Kitchen cabinet cut list on an iPhone

Group by material and thickness before anything else

A typical kitchen produces at least three groups: the carcass ply at 18 or 19 mm, the backs at 6 mm, and the fronts, often in a different board again. Each group has to be optimised against its own stock sheet. Throwing all the parts into one list and dividing by one sheet size gives a number that means nothing, because a 6 mm back cannot be cut from an 18 mm panel.

In Sawgrid each of those is a material, with its own stock, its own grain axis and its own plan. One run solves all of them and returns a separate cutting map per material plus one consolidated shopping list. That is a Pro feature; the free tier runs one material at a time, which is fine for a single unit and awkward for a whole kitchen.

The carcass, part by part

The plan on the home page is one unit, and it is a useful shape to copy:

Ten parts, one sheet, 89.6 % of the panel turned into cabinet and a 982 by 240 mm offcut back in the rack.

Grain is where a kitchen is won or lost

Fronts and visible sides must run with the grain, or a finished run of doors looks wrong in a way no customer can name but everybody sees. Shelves, bottoms and anything behind a door do not care, and letting those turn is frequently what saves the last sheet.

So grain in Sawgrid is set per part, three valued: free to rotate, forced lengthwise, forced crosswise. Parts inherit the material's setting when you create them and you override the handful that matter. The stock panel itself carries a grain axis, so a sheet whose grain runs the short way is handled correctly rather than assumed.

Do not forget the edge banding

Each part carries which of its four sides get banded, and that drives the banding length in the shopping list. It is easy to plan the panels perfectly and then find yourself twelve metres short of edging on a Saturday.

What you take to the merchant, and what you take to the saw

Out of one run you get: a cutting map per material drawn to scale and dimensioned, the cut list in the order you will actually cut, a consolidated shopping list, the area balance, and, with Pro, a multi page PDF and a label sheet you can print and stick on the parts as they come off. There is also a saw table mode that walks the cut sequence one fence setting at a time with the screen kept awake, which is the difference between checking a phone thirty times and reading a number once.