How to plan straight crosscuts with Stockstrip Cut Planner

Enter one stock length, a saw kerf and labeled part lengths with quantities, then choose Generate plan. Review the numbered stock bars, complete assignment table and totals before downloading the cut sheet. Stockstrip reserves a full kerf for every piece and uses a longest-first allocation method; its result does not guarantee minimum stock or least waste.

Open Stockstrip Cut Planner

Start with one stock size and a small example

Stockstrip Cut Planner plans straight crosscuts from identical lengths of timber, dowel or trim. Use it when every available stock bar has the same length. It does not combine several stock sizes or track an inventory of leftover offcuts. Keep your original measurements separately so you can check the plan before cutting.

For a first run, select Load example. It replaces the current entries with 1000 mm stock, 3 mm saw kerf and one Shelf rail row: 400 mm long, quantity 4. Loading the example does not generate a result. Select Generate plan to allocate the four rails and reveal the numbered bars and assignment table.

Enter your own measurements and labeled parts

Stock length, Saw kerf and each part length use millimeters with at most one decimal place. Enter 400 or 400.5, without a unit suffix. Stock and part lengths must be from 0.1 to 1,000,000 mm; kerf can also be zero. A blank kerf is not the same as entering 0. Quantities must be positive whole numbers.

Use Part label to identify each kind of piece, then enter its Length (mm) and Quantity. Select + Add part row for another kind, or Remove to delete an unwanted row. The limits are 40 labeled rows and 200 pieces across all rows, so a quantity of 150 plus another of 60 exceeds the total even though there are only two rows. Labels must contain 1–80 characters without control characters.

If generation reports an error, correct the named field or row and generate again. Validation preserves the entries. A length that looks individually valid can still fail because the part plus one kerf must fit the stock.

Read parts, reserved kerf and leftover separately

The example produces two stock bars. Each holds two 400 mm rails, reserves 6 mm for their two kerfs and leaves 194 mm. Across both bars, that is 1600 mm of finished parts, 12 mm of reserved kerf and 388 mm of leftover. Each bar accounts for its full 1000 mm: 800 plus 6 plus 194.

The proportional strips show blue finished parts, orange reserved kerf and the remaining paper-colored space as leftover. Use the complete assignment table to read exact lengths and match piece IDs to labels. IDs distinguish repeated pieces: 1.1 is the first occurrence from input row 1, while 1.2 is its second occurrence. The bar total row gives that bar's combined parts, kerf and leftover.

Check the assumptions before treating a layout as final

Stockstrip reserves one full kerf for every finished piece, including the last piece on a bar. With 1000 mm stock and 3 mm kerf, a single 1000 mm part is rejected because the calculation needs 1003 mm. This conservative convention can reject an otherwise exact end fit. Enter the kerf appropriate to your plan rather than changing it merely to make an error disappear.

Allocation sorts pieces longest first and places each on the first existing bar with room, opening another bar when necessary. Equal lengths keep input row and occurrence order. The method is deterministic, but it does not guarantee the fewest stock bars or least waste. End trimming, defects, grain and angled cuts are not modeled, so inspect those requirements separately before using the assignments.

Regenerate deliberately when comparing alternatives

To compare a different stock length, quantity or kerf, first save the current cut sheet if you need to retain it. Any input edit clears the displayed result and disables downloading. Make your change and select Generate plan again; changing a field alone does not create a replacement layout.

There is no stored comparison history. Keep the downloaded versions separately when comparing alternatives, and read each sheet's input parts and assumptions alongside its totals. A smaller leftover total alone does not establish that an alternative meets the physical requirements of your job.

Save the cut sheet before leaving the tab

After successful generation, select Download cut sheet. The app requests a UTF-8 plain-text file named stockstrip-cut-sheet.txt. It contains stock length, saw kerf, input parts, assumptions, assignments and totals. Generating a plan does not automatically save that file.

If browser saving is blocked, expand View / select plain-text cut sheet and select the Current cut sheet text to save it yourself. Inputs and results live only in tab memory and are not uploaded or stored. Reset all or reloading discards the work, so keep a useful sheet before either action.

AI-assisted ForgeHub editorial. App capabilities were checked against its implementation; this guide is not an independent review.