Cut list optimizer apps for iPhone: what to check first

1. Is the calculating metered?

This is the first thing to test, because it decides whether the app is usable at all. Several apps in this category give you a fixed number of free solves, or cap the parts list, or hold the plan behind a paywall after you have typed in forty parts. A free run burned by a mistyped digit is the complaint that comes up again and again.

Sawgrid does not meter the calculating. As many parts and panels as the job actually has, as many recalculations as you like, all 108 optimisation strategies on every run, and the full cutting plan on screen with dimensions, part names and the area balance. The free tier is limited in a different way: one project at a time, one material in it, and a fixed 3.0 mm saw kerf. Those limits are stated on the result screen rather than discovered at a paywall.

2. Where does it charge the kerf?

Two apps can hold the same numbers and disagree by a whole sheet, purely because of where they book the blade width. The blade takes material out of the free area beside a placed part. It is never added to the size of the part, and it is never charged at an outside edge of the panel, because there is no cut there.

Get that wrong in the generous direction and the plan will not fit the wood. Get it wrong in the strict direction and you buy a sheet you did not need. The kerf page works the arithmetic through on a real strip.

3. Does the area balance close?

Ask the app what happened to every square millimetre of the sheet. A trustworthy answer splits the gross area into parts, saw kerf, edge trim, reusable offcut and waste, and those five figures add up to exactly the sheet.

Sawgrid computes that balance in whole tenths of a millimetre and refuses to display a plan whose books do not close. It is not a presentation feature. It is the check that catches an optimizer quietly losing area.

4. What happens to a part that does not fit?

The single most damaging failure in this category is a plan that silently drops a piece. You take the sheet count to the merchant, buy to it, and discover the missing part when the material is already cut.

Every requested copy in Sawgrid is either placed on a panel or listed as unplaced with a reason, its size, and the stock item it was measured against. Nothing disappears without a line about it.

5. Is grain direction per part, or one global switch?

A single "allow rotation" checkbox is not enough for real furniture. Fronts and visible sides have to run with the grain; shelves and hidden parts can turn freely, and turning them is often what saves the sheet.

Sawgrid makes grain a three valued setting on every part: free to rotate, forced lengthwise, forced crosswise. Parts inherit it from their material and you override it where it matters. The stock panel carries its own grain axis, so a cross grain sheet is handled correctly too. Grain per part is a Pro switch; free plans treat every part as free to turn and say so on the result.

6. Can you take it to the saw?

A plan you can only read on a phone held in a sawdust covered hand is a plan you will mis-read. Look for two things: a printable document, and a mode built for the machine.

Sawgrid Pro exports a multi page PDF with one page per panel drawn to scale and dimensioned, the cut list in cutting order, a label sheet and the cut list as CSV, all through the normal iOS share sheet. It also has a saw table mode that shows one cut at a time, with the fence setting set in figures you can read from two metres away, the screen kept awake, and each cut ticked off as you make it.

7. Does it need a connection or an account?

Workshops are basements, garages and building sites. A tool that needs a login is a tool that fails on the day the signal does.

Sawgrid has no account, no login and no server. The optimizer, the drawings, the PDF and the offcut inventory all run on the device, and your projects live in the app's own storage. The only part that reaches the network is the advertising in the free version, and Pro carries none.