Cut List Optimiser
Enter the pieces a project needs and the stock sizes on hand — the optimiser lays them out to minimise waste and draws the result to scale, with the kerf and every offcut marked, so you can see the layout before you touch a saw. The state lives in the URL, so you can copy the link and come back to the same layout.
How this works
Type your required pieces as length x quantity pairs separated by commas (30x4,24x2,18x2 means four pieces at 30", two at 24", and two at 18"), then list the stock lengths you actually have on hand the same way. The optimiser sorts your pieces longest-first and places each one into the first stock board with enough room left, opening a new board only when nothing already open will fit — a first-fit-decreasing heuristic. It isn't guaranteed mathematically optimal for every possible combination, but it's fast, deterministic, and lands within a few percent of optimal for the board counts a shop project actually needs, which matters more than a marginal waste-percentage improvement when you're the one trusting it with real material.
Reading the to-scale drawing
Each stock board draws as one outlined bar, scaled against the longest board in the result so every board's proportions are comparable at a glance. Placed pieces are the light rectangles with their length labelled; the dark band between two pieces on the same board is the kerf — the material the saw blade actually removes on each cut, which the optimiser subtracts from available length before placing the next piece. The shaded orange section at the end of a board is the offcut — what's left over once every piece that fits has been placed. A board with no visible offcut band used its full length exactly; a board with a large one is where trimming a piece length slightly, or picking a different stock size, would save the most material.
Why kerf matters more than it looks like it should
A 1/8" kerf sounds negligible until you're cutting eight pieces from one board — that's seven cuts, 7/8" of material gone to sawdust before you account for a single offcut. Leave kerf at zero and the optimiser will tell you a layout fits when your actual saw will run out of board on the last piece. If you don't know your blade's exact kerf, 1/8" (0.125") is a safe default for a standard 10" table saw blade; thin-kerf blades run closer to 3/32" (0.094").
What it doesn't account for
This optimiser packs pieces along the LENGTH of straight stock — it doesn't handle sheet-goods layout (cutting rectangles from a 4x8 sheet in two dimensions), grain-direction constraints, or defect avoidance (knots, checks, sapwood you want to cut around). For sheet goods, plan the layout by hand against the sheet dimensions in /reference/; for defect avoidance, add a little slack to your stock-length total rather than relying on the optimiser to route around a knot it doesn't know exists. Once you know exact board feet needed for a project, the board foot calculator will convert that into a material cost estimate.