Free tools
How to plan board cuts for free: sheets, offcuts and a PDF for the saw
Work out how many boards a wardrobe or kitchen needs, plan the cuts and keep the offcuts with a free optimizer that runs in your browser. No sign-up, nothing uploaded.
By AnyCutlist · Published
The business problem
The board count is where a job's money goes
Buy one board too few and the job stops while someone goes back to the yard. Buy two too many and the profit sits in the corner of the workshop. Most fundis work the number out on paper: add up the parts, compare with a board, add one for safety. That works until the parts are long, the boards are grained or the job mixes two materials, and then the paper answer is usually wrong.
- no account, no trial and no limit on projects
- Free
- runs in your browser; nothing you enter is uploaded
- Private
- panel saw, CNC, bars, shapes, boxes and box stacks
- 6 kinds
- with a page for every sheet and the offcuts
- 1 PDF
From a parts list to a plan you can cut
Five steps in the free optimizer
- 01
Boards
Name each board and give its size. A new project starts with a 2440 × 1220 board.
- 02
Parts
Type or paste each part's name, length, width and quantity, and the board it is cut from.
- 03
Settings
Check the saw kerf (4 mm to start), edge trims and Grain on parts that must not turn.
- 04
Optimize
Press Optimize. Small jobs come back in seconds, each material on its own sheets.
- 05
PDF
Download the PDF report: materials, parts, a page per sheet and the offcuts.
How many boards does my job need?
Take a simple two-door wardrobe, 900 mm wide, 2000 mm high and 560 mm deep, cut from white board with a hardboard back. Added up, the white parts cover about 2.3 boards of 2440 × 1220 mm. Rounded up with one spare, the paper answer is three or four boards.
The free optimizer says 4 white boards and 1 hardboard, and the drawings show why. The two sides and the two doors are each about two metres long, so they take two whole boards between them, and the strips they leave are too narrow for a shelf. The top, bottom and four shelves then need two more boards of their own. Area alone would have sent you to the yard twice.
| Part | Board | Length × width | Quantity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side | White board | 2000 × 560 | 2 |
| Top and bottom | White board | 864 × 560 | 2 |
| Shelf | White board | 864 × 520 | 4 |
| Door | White board | 1996 × 447 | 2 |
| Back | Hardboard | 1996 × 896 | 1 |
- Long parts decide the count: a board fits only so many two-metre sides, whatever their area.
- Every saw cut removes the blade's thickness. With a 4 mm blade, ten cuts lose 40 mm.
- Edge trims, if your boards need clean edges first, make every board smaller before you start.
- Grain stops a part from turning, so it can no longer fill a gap the other way round.
Plan the cuts in the free optimizer, step by step
Open solver.anycutlist.com on a laptop or desktop. At the top it asks what you are cutting or packing; Sheets, panel saw is chosen for you, which is right for a panel saw or table saw making straight cuts from edge to edge. Click Change to pick another kind.
Use one unit for every size, usually millimetres. The optimizer does not convert units, so a part typed in centimetres beside boards in millimetres comes out wrong.
- Sheets: give each board a name, such as White board, and its length and width. Leave Quantity on unlimited unless you only have so many boards.
- Parts: type each part's name, length, width and quantity, one row per part type. To save typing, copy rows from a spreadsheet and press Ctrl+V in a cell; a header row such as Length, Width, Quantity is matched by name.
- Once your boards have names, each part gets a Sheet column. Pick the board it is cut from. If one part names a board, every part has to.
- Tick Grain on any part whose grain must run along its length, such as woodgrain doors and sides.
- Check the Saw kerf (blade thickness) field. It starts at 4 mm; measure your own blade's cut.
- Press Optimize. If a part is bigger than every board it is cut from, the optimizer names that part instead of guessing.
- Click through the sheets, then Download the PDF report.
Kerf, edge trims and grain: the settings that change the plan
Three settings decide whether a plan works at the saw. Get them right before you trust the board count.
| Setting | What it means | Where it is |
|---|---|---|
| Saw kerf | The width of material the blade turns into dust on every cut. | Saw kerf (blade thickness), under the parts. Starts at 4 mm. |
| Edge trims | A strip cut off each board edge first, for chipped or uneven factory edges. | On each board row: L, R, B and T for the four edges. Empty means no trim. |
| Grain | The part must keep its length along the board's length. | The Grain tick box on each part row. |
| Board quantity | How many of that board you have. Unlimited lets the optimizer use as many as it needs. | Quantity on each board row. |
Two boards in one job: keep the materials apart
Most jobs mix materials: white carcass board with woodgrain doors, or board with a hardboard back. Add each one as its own sheet with its own name, and choose it in each part's Sheet column. The optimizer plans every material on its own boards, so the result tells you how many of each to buy rather than one total that mixes them.
