Import
Drop a CAD model in and get a measured parts list out. Panels are found, duplicates counted, shaped parts kept as their real outline. Free, in the browser.
A cut list is a list of panels, and a CAD model is a pile of solids. The import does the translation. It walks the model, works out which solids are panels, measures each one from its own axes so a rotated part reads the same as an unrotated one, and collapses identical parts into a single row with a quantity.
What comes back is a table beside a 3D preview of the model as you drew it, with an explode slider so you can see which part is which. Every value is editable before anything reaches your cutlist, and a Checks panel collects anything worth a second look: open meshes, parts that are not flat panels, overlaps, or parts larger than your stock.
Free to use
Most formats work. Two of them work better, and it is worth knowing why before you export.
These carry the unit inside the file, so the sizes arrive exact and there is nothing for you to set. If your CAD writes STEP, use STEP.
They describe shape and nothing else, so you tell the import what the numbers mean. Getting that wrong is the one failure mode worth guarding against, because it is silent: every part stays correct relative to every other, so a whole cabinet can arrive a thousand times too small and look perfectly consistent while it does it.
Two things catch it. The panel states the size of the whole model in the unit you are reading it as, so a wardrobe reading 1.8 by 0.6 is obviously not millimetres. And if the model turns out to be barely wider than your saw blade, it says so and offers to re-read the file in the unit that makes sense of it.
Every part is classed as rectangular, irregular or not a panel, and its outline is drawn for you.
In nesting mode an irregular part keeps its true contour and is cut that way on a CNC. In rectangular cutting it cannot be cut as drawn, so the import squares it off to its tightest enclosing rectangle and tells you what that costs as a percentage of area, part by part, so you decide with the number in front of you rather than in advance. Round holes can become drilling operations rather than geometry, which is the only way a rectangular cut keeps them.
If most of your work is shaped rather than panel, the nesting optimizer is the better starting point. It is the same import feeding a different cutting mode.
A kitchen is rarely one file. Doors come from one export and carcasses from another, so several files dropped together are read as one model with one merged parts list. Any part the file did not name takes its file's name instead, so you can still tell which export a row came from.
The import can also create one stock item per material and thickness in the job, and lock each part the way round it was drawn so a panel whose length runs along the model keeps that direction against the stock grain.
The route differs a little by tool, and three of them have a guide of their own.
Drawings rather than models, one part per file, come in as DXF instead. Nesting from AutoCAD covers that route end to end. See every import route for the full list, which also covers spreadsheets and pasting straight from a cut list you already have.
The Checks panel is the part worth reading rather than clicking past. Open meshes and non-manifold edges mean the solid is not closed, so its dimensions may not be trustworthy. Overlapping parts are often deliberate, a housing or a rebate, but they are worth a glance. Parts larger than your stock will not fit however good the optimizer is. And anything classed as not a panel, turned or curved or multi-body, is being measured by its bounding box because there is no better answer.
None of these stop the import. They are there so the surprises happen on screen rather than at the saw.
Free to use