Calculators
Enter your parts, set the blade kerf and grain direction, and get sheet layouts ready for the saw. Free, in the browser, nothing to install.
Give the calculator a list of parts and the sheets you can buy, and it works out how to cut them. You get a cutting diagram for every sheet, a count of how many sheets the job needs, and the position of every usable offcut. Layouts export as a PDF for the shop floor, and each part can carry a printed label so the pile on the bench stays sorted.
It runs in the browser as part of the Cutlist Evolution optimizer, so there is nothing to install and nothing to pay.
Free to use
A plywood sheet is not a blank rectangle. The face veneer has a grain, and on a standard sheet it runs the long way, along the 2440 mm edge. Any part that will be seen usually wants that grain running along its own length. Door panels, drawer fronts and exposed shelves all read wrong when the figure runs sideways.
That constraint changes the maths. A part that can rotate freely fits in twice as many positions as one that cannot, so a job full of grain-locked parts almost always needs more material than the same parts cut from MDF. The calculator lets you set orientation per part. It keeps the grain running the right way on the parts you flag, and rotates everything else to claw the yield back.
Thickness is the other plywood habit worth knowing about. Sheets sold as 18 mm regularly measure a few tenths under, and 3/4 inch plywood commonly arrives at 23/32. That does not change the layout, but it does change your dados and rebates, so measure the batch before cutting joinery to suit it.
Every cut removes a blade width of material. A typical table saw blade takes out about 3 mm, an eighth of an inch, and the loss adds up faster than it feels like it should. Rip a sheet into ten strips and the nine cuts between them have eaten close to 30 mm, which is why chained measurements marked out by hand drift off the end of the sheet. The calculator carries your kerf through every cut, so the diagram matches what actually comes off the saw.
Factory edges deserve the same suspicion. They are rarely straight or square enough to reference joinery from, and they collect damage in transit. Set a trim allowance and every finished part stays clear of them.
The common 2440 x 1220 mm sheet and its 8 by 4 foot equivalent are the obvious starting points, but stock is whatever you type. Metric 2500 x 1250 sheets, half sheets and odd-sized leftovers all work, and sizes can be mixed within one job. Give each size a price and the calculator weighs cheaper combinations against tighter packing, which matters when the big sheets cost disproportionately more.
Type parts straight in, or import them from a spreadsheet, a CSV file, or a 3D model in Fusion 360 or Shapr3D. Dimensions work in millimetres, decimals or inch fractions. Set the sheet size, kerf and trim, mark the parts whose grain matters, and run it. Most jobs solve in seconds.
Offcuts from one job can be fed into the next calculation as stock, which is how a rack of half sheets stops growing. The user guide covers importing, options and export formats in more detail.
The tightest layout on paper can be miserable to cut, with parts pinwheeled together so that no single rip frees anything. The optimizer balances material efficiency against a cutting sequence that a person with a track saw or a panel saw can actually follow. For the background on why this problem is genuinely hard, the write-up on the bin packing problem covers the mathematics and the main families of solution.
If your job is built around standard imperial sheets, the 4x8 plywood cut calculator page walks through that workflow, worked examples included. For the paperwork side, turning a parts list into a document a saw operator works from, see the cut sheet calculator. Lengths of timber and other one-dimensional stock are a different problem with their own page, the linear cut list calculator.
List every part with its finished length, width and quantity, and note which parts must have the grain running along their length. Add the sheet size you can buy and your blade kerf. That list is the whole input: paste it into the calculator and it returns the layouts, the sheet count and the offcuts. The mistake to avoid is sizing parts off the drawing without checking the cut order, which is exactly the work the optimizer does for you.
Free to use