Getting started

Everything you need to know to go from a pile of sheet goods to an actual cut plan.

The basic idea

CUTLIST.io takes the sheet goods you have and the parts you need to cut, and figures out how to lay those parts onto the sheets. The workflow has four steps, matching the four tabs in the app: Setup → Stock → Parts → Layout.

The thing that makes CUTLIST.io different from a lot of cut-list tools: there isn't one packing algorithm wearing four costumes. There are four genuinely different strategies, because "best" depends on how you actually plan to cut the material — a table saw workflow and a track saw workflow don't want the same layout, even on identical material.

Setup: units, kerf, and the two toggles

The Setup tab holds a few settings that affect every calculation:

Units

Switch between inches and millimeters. Changing this converts every number you've already entered, rather than just relabeling them.

Kerf width

Kerf is the width of material your blade actually removes when it cuts — typically around 1/8" for a table saw blade. CUTLIST.io factors this in when deciding whether two parts can sit next to each other: it's not enough for their combined width to fit the sheet, there also needs to be room for the blade itself to pass between them.

You can type kerf as a decimal (0.125) or a fraction (1/8) — both work anywhere you enter a dimension in the app.

Auto-add stock

When this is on, if your parts don't all fit on the stock quantity you've entered, the app automatically adds more sheets until everything fits. When it's off, the app respects your exact stock count and reports anything that doesn't fit as unplaced, rather than assuming you want to buy more material.

Auto-rotate parts

When this is on, an optimization method is allowed to turn a part 90° if that helps it fit or improves the result. When it's off, every part keeps the width/height exactly as you entered it. If you have grain direction to worry about on a particular part, keep this off for that project.

The Setup card in CUTLIST.io — The Setup card — units, kerf, and the Auto-add stock / Auto-rotate parts toggles.

Bonus Tools: Quick Fill

Right below Setup is a collapsed Bonus Tools section — a home for small calculators that sit outside the main Setup → Stock → Parts → Layout flow. Right now it holds one: Quick Fill — that rabbit icon is the same one on its tile in the app.

Quick Fill answers a narrower, faster question than the main optimizer: how many of one part size fit onto one sheet size, kerf included? Enter a sheet size and a part size, tap Fill Sheet, and you get a count and the grid it's based on. It's a separate scratch calculator — nothing you type in there is saved to, or added to, your actual Stock or Parts lists.

The Allow rotation toggle starts off every time you open Quick Fill. Turn it on and Quick Fill does more than just check the part sideways: it also tries tiling the part one way and filling the leftover strip along the edge with the same part turned 90°, and tells you when that mixed layout fits more pieces than either single orientation would — for example, "8 parts fit — mixed layout (5 rotated + 3 upright)", alongside a note on what a single-orientation grid alone would have gotten you.

The eraser icon in the popup's header clears just the Quick Fill fields, so you can start the next size from scratch without closing and reopening it — it has no effect on your real stock or parts.

The Bonus Tools accordion, expanded, showing the Quick Fill tile — Bonus Tools, expanded — the Quick Fill tile with its rabbit icon.

Adding your stock

Enter the width, height, and quantity of a sheet size, then add it. If you add a size that already exists — even entered slightly differently, like 24 vs 24.0 — the app increases that existing entry's quantity instead of creating a duplicate row.

You can stock more than one sheet size at once. The app will use whichever sizes make sense for the parts you've entered.

Cutting order

Each stock row has ▲▼ arrows next to it. Tap them to move a sheet size up or down the list, which changes the order it gets cut into — handy if you'd rather work through a specific sheet before starting on the next.

Use smallest stock first (in Setup) decides whether that order matters: switch it on and the app automatically fills your smallest sheets before touching larger ones, regardless of how you've arranged the list. Switch it off and cutting strictly follows the order you've set with the arrows.

The Stock size card, with one 48 x 96 sheet added — The Stock size card — add a sheet size, then reorder or edit it in the list below.

