right in the Settings row. Flip it and every measurement converts instantly — no need to re-enter your numbers.
• Your choice is remembered on this device and on your account, so it carries across sessions and computers.
• Every export is unit-aware. PDF cutting plans, CSV, DXF (with the correct $INSUNITS flag for CAD), labels and quotations all print in your chosen unit; 2D waste is shown in ft² in imperial mode.
• Sensible imperial defaults. The demo data and starting values use round imperial sizes (96×48 sheet, 2×4 lumber) instead of awkward conversions, and each saved cut shows a small mm / in badge.
• Switching units never re-runs the optimizer, so it won’t cost you a quota.

A smarter 2D panel optimizer

The 2D panel packer was rebuilt around how sheets are actually cut, and it wastes noticeably less material.

• More on fewer sheets. A real job that used to spill across two sheets at 39% now fits on a single sheet at 77%. The new shelf/column packer keeps clean rows of same-width parts together, the way a real cut does.
• It tries every stock format. If you stock more than one sheet size, the optimizer now compares running the job on each format and keeps the best result, instead of using them in the order you listed.
• Tighter packing on hard jobs. A new “gap-reclaiming” strategy recovers the strip above a short part, so awkward mixes leave less offcut.
• “First cut direction” now works in 2D. Choosing a horizontal or vertical first cut finally changes the layout the way you’d expect.

2D now tells you what didn’t fit

Previously, if a panel was too large or you ran short on sheets, it just quietly disappeared from the plan. Now you get an honest answer:

• A red “unplaced panels” notice lists any part that is too big for any sheet you stock, with its name and size.
• A yellow “not enough stock” notice tells you, per format, how many sheets the plan needs versus how many you have on hand — so you know exactly how many more to buy.
• The piece count turns red whenever not everything was placed, so a short plan can’t slip by unnoticed.

Never lose an unsaved optimization

Running an optimization and then navigating away used to throw the result away. Not anymore.

• A save prompt appears before you leave a page (or switch modes) with unsaved results, so you can keep your work with one click.
• Automatic draft restore brings your last run back when you return — without spending another optimization.
• A proper save-destination picker lets you choose the project, and either overwrite the loaded cut or save it as a new one (like “Save” vs “Save as”).
• Cut names are now unique within a project, and deletions use a clear in-app confirmation dialog instead of a browser pop-up.

What’s next

Off-cut auto-include and assembly groups (Feature Pack 2 Phase 2) are next, along with an optional “use only the stock I have” mode for 2D.

Have a feature request or hit a bug? Reply to any CutOptim email or use the contact form.

This update is all about polish: the documents you print and the tables you read on screen now look the way they should.

Print-friendly PDF exports

We audited every PDF the app produces — the 2D / 1D / wood cutting plans, panel labels and the quotation — against typography and print best practices:

• Readable everywhere. No more sub-6 pt micro-text; diagram labels now use a dark, high-contrast colour instead of the piece’s own (sometimes pale) hue, so part names stay legible on any colour.
• Print-friendly contrast. Section headers and the footer were darkened to clear accessibility contrast ratios — easier on the eyes and on the toner.

Roomier, well-paginated 1D plans

The 1D plans (linear and wood) got the biggest cleanup:

• Breathing room between each bar diagram and the cut list below it — no more text glued to the bar.
• Larger fonts throughout the diagrams, tables and summary box, so a printed sheet is comfortable to read at arm’s length on the workshop bench.
• Logical page breaks. Each bar’s header, diagram and cut list are now kept together on one page whenever they fit, so you never get an orphaned header at the bottom of a page.

Redesigned cut-list tables — now in 2D too

The result cut-list table was rebuilt from scratch:

• Columns now size to their content and the table is centred, so the part name finally gets the room it needs while the rod / order / length columns stay compact.
• A small colour dot before each part name ties the row back to its piece in the diagram.
• 2D mode now has a cut-list table too (Sheet / Order / Part / Size), matching the 1D and wood views.

