Optimizer
Plan cuts for steel and aluminium bars, tubes and profiles from the stock lengths you buy, and for parts cut from plate and sheet. Free, in the browser.
Most metal cutting is linear. Box section, angle, flat bar, tube and aluminium extrusion all arrive in stock lengths, and the waste lives in the drops at the end of each bar. The optimizer combines your cut lengths so each bar is used as fully as possible, allows for the kerf of a bandsaw or cold saw between every cut, and tells you how many bars to order.
You can enter several stock lengths at once, including part bars from the rack. Drops worth keeping go back into your stock list and are used first on the next job, so a short offcut becomes the next bracket instead of scrap.
Free to use
Say a frame needs 40 pieces at 1450 mm, cut from 6000 mm bars with a 3 mm blade. Four pieces and four cuts take 5812 mm, so each bar gives four pieces and a 188 mm drop, and the job needs 10 bars. Add 10 pieces at 2900 mm and the arithmetic changes: one 2900 and two 1450s also fit a bar with a 191 mm drop, so the optimizer pairs lengths across the whole list rather than bar by bar. That pairing is what is hard to do by hand on a long list, and it is where the bars are saved.
Rectangular parts from plate and sheet are laid out like any sheet material, with edge-to-edge cuts for a guillotine shear or saw. When parts have irregular outlines for laser, plasma or waterjet cutting, the true-shape nesting optimizer fits the shapes together from DXF files instead.
Plan a steel cutting list
FAQ
Yes. Calculations of up to 40 parts are free, with no limit on how many you run and nothing to install.
Yes. Set the blade width once and it is allowed for between every cut, so the lengths you cut match the lengths you planned.
Yes. Add part bars and remnants to your stock list and the optimizer uses them before a new full length.
Yes. Any material sold in stock lengths works the same way, including aluminium extrusion, copper and plastic profiles, and timber.
Yes. Rectangular parts are optimized on the sheet directly, and irregular parts go through the true-shape nesting optimizer, which takes DXF outlines.