Carcass sides, bottoms, shelves, doors, drawer fronts — a single kitchen easily adds up to several dozen parts from a few sheets of melamine-faced chipboard (MFC). CuttingOpt.Pro lays them out so every board can be cut with straight edge-to-edge cuts only, keeps the decor grain where it matters, and hands you a ready layout and cut sequence for the panel saw.
Cutting solid wood, battens or profiles for furniture? Furniture Cut List Optimization →
▶ Open the kitchen example in the calculatorEnter your boards (length × width and quantity — for example 2800 × 2070 mm or 2440 × 1220 mm) and the parts from your cut list; rows can also be pasted straight from Excel. Set the blade kerf, the edge trim and the minimum usable offcut, then press “Cut panels”. Within seconds you get a layout for every board, a numbered cut sequence and an ordered / placed parts table. Your input is saved automatically as a draft in the browser, separately for each account.
The board grain is taken to run along its length. Ticking “grain” on a part keeps its length along the grain, so that part is never rotated; parts without the tick may be turned 90° when they fit better that way. For plain or uni-colour boards, leave the ticks off — the layout can come out tighter. On the Pro plan every board and part can carry a material / decor (say “white 18” and “oak 18”), and parts are placed only on boards of their own decor — all in one calculation.
Every cut is a guillotine cut: it runs edge to edge through the current piece, exactly the way a panel saw or sliding table saw works. You choose the first cut: automatic (the better layout wins), along the board length or across it. The kerf is deducted on every cut, and the edge trim takes the chipped factory edge off each side of the board. For every board you get a numbered list: direction, position in mm from the left or top edge, and cut length.
A to-scale drawing of every board with the parts, edge trim, usable offcuts and waste in distinct colours. Above it: efficiency, parts area, waste and usable offcuts in m², plus the number of cuts and their total length in metres — handy when cutting is charged per running metre. Parts that did not fit are listed in red at the top, with the reason. The workshop document prints or downloads as a PDF with your company logo and details, the customer and the order number.
No — 2D panel cutting is included in the Hobby plan (4.99 €/month, 30 calculations a month shared between linear and panel cutting) and the Pro plan (14.99 €/month, unlimited, plus material / decor matching and edge banding). There is also a one-time Lifetime licence for 399 €. With a free account you get a preview — how many boards are needed, the efficiency and how many parts were placed (it counts as one of your 10 free calculations a month); the layout drawing, cut sequence, printing and PDF need Hobby or Pro.
Yes — one calculation can use several formats, for example full 2800 × 2070 mm boards plus a smaller size or a piece left over from an earlier job, entered as another board row with its quantity. The limits are 30 board rows (200 boards in total) and 300 part rows (1000 parts in total).
By default, the cutting size. On the Pro plan you can mark the banded edges of each part, set the band types with their thickness and turn on “Sizes are finished (with banding)” — then you enter the finished size, the band thickness is deducted for cutting automatically, and the band metres per type come with the result.
Shaped parts — no: the optimizer works with rectangular parts only. CNC — yes, in the Pro plan: “CNC router” mode places the parts D + a apart (cutter diameter + clearance), with a margin from the board edge, and gives a DXF per board for CAM (board outline and nominal part outlines, mm). With rectangular parts the board count is usually the same as on a panel saw; what you gain is the correct cutter clearance and a DXF for the machine.