Text fixes

• No more double colons in the PDF summary (Useful:: → Useful:).
• The “Order” column is spelled out in full instead of being abbreviated.
• Central-European characters (Hungarian ő/ű, Polish ł/ą/ż, Czech ř/ě/ů, Romanian ș/ț/ă) used to break in the PDF font; they now render as readable letters.
• CSV import correctly handles quoted fields that contain commas.

What’s next

A fully embedded Unicode font for pixel-perfect diacritics in PDFs is on the list, along with Feature Pack 2 Phase 2 (off-cut auto-include and assembly groups).

Have a feature request or hit a bug? Reply to any CutOptim email or use the contact form.

We have shipped two large sprints worth of improvements over the past three weeks. This post bundles the user-facing changes you can use right now.

Workshop-grade precision

Every cutting plan now respects three new physical-shop realities:

• Kerf tolerance (±mm) — Free+. The optimizer first tries an exact-fit placement; only when nothing fits does it allow up to ±tolerance of give. Useful when your blade jitters between 3.0 and 3.2 mm or when imported demand sizes have rounding noise.
• Start / End trim (mm) — Free+. The effective length of every bar or sheet is reduced by start_trim + end_trim. The damaged clamped edge stops being treated as offcut material, so your scrap reports match what the workshop actually keeps.
• Cost per cut (€) — Pro+. Each piece adds 1 cut (1D) or 2 cuts (2D) to the project total, multiplied by your blade-and-time cost. The new “Cuts” and “Cut cost” stat cards make the trade-off between a tighter layout and an extra blade pass visible.

All three settings travel with the project. The dedicated Kerf tolerance article walks through a 5-step measurement protocol and a workshop-tolerance reference table (CNC 0 mm → hand-fed bandsaw 2–3 mm).

Workshop-grade exports

• DXF + SVG export is now a stand-alone Pro feature on the landing page. The DXF target is R12, so it opens in AutoCAD LT, Inkscape, OnShape, Fusion, and every mainstream CNC post-processor without conversion.
• SVG files now include an xmlns declaration and an <?xml ... ?> prologue so the downloaded file opens correctly in Inkscape and any standalone SVG viewer.
• CSV files prepend a UTF-8 BOM so Excel automatically detects the encoding — no more garbled diacritics.
• Filename pattern is unified across PDF / CSV / DXF / SVG: <company-slug>-cutting-plan-<timestamp>.<ext>.

Saved offcuts go cross-device

Pro and Business users no longer lose their offcut inventory when they switch browsers. The “Saved offcuts” list now lives in the database (/api/offcuts-inventory), with a one-time silent migration from your existing localStorage on your next visit. Free users keep their browser-local storage as before.

Settings audit + 5 real bug fixes

We audited the entire /app Settings sidebar against the running optimizer code. Five settings looked like they did something but actually had no effect on the result:

• Stock prioritization (★ icon per row) now actually sorts the stock list before optimization.
• Min. offcut size advanced inputs (W / H / L) are now actually consulted by the inline optimizer.
• Cost minimization mode now sorts stock by _price ascending — pick the cheapest sheet first.
• Cut type and Unit (mm/cm) selects were phantoms — the code never read them. They have been removed. Cut type stays guillotine for now; nested layout is on the roadmap. Unit stays in millimetres; cm / inch is planned for v2.

Faster perceived UX with skeleton loading

We added a reusable Skeleton placeholder and wired it into five async paths so you no longer stare at empty space while data loads:

• The optimization run paints a stats-and-sheet skeleton before computing, so the layout shift is gone on big jobs.
• The PDF dropdown shows a busy state while jsPDF lazy-loads.
• The dashboard billing-history list, project-delete card, and Pro offcut inventory load all show structured placeholders during their network round-trip.

Login and accessibility polish

• Show / hide password toggle on Login + Register, with a Caps Lock warning.
• Inline per-field validation with role="alert" for screen readers.
• Public accessibility statement is now available in all 8 languages — see accessibility.

What’s next

Sprint 6 picks up Feature Pack 2 Phase 2 (P1): off-cut auto-include, assembly groups, and a richer Material Library. Sprint 7 brings the first Pillar A2 export (G-code).

Have a feature request or hit a bug? Reply to any CutOptim email or use the contact form.