Tutorial 4 of 7

Sheet nesting, grain and offcuts

Intermediate 10 min

Get the most out of every sheet — choose guillotine or MaxRects, set kerf and trim, lock the grain, read the yield, reuse offcuts and export DXF for your saw or CNC.

The Sheets view (key 5) shows one tab per material. Each sheet material is nested separately; solid stock and worktops get a 1D length optimisation instead.

Sheet layouts with labels, offcuts and cut lines

Method

Guillotine (panel saw) — every cut runs edge to edge, so the layout can be cut on a panel or table saw. Dashed lines show the cut sequence.
MaxRects (CNC) — tighter packing that is not always guillotine-cuttable; ideal for a router.
Auto — tries both with many strategies and keeps the best: fewest sheets, then the largest single offcut, then guillotine.

Kerf and trim

The kerf (default 4 mm) is the width of material your blade removes. The trim (default 10 mm) is cut off every sheet edge because factory edges are rarely clean. A quick sanity check: on a 2800 × 2070 sheet the usable area is 2780 × 2050, and with 4 mm kerf exactly 16 parts of 600 × 500 fit (4 × 4) — yield 82.8 %. A 17th part needs a second sheet.

Grain

Materials with grain (veneers, plywood, solid panels, wood-decor melamine) keep grained parts with their length along the sheet length: sides run vertically, drawer fronts horizontally. Parts without grain may rotate. You can switch a material’s grain on or off in Edit → Materials & edge banding….

Materials dialog with sheet sizes, prices, grain and colours

Standard sheet sizes (2800 × 2070, 2440 × 1220, 3050 × 1220, 2500 × 1250 …) are one click away in the Size column.

Yield and offcuts

Yield = part area ÷ full sheet area, per sheet and per material.
Offcuts kept are rectangles at least 300 × 100 mm (change the minimum in the project settings). Open Offcuts under a sheet to see their sizes and positions.
Click a part on a sheet to select it everywhere (cut list, 3D, drawings).

Linear stock and worktops

Legs, battens, slats and worktops are cut from lengths. Kerfwise uses first-fit decreasing with the kerf between pieces and the trim at both ends, and splits a worktop that is longer than the stock (with a warning that you need a joint).

Linear stock optimisation for table legs

Export

DXF (all sheets) — R12 ASCII in millimetres with layers SHEET, PARTS, LABELS, OFFCUTS and CUTS; opens in practically every CAD/CAM program.
SVG / PNG per sheet, or all sheets at once from the File menu.