Offcuts stay with their material too. A white offcut is never offered for a black part, and the PDF lists the offcuts material by material.
Use your offcuts, even the L-shaped ones
An offcut from the last job is just another board. Add it as a sheet with its size and a quantity of one, give it the same name as the material, and the optimizer can place parts on it.
For an L-shaped remnant, click Change and choose Irregular shapes. There you draw the remnant as a sheet, and you can draw parts as L, T or U shapes, circles or any outline with curved edges.
After each plan, the drawings mark the usable offcuts with their sizes, and the PDF lists them, so you know which pieces are worth keeping on the rack.
Bars, profiles, CNC and boxes
The same page plans more than panel-saw cutting. Choose the kind that matches the job under What are you cutting or packing.
| Kind | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Sheets, panel saw | Boards cut with straight saw cuts from edge to edge. The default. |
| Sheets, CNC | Rectangular parts placed freely, for routers that don't need cuts from edge to edge. |
| Bars and profiles | Lengths cut from bars, pipes or rails: aluminium, steel tube, timber or skirting, with the length left on each bar. |
| Irregular shapes | Parts and remnants with curves, angles or holes, drawn in the part designer. |
| Boxes | Cartons packed into a container. |
| Box stacks | Stacks of boxes on the floor of a container or truck. |
Reading the cutting plan and the PDF
After Optimize, the cutting plan shows how many parts were placed out of how many, how many boards each material needs and how much of the material is used. Every part on a sheet is drawn with its number, name and size, for example #1 Side 720 × 560, so it can be found on the parts list.
The PDF report has a summary, the materials used, the parts list, a page for every sheet with its offcuts, and the offcuts listed per material. Print it for the saw or send it to whoever is buying the boards. Projects are saved in your browser; Download all the reports gives you a zip of every project's PDF.
Mistakes that waste a board
The optimizer plans exactly what you type. Check these before you buy or cut.
- Mixed units: one size in centimetres or inches among millimetres.
- Length and width swapped on a grained part, so the grain runs across the door once Grain is ticked.
- The kerf left at 4 mm when your blade cuts wider.
- Factory edges that need trimming, with no edge trims set.
- One row per piece instead of one row per part with a quantity, which makes the count hard to check.
- Finished sizes typed when your edge banding has to be taken off first. Decide which sizes you are cutting, then type those.
Free optimizer questions
Short answers to what fundis and carpenters ask most about the free optimizer.
- Is the cutting optimizer really free?
- Yes. There is no account, no trial and no limit on projects. It is a free tool for fundis, carpenters and hobbyists from the team behind AnyCutlist.
- Is my cutting list uploaded anywhere?
- No. The optimizer runs on your own computer, in the browser. Projects are saved in that browser only, so clearing it or changing computers leaves them behind. Download the PDF to keep a copy.
- How many 8 × 4 boards do I need for my job?
- Type your parts in with the board size (2440 × 1220 mm is a standard 8 × 4 board) and press Optimize. The result gives the number of boards per material, which is often more than dividing the parts' area by the board's area, because long parts and saw cuts waste space.
- Does it work on a phone?
- Yes, but a laptop or desktop is faster and easier: the optimizer uses every core of the processor, and the first start takes a few seconds.
- Can I paste my cutting list from Excel?
- Yes. Copy the rows and press Ctrl+V in a cell of the parts table. With a header row such as Length, Width, Quantity, the columns are matched by name.
- Can it read a handwritten cutting list?
- Not the free optimizer: you type or paste the parts. Reading customers' handwritten, photographed and PDF cutting lists is what AnyCutlist does, for workshops that quote and cut for customers every day.
When cutting is your business
The free optimizer is for planning your own cuts. A workshop that cuts and edges for customers has a different problem: customers send lists as phone photos, PDFs and spreadsheets, someone has to type them in, and every job needs a quote before anything is cut.
That is what AnyCutlist is for. It reads the customer's list, flags anything it is unsure of for a person to check, prices the boards, cutting and edging, optimizes the sheets and exports the job to MaxCut, CutList Plus or other saw software.
Evidence note
How we checked this guide
The wardrobe is invented, not a customer's job, and its sizes are one way to build it; your own construction decides your part sizes. It was run in the free optimizer on 19 October 2026 with its defaults: Sheets, panel saw, 2440 × 1220 mm boards, a 4 mm saw kerf and no edge trims. A different blade, trims or Grain settings can change the board count.
The area figure divides the white parts' total area by one board's area and rounds to one decimal place. A test recalculates it from the same parts table, so the table and the figure cannot disagree.
Screens and labels are described as they appeared on solver.anycutlist.com on that date. If the page has changed since, follow what you see there.