Import
Six ways to get parts and stock into the optimizer, from a two-column spreadsheet to a live push out of SketchUp. Free, in the browser.
CSV, DXF, and 3D models in OBJ, STL, PLY, glTF or GLB, 3MF, Collada (DAE) and STEP. You can also paste straight from a spreadsheet, push a model live from SketchUp with the free Bridge extension, or have your own AI assistant read a PDF or photo of a cutting plan.
Whichever route you take, the parts land in a preview first. You check them, edit anything that looks wrong, untick what you do not want, and only then do they reach your cutlist. The import guide covers each one step by step.
A file any spreadsheet can save, one sheet for parts and one for stock.
Comes out of Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, LibreOffice, and most cabinet software.
Column headings are matched to fields for you, and you can correct the mapping by hand when a heading is unusual.
No file at all: copy the cells and paste them into the Import panel.
Comes out of Any spreadsheet you already have open.
The quickest route for a list that exists but was never saved anywhere. Import stock first if you use materials, so the parts match to it.
The model you designed, measured and broken down into cuttable panels.
Comes out of Fusion 360, Shapr3D, Onshape, SketchUp and Blender: OBJ, STL, PLY, glTF and GLB, 3MF, Collada (DAE) and STEP.
STEP, 3MF and Collada state their own units, so the sizes arrive exact rather than scaled by hand. Drop several exports at once and they are read as one model.
The drawing your CAD already produces, one part per file.
Comes out of CabinetSense and Pro100 are the tested exports, and most CAD packages write the same thing.
In nesting the true contour is kept and nested as its own shape. In rectangular cutting each contour becomes its bounding box.
No export step: the panels go straight from SketchUp into your cutlist.
Comes out of SketchUp 2021 or newer on Windows or macOS, through the free SmartCut Bridge extension.
A short pairing code is the whole connection, with no account and no sign-in, and nothing reaches your cutlist until you press Import.
A PDF or a photo of a cutting plan, read by an assistant you already use.
Comes out of Claude Desktop and other assistants that support MCP.
Your assistant does the reading and sends the dimensions across, so the file itself never reaches us. Needs an API plan.
Free to use, nothing to install
Yes. STEP files (.step or .stp) import in the 3D Model tab alongside OBJ, STL, PLY, glTF and GLB, 3MF and Collada. STEP carries its own units, so the dimensions arrive exact instead of being scaled by hand afterwards.
Drop a model into the 3D Model tab and it is taken apart into panels: every one measured, duplicates merged into a quantity, the result shown in a 3D preview beside a table you tick your way through. A job is rarely a single export, with doors from one file and carcasses from another, so several files dropped together are read as one model, with one merged parts list.
Units are where a model import usually goes wrong, quietly. STEP, 3MF and Collada declare their own units and are set for you. OBJ, STL, PLY and glTF carry none at all, so a whole cabinet can arrive in tenths of a millimetre looking perfectly consistent. The panel states the size of the whole model in the units you are reading it as, and if the model is barely wider than your saw blade it says so and offers to re-read the file in the unit that makes sense of it. See model units.
Parts are classed as rectangular, irregular or not a panel, and the shape of each one is drawn for you. In nesting an irregular part is imported as its true shape and cut that way on a CNC. In rectangular cutting it cannot be cut at all, so the import squares it off to its tightest enclosing rectangle and tells you what that costs as a percentage of area, or leaves those parts out if you would rather. Round holes can be converted to drilling operations rather than geometry, which is the only way a rectangular cut keeps them. More on irregular parts and round holes.
The import can also 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, and it can create one stock item per material and thickness in the job. Anything worth a second look is collected into an issues list you can click through: open meshes, parts that are not flat panels, overlaps, and parts larger than your stock. Exporting cleanly from Fusion 360, Shapr3D, Onshape and SketchUp takes a line each.
Yes, in two ways. Export the model as Collada (DAE) and drop it into the 3D Model tab, or install the free SmartCut Bridge extension and send the panels straight out of SketchUp using a short pairing code. The extension needs no account and no sign-in.
The SmartCut Bridge extension walks the model, measures every component and pushes the parts across. Install it once through Window → Extension Manager, open the SketchUp tab in Cutlist Evolution for a connection code, and send either the whole model or just your selection. Codes last about fifteen minutes and keep working until they expire, so you can send, adjust the model in SketchUp, and send again without pairing twice.
Parts arrive in the same 3D preview the model importer uses. Anything that is not a rectangle is spotted and marked, drawn as its true outline, with the cost of squaring it off stated on the row, squares off to 600 × 400, +25% waste, so you decide with the number in front of you. The extension also reports which component or group each part came from, so ticking group parts by assembly cuts a run of doors as one block with the grain and pattern running continuously across the joins.
One limit worth knowing: this tab imports into rectangular cutting, so shaped parts arrive squared off. To cut shapes as their true outline, export the model as Collada and use the 3D Model tab instead. Full setup in SketchUp live import.
If your parts already exist as drawings, there is no reason to retype them. The DXF import reads one part per file and pulls out length, width, thickness, quantity, name and material as far as the exporting software writes them. It has been tested against the multi-file exports from CabinetSense and Pro100, and works with other CAD that exports the same way.
What happens to a shape depends on the mode you are in. Rectangular cutting reduces every contour to its bounding box, because a table saw or a beam saw cannot do anything else with it. Nesting keeps the real outline and nests it as a shape, which is the whole point of the nesting optimizer and of the plate nesting calculator for steel and aluminium. Precision is adjustable when the detected boxes come out too coarse or too fine, and grain is set to the long or short side of the stock. Details in import DXF.
Most cutlists start life in a spreadsheet, so both routes exist: save it as CSV and drop the file, or copy the cells and paste them straight into the Import panel. Either way you get a preview of the parsed data before anything is imported.
Parts and stock are separate sheets, imported one at a time, and the column headings are matched to fields automatically. Map them yourself if a heading is unusual, and leave out any column you do not use. Trim and banding travel as a single cell each, in side order L1, L2, W1, W2. Check your number format first, because thousands and decimal separators are read as your locale writes them. See import CSV and paste from spreadsheet.
Some cutting plans only exist as a PDF from a supplier or a photo of a drawing on the bench. Rather than typing those out, you can let an AI assistant you already use read them and send the dimensions across. It works over MCP, supported by assistants such as Claude Desktop: you add the MCP server URL and your API key to your own assistant, give it the short connection code from the AI tab, and attach the plan.
Because it is your assistant doing the reading, your file never comes to us. We receive the parts, and they sit in a preview until you confirm them. This route needs an API plan. Setup is in import with AI.
Everything ends up in the same place: the Inputs panel, where parts and stock can be edited singly or in bulk before you optimise. By default an import replaces what is already there, and you can add to the existing list instead, in which case matching rows have their quantity raised rather than being repeated.
From there the rest of the workflow is the usual one: set kerf, trim, grain and edge banding in options, run the optimizer, and take the result out as diagrams, labels or a saw file from export. If you are still deciding whether the tool fits, the free version covers everything on this page.
Free to use, nothing to install