Calculators
Lay your parts out on standard 48 x 96 inch sheets, kerf and trim included, and know the sheet count before you buy. Free, in the browser.
The 4x8 sheet, 48 by 96 inches, is the default unit of sheet goods across North America, and its metric cousin at 1220 x 2440 mm covers most of the rest of the world. Stud spacing, cabinet dimensions and subfloor layouts all descend from it. So the practical question on most jobs is not what size the stock is, it is how many 4x8 sheets the parts list needs and how each one gets divided.
This calculator answers exactly that. Enter your parts in inches, fractions welcome, and it returns a cutting diagram for every sheet, the total count to buy, and the offcuts you will have left. It is the free Cutlist Evolution optimizer, running in the browser with nothing to install.
Free to use
A 4x8 sheet looks like eight 24 inch squares or thirty two 12 inch ones, and that is the arithmetic most people take to the lumber yard. The blade disagrees. Split the 48 inch width in half with a 1/8 inch kerf and each half comes out at 23-15/16, not 24. Rip it into four strips and three kerfs take 3/8 inch, leaving strips of 11-29/32 rather than 12. Any plan that needs full nominal divisions of the sheet fails by a blade width, and it fails at the last cut, after the material is committed.
Trim makes it tighter still. Factory edges are rarely square and pick up dings in handling, so careful work takes a cleaning cut along the reference edges first. Between kerf and trim, the usable sheet is smaller than the label says, and the layouts that actually work are rarely the tidy ones sketched on the back of an offcut. The calculator accounts for both from the start, so its sheet count is one you can order against.
Imperial work happens in sixteenths, not decimals, so the calculator accepts dimensions the way they are read off a tape. Enter 23-7/8 as a fraction and get diagrams back the same way. Decimal inches and metric both work when the job mixes conventions, which cabinet hardware regularly forces.
Sheet count is the number that matters at the till, and it moves in whole sheets. A parts list that needs 3.1 sheets worth of area still means buying four, and which parts share the fourth sheet decides how useful the leftover is. The calculator shows the layout of the last sheet explicitly, so you can decide whether to reshuffle, resize a shelf, or keep the remnant for the next job. Offcuts can be entered as stock in a later calculation, which is what turns the remnant stack into material instead of clutter.
Larger jobs also mix sheet sizes. Bring in 5x5 baltic birch or metric 2500 x 1250 stock alongside the 4x8s, give each a price, and the calculator picks the cheapest workable combination. The layout search behind that decision is the bin packing problem, which is worth a read if you want to know why good layouts are hard to find by eye.
A 4x8 sheet does not fit in most cars, and wrestling full sheets across a table saw alone is how casual work gets dangerous. With the cutting diagram in hand you know which one or two rough cuts break each sheet into manageable pieces, and many yards will make those first cuts for you at the counter. Leave the parts a little oversize at that stage, since a panel saw at the yard is set for speed rather than finish, and make the finished cuts at home from pieces you can actually control. The PDF export gives the yard and the workshop the same picture.
Grain direction, veneer quality and real-world plywood thickness are covered on the plywood cut calculator page. The paperwork workflow, from parts list to a document the saw operator follows, is on the cut sheet calculator page. Framing lumber to go with the sheathing has its own page at the 2x4 cut list calculator.
Free to use