Sheet Goods

For every group of parts with the same material of type Sheet Good and the same thickness, a small icon will appear in its title bar. Clicking on it will open the Cutting Diagram Configuration Window.

Grain Direction

Materials without grain direction allow a part to be rotated by 90° if a better fit can be found.

If you are using material with grain direction, but the grain direction is not important for a few parts, because these parts are hidden, let OpenCutList know that grain direction shall be ignored. This feature can be enabled in the tab Axes of the Properties of the part.

Material Tab

Material of type Sheet Good must be configured before a cutting diagram can be computed, see Materials. By convention, length is read on the red axis of your components. If the material has a grain direction, the grain runs along the first dimension. Select a Standard Panel size and/or list the Offcuts you would like to be considered first.

The standard panel size is assumed to be available in unlimited quantity. If additional space is required, the cutting diagram algorithm will generate a new panel with these dimensions.

If the grain direction runs across the panel, swap length and width of the panel dimensions. A panel with dimension 2000mm x 1250mm and grain running across the width, should be entered as 1250mm x 2000mm.

Any number of offcuts can be added. These will be considered first in computing the cutting diagram. Without Standard Panel, the parts may not all be placed.

It is not possible to configure several standard panel sizes and have OpenCutList decide which panel is best for you.

Configuration Tab

Configure the Blade Thickness and a Trimming Size to be applied around the raw panel.

You also need to select an Optimization Level (Medium is faster but may sometimes miss a good solution, Advanced makes more computations and may take much more time). Finally select a Preferred Direction, which determines if parts should rather be aligned lengthwise, widthwise, without preference or ask OpenCutList to check for all three possibilities.

When multiple panels are required, the last choice may select a different stacking preference per panel otherwise the same or no stacking preference is applied to all panels.

Always try different Optimization Levels and Preferred Directions to get the best cutting diagram. There is no guarantee that one option combination will always be better than another.

Display Tab

The Display Tab lets you configure the appearance of the resulting Cutting Diagram.

Remember to save your preferences using the Presets.

Cutting Diagram

At the top of the cutting diagrams a Summary displays the settings in use, the panel sizes, quantity, area and the number of parts placed onto each panel. At the bottom of each cutting diagram, OpenCutList indicates the length of all cuts excluding the trimming cuts and the efficiency of the placements onto the panel.