Fit It – My Panel Cutting Optimiser

Here’s an update and quick demo of my cutlist generating program, tentatively named ‘Fit It’.

What is the point of it?
Well, plain and simple, I want to save money!
My shop is always full of odd ends and scraps of wood, I’m a terrible hoarder and find it hard to throw scraps away – even if those scraps are effectively useless because of their odd shape or size. If I can plan my projects out better at the design stage, I can see what sort of scraps I can expect to have, and then make adjustments so that they are as useful as possible.

How do you use it?
Say you were building a small storage unit to go under your bed. (This is a design from Steve Ramsay – Mere Mortals). You simply enter each required panel into the program; length, width, material thickness and a label. If there are more than one of the same part, you can specify a quantity as well. Then you add your sheetgood or timber stock in the same manner.

All you then need to do is hit the AutoLayout button and the program will then come up with a usable cutting diagram for you. It probably won’t be the best layout possible, but all you need to do is hit the button again and you will get another layout. Hit it again, get another one, etc. Eventually you will come across a layout that fits all the panels in nicely and / or leaves nice offcuts in the size and shape you are after.

How does it work out the layouts?
Each ‘autolayout’ follows a strict rule; the user must be able to make a through cut from one side of the board to the other, the type of cut you would make with a table or circular saw. This means that these layouts are technically NOT going to be the most efficient. However I consider my time and effort to have a cost as well. If I was to squash every panel into a tight fitting tetris style layout, sure I might save some wood, but now I will have to use a jigsaw to cut them out. This will take me longer as I have to cut and measure as I go. Plus I will have to trim the parts up again anyway.

I feel that the efficiency of the through cut, outweighs the slight saving in wood using the tetris style.

But you can always easily manipulate the panels yourself by moving them about. Rotating is a simple click, and when you drag a panel, it ‘sticks’ to the surrounding ones (with a kerf space in-between) so there is no wasted space that way either.

What else will it do upon release?

• Save and load cutlists and layouts.
• Load multiple copies of cutlists, (batching out projects anyone?)
• Accept dimensions in metric, decimal and fractional imperial. (ie, you can enter 0.75 or 3/4)
• Allow you to change the kerf size setting to provide you with bigger ‘padding’ around your panels.
• Create cutlists for lengths of 2×4, pipes or similar. Lets say you were building a frame or wall and you know how many studs and noggins you will need, but not how best to cut them. Enter your requirements and the length your 2×4’s come in and let Fit It work it out.
• Export images and print out diagrams and cutlists of your project.

What it can’t do (yet):

• Let you resize the window. It’s a fixed size which may not suit all users depending on their aspect ratio.
  It will still work fine, but it may only take up a small section of your screen which can be frustrating.
  Working on it, but having some trouble still.
• I’ve developed this in Java, which should run for everybody, if they have Java installed. I may port it to another language one day but only if it is received well. I originally built it in Java as a learning project for myself.

What I (and readers) want it to do: 

• Grain direction. When laying out panels on a nice section of an exotic wood, you want to be able to tell the program to lay it out with the grain running a certain way. Seeing as I only work with ply, MDF and pine, it’s never really been an issue for me! You fancy woodworkers with your fancy wood! I don’t know if it’ll launch with this feature, but it is going to happen eventually.
• Automatically input your panels from SketchUp. I do plan on writing a simple plugin for SU which will handle this, but it won’t happen until after the program is released and if it is received well.

Check out the video and let me know what you think. Does it seem worthwhile to you?
Do you think it would help save you some money for any of your projects?
Or what other feature would you like to see?