Cut List Optimizer for Plywood & Sheet Goods
Enter the sheets you have and the parts you need, and get a cutting layout for each sheet with the parts labelled, the utilisation worked out, and anything that did not fit listed honestly. Saw kerf is charged on every cut, parts can be locked to their grain direction, and each layout downloads as a PNG or prints one sheet per page. Nothing is uploaded — the whole thing runs in this tab.
Private by design. Your cut list is nested, drawn and rasterised to PNG entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded to a server.
FreeNo sign-upRuns in your browserDesignApplication
Sheet goods sizes and saw kerfs worth knowing
The presets in this tool, and what they actually measure. Nominal sizes are what the panel is sold as; a sheet can arrive a fraction over or under, and MDF and melamine are deliberately oversized so you can trim damaged edges. Measure the sheet in front of you before you cut a tight layout.
| Panel | Nominal size | Metric | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plywood / OSB, 4 × 8 ft | 48 × 96 in | 1220 × 2440 mm | The default sheet. Usually true to size, but the factory edges are often damaged enough to be worth trimming. |
| 4 × 10 ft sheathing / MDF | 48 × 120 in | 1220 × 3050 mm | Two extra feet for tall cabinet sides — check it fits in the vehicle before you plan the layout around it. |
| Baltic birch, 5 × 5 ft | 60 × 60 in | 1525 × 1525 mm | Genuinely metric: 1525 mm is 60.04 in. Square, so rotation never changes what fits. |
| MDF / melamine, oversized | 49 × 97 in | 1245 × 2465 mm | Sold an inch over on both sides so the chipped edges can be cut off. Do not count on the extra inch unless you measured it. |
| Handy panel, 2 × 4 ft | 24 × 48 in | 610 × 1220 mm | The pre-cut quarter sheet. Enter your own offcuts as stock rows the same way. |
- Blade kerfs: full-kerf table saw 1/8" (3.2 mm), thin-kerf 3/32" (2.4 mm), track or circular saw around 2.2 mm, band saw 1/16" (1.6 mm) or less, CNC router as wide as the bit — a 1/4" bit takes a 1/4" kerf. Kerf is charged on cuts between parts and never against a factory edge.
- Utilisation is the placed part area divided by the area of the sheets that were opened, so it falls when a nearly empty extra sheet is started. A first cut on a fresh sheet often costs more than it looks: the offcut it leaves may be too narrow for any remaining part.
- The optimiser sorts parts largest-area-first, places each into the free rectangle that wastes the least short side, and splits the remainder with a single straight cut. That is the classic guillotine heuristic; it is fast and close to optimal, but it is not a proof of the minimum sheet count.
- Nothing here decides the ORDER to make the cuts in. A layout tells you what goes where, not which rip to make first — on a full sheet, cut it into manageable strips before trying to cut small parts on a big panel.
How to optimise a plywood cut list
- List the sheets you have. Width, length and how many of each. Presets cover 4 × 8 plywood, 4 × 10, 5 × 5 Baltic birch, oversized MDF and the 2 × 4 handy panel; edit any of them or add your own offcuts as extra stock.
- Enter the parts. One row per part: a name, its width and height, and how many you need. Lock a part when its grain or face pattern has to run a particular way, and the optimiser will never turn it.
- Set your blade kerf. Full-kerf table saw blades take 1/8", thin-kerf 3/32", a band saw about 1/16", a CNC as much as its bit diameter. Kerf is not a rounding error: on a sheet cut into many small parts it is the difference between fitting and not.
- Read, print or download the layout. Each sheet gets a scaled drawing with every part labelled and turned parts marked. Print all layouts one per page for the shop wall, or download any single sheet as a PNG.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is this cut list optimizer really free?
- Yes — no sign-up, no part limit, no watermark, and no upload. Your cut list never leaves this browser tab, which is also why there is nothing to save on a server and nothing to export to an account.
- Why will not four 24 × 48 parts fit on a 48 × 96 sheet?
- Because four of them need 4 × 1,152 = 4,608 square inches, which is the whole sheet to the square inch, leaving nothing for the saw. With a 1/8" blade, three parts across the 96" run take 3 × 24 + 2 × 0.125 = 72.25 inches and fit; four take 4 × 24 + 3 × 0.125 = 96.375 inches and do not. This is the single most common surprise on a first cut list, and it is arithmetic rather than a bug.
- What is kerf and why does it matter so much?
- Kerf is the strip of material the blade turns into dust — 1/8" for a full-kerf table saw blade, 3/32" for thin-kerf. It is charged on every cut between two parts, but never against a factory edge of the sheet, because no cut was made there. Twenty cuts at 1/8" is two and a half inches of plywood gone, which is why a layout that looks fine on paper can come up one part short in the shop.
- Is this the best possible layout?
- No, and no free tool can promise that — finding the true minimum number of sheets is an NP-hard problem. This is a guillotine packer that places the largest parts first, which lands close to optimal on real cut lists. Reordering your parts list, or unlocking a part that could be turned, will occasionally shake out a better layout, and on a big job it is worth trying.
- Why are all the cuts straight across?
- Because that is what a table saw or a panel saw can actually do: a guillotine cut runs edge to edge across whatever piece is on the table. Layouts that nest parts in ways a saw cannot follow look more efficient and cannot be cut. Every layout here is guillotine-cuttable by construction.
- How do I handle grain direction?
- Lock the part with the padlock button in its row. A locked part is never turned, even when turning would save a sheet — which is exactly what you want for cabinet doors and drawer fronts whose face grain has to run the same way. The job-wide "allow parts to be turned" switch does the same thing to every part at once.
Use Cases
- Nest cabinet parts onto 4 × 8 plywood before a shop trip
- Find out how many sheets a project actually needs, kerf included
- Lay out a cut list that respects grain direction on doors and fronts
- Use up existing offcuts by entering them as extra stock sheets
- Print a labelled layout per sheet to take to the saw