Cutting list calculator

Enter the board you buy, not a nominal description. This is the single input most likely to be wrong, and it silently changes the board count.

Note in particular that 2440 × 1220 mm is not the same as 8' × 4' - it is 1.6 mm longer and 0.8 mm wider. That sounds like nothing until your parts divide the board almost exactly, at which point it is the difference between a row fitting and not.

Work entirely in one unit. Mixed millimetres and inches survive a spreadsheet import perfectly happily and then produce a cutting plan that is quietly wrong.

Free use needs no account: 20 part rows per session, CSV or XLSX import up to 5 rows, and 3 PDF exports a day with unlimited re-running while you compare options.

A retail counter 3000 mm long, 900 mm high, 600 mm deep, built as three 1000 mm modules from 18 mm melamine faced chipboard on 2750 × 1830 boards.

Per module: two gables at 882 × 600 (900 less an 18 mm top), a top at 964 × 600, a bottom deck at 964 × 600, and two rails at 964 × 100. Across three modules that is six gables, three tops, three decks and six rails - eighteen parts, all 600 mm deep or less.

Every horizontal part is 964 mm because the module is 1000 mm wide and the two 18 mm gables take 36 mm. That subtraction is the one people get wrong, and it is invisible until assembly.

On a 2750 × 1830 board with a 4.4 mm beam saw kerf, 600 mm deep parts give three strips across the 1830 width (3 × 600 + 2 × 4.4 = 1808.8 mm, which fits) with 21 mm to spare. The calculator returns the board count for the whole run rather than per module, which is what you order against.

A cutting list for board work carries two things a timber cutting list does not: which edges get banded, and whether the size quoted is before or after edging.

Pick one convention and state it at the top. Most shops list finished sizes including edging and let the machine allowance handle the rest; the alternative is to list the cut size and note the edging separately. Mixing the two across one job produces doors that are 2 mm proud on one cabinet and flush on the next.

Thickness belongs to the board, not the part. If a job uses 18 mm carcass, 16 mm backs and 22 mm tops, that is three board rows and three separate cutting plans.

Boards are only half the job. Skirting, architrave, cornice, PAR timber, steel tube and aluminium extrusion pack onto stock lengths rather than nesting on a board, and need the linear calculator instead.

Enter the stock lengths your merchant sells - commonly 2.4, 3.0, 3.6, 4.2 and 4.8 m for timber, 6 m for tube and bar - and the calculator sequences the cuts and reports the drop on each length. Comparing two stock lengths on the same cutting list is usually worth more than any algorithm change, because the drop is where the money goes.