Cutting Stock Optimizer
Tell it the length of your boards, bars or pipes and the pieces you need — it packs them onto as few boards as it can and shows every cut.
Boards to buy
4
12 pieces · 23.4% waste
Material bought
384
Saw cuts lost
1
Offcuts
89
- Board 1: 30 + 30 + 30 · offcut 5.75
- Board 2: 30 + 24 + 24 · offcut 17.75
- Board 3: 24 + 24 + 24 + 18 · offcut 5.625
- Board 4: 18 + 18 · offcut 59.875
How it works
- Type the length of one board, bar or pipe, and the thickness of your saw blade (kerf).
- Add each piece length with the quantity you need. Use the same unit everywhere.
- Read how many boards to buy, then follow the cut list for each board.
- Check the waste line: it splits the loss into saw cuts and leftover offcuts.
What people use it for
Woodworking and framing
Plan a shelf, a fence or a stud wall from standard lumber lengths before you shop.
Metal, pipe and trim
Cut steel bar, copper pipe or baseboard with the fewest purchased lengths.
Workshops and small jobs
Estimate material for a quote, and see which offcuts are long enough to keep.
Questions
- How does the tool decide where each piece goes?
- It uses first-fit decreasing: pieces are sorted from longest to shortest, and each one goes on the first board that still has room. It is a fast, well-known heuristic that is usually close to the best possible, but not guaranteed to be optimal.
- How is the saw kerf counted?
- A board holding n pieces needs n − 1 cuts between them, so it uses the sum of the pieces plus kerf × (n − 1). What is left over is the offcut. Waste % = (kerf losses + offcuts) ÷ total length bought × 100.
- What if a piece is longer than my board?
- It cannot be cut from one board, so it is listed as too long and left out of the plan. Use a longer board, or split the piece into two joined parts.