Adding your parts

Same idea as stock: width, height, quantity. A few things specific to parts:

Fractions: tap the / button next to a dimension field to open a scrollable wheel for picking a fraction, instead of typing it out.
Colors: every distinct part size gets its own color, shown as a small swatch next to it in the list. The same color is used for that size everywhere — the parts list and the layout diagram always agree.
Placed / Unplaced: once you've run an optimization, each part row shows how many of that size were actually placed. If any couldn't fit, you'll see an unplaced count too, highlighted so it's easy to spot.

The Parts to cut card, showing five part sizes with Placed counts — The Parts to cut card, after optimizing — every size shows its color, quantity, and Placed count.

Choosing an optimization method

This is the part worth understanding well, since picking the right method matters more than any other setting in the app.

Density

Max Yield

Just fit everything, as efficiently as possible. Max Yield doesn't care whether the resulting cuts are convenient — if a part fits in a leftover gap, it goes there, even if reaching it later means an awkward cut sequence. Use this when material cost matters more than cutting convenience, or when you're using a panel saw that handles arbitrary cuts easily anyway.

Table saw

Rip First

Built around how a table saw actually works: rip the sheet into full-length strips first, then crosscut parts out of each strip. The layout visually reflects that — parts belonging to the same strip line up cleanly, so the cut sequence matches what you'd naturally do at the saw.

Track saw

Crosscut First

The mirror image of Rip First: crosscut the sheet into horizontal bands first, then rip parts out of each band. This fits how a lot of track saw or panel saw workflows go, where a full-width crosscut is the first, easiest cut to make on a full sheet.

Hybrid

Smart Stack

Sits between Max Yield's raw density and the other two methods' strict discipline. It mixes vertical and horizontal splits within the same sheet — one region might behave like Rip First, another like Crosscut First — while staying realistically cuttable. It's the one built for "give me something dense, but I still want to be able to reasonably cut it by hand."

None of these are the "correct" one — they solve different problems. If you're not sure, try a couple of methods on the same parts list; the tabs make it a one-tap comparison.

The four Optimization method tabs, with Rip First selected — The four method tabs — the active one turns kerf-orange, with its own one-line description below.

Smart Stack and Refresh

Smart Stack has an extra button the other three don't, labeled I'm feeling lucky — it's the Refresh Stack action. Since there are usually several reasonable ways to arrange parts densely, tapping it generates a genuinely different valid layout each time — different ordering, different split directions, different grouping — rather than just nudging a piece or two. If the first result doesn't feel right, tap it again and see another option.

Reading the layout

Once you optimize, the Layout tab shows:

Placed / Unplaced counts across all your parts
Sheets — how many sheets the plan actually uses
Unused — the percentage of material left over
A scaled diagram of each sheet, with every part drawn at accurate proportions and labeled with its dimensions

If something didn't fit: the app tells you plainly rather than silently dropping a part — you'll see which size and how many are unplaced, so you know to either add stock, turn on auto-add, or reconsider quantities.

Cut lines and cut order

Each sheet diagram has two small buttons of its own — the exact same icon buttons shown here — for overlaying the actual cuts on top of the layout:

Scissors — draws dashed lines on the diagram showing exactly where each cut falls, with no sequence attached.
Numbered — adds numbered badges on top of those same lines, showing the order to make the cuts in.

The numbered button only ever controls the numbers: tapping it again while numbers are showing drops back to lines-only rather than clearing the diagram entirely, so deciding you don't need the sequence anymore doesn't cost you the cut lines too. The scissors button is the one that turns everything off.

Saving and loading projects

If you're signed in, "Save Layout" stores your current stock, parts, and settings under a name you choose. Open the hamburger menu → Open to see everything you've saved, load one back in, or delete ones you don't need anymore. Loading a project automatically re-optimizes it, so you land straight on an up-to-date layout rather than stale data from whenever it was saved.

The hamburger menu open, showing New, Open, Save layout, Print report, Home, Guide, Preferences and Sign Out — The hamburger menu — Open and Save layout live here, alongside Print report and this Guide link.

Printing a cut report

From the Layout tab, "Print report" opens a printable version in a new tab — one sheet per page, scaled to fit, ready to bring to the shop.