📋 Plywood Cut List Calculator — Nest Parts & Print Cutting Diagrams

How to write a cut list — and turn it into a sheet order

A usable cut list — what shops call a cut sheet — is a table, not a sketch: one row per part type, five columns that never change. Label, quantity, width, length, and grain note. The label is what you pencil on the part as it leaves the blade; the width is measured across the grain and the length along it, a convention that matters the moment the planner has to decide whether a part may rotate. Every dimension is the final cut size, after edging and squaring — the saw does not round up.

Write the list before you buy, not after. A cabinet cut list written first turns the buying decision into arithmetic: the planner above expands quantities into individual parts, adds your blade's kerf to every piece, and shelf-packs them onto the stock you can actually buy — 4×8 construction sheets, 5×5 Baltic birch, or metric 1220 × 2440 mm panels. The output is three numbers that settle the lumberyard trip: sheets needed, waste as a percentage, and how far the nested result sits above the theoretical area minimum.

The nesting math, step by step

The planner runs a guillotine shelf-packing pass — the same family of algorithm that panel saws and commercial cut planners use, restricted to layouts a single blade can actually reproduce. Five steps, each with a checkable number:

1. 1Expand the bill of materials into individual parts

   A row reading "Shelves × 3, 22¾ × 29½" becomes three separate parts. A 12-part-type cabinet list of 38 pieces expands to 38 instances — the nesting problem is per-piece, not per-row.

2. 2Add one kerf to every part on both dimensions

   A 23¼ × 34½″ side with a 0.125″ blade becomes a 23.375 × 34.625″ cell. The last piece on each sheet gets its kerf back (there is no cut after it), which makes the layout conservatively wrong rather than optimistically wrong — a 1/64″ surprise is always cheaper than a short part.

3. 3Sort tallest-first

   Parts are sorted by cell height, descending. Shelves hold rows of similar height, so a tall part never wastes a short shelf. Unlocking grain rotation lets each part lie with its shorter dimension as the row height, which is why rotation typically saves sheets on mixed lists.

4. 4Shelf-pack left to right, then new shelf, then new sheet
   part fits shelf? x += part_w + kerf

   else new shelf? y += shelf_h + kerf

   else new sheet — repeat

   First-fit-decreasing placement: each part lands in the first shelf that holds it. First-fit is a heuristic, not an exhaustive optimum — exhaustive search over 38 parts exceeds 10³⁰ layouts, so every commercial cut planner uses a bounded heuristic like this one.

5. 5Report sheets, waste, and the fragmentation gap

   Waste % = (sheet area − part area) ÷ sheet area. The gap between the nested sheet count and the area minimum (part area ÷ sheet area, rounded up) is pure fragmentation — rectangles that no remaining part could fill. The planner shows both numbers so you can judge whether one more design tweak is worth it.

Guillotine nesting rules the planner obeys

Every diagram this tool draws can be executed with a straightedge and one blade, because the nesting pass enforces the guillotine constraint end to end. The rules, and why each exists:

• Every cut crosses the full piece. No L-shaped or T-shaped cuts — a circular saw, table saw or track saw cannot make them in one pass, and "efficient" layouts that require them are unbuildable.
• Kerf is charged on every cut line. Two 12″ doors cut from one 24″+kerf strip come out 11 15/16″ each, not 12″. The planner bakes this into placement rather than leaving it for the saw to discover.
• Grain runs one way when locked. With rotation off, every part keeps its length along the sheet's 8-foot grain. Visible panels — doors, sides, drawer fronts — need this; shelf cleats do not.
• Shelves never overflow the sheet. A shelf opens only when the remaining height admits the tallest part left to place — parts never straddle the sheet edge, so diagrams are honest to the last inch.
• Oversize parts are refused, not silently shrunk. A part wider than the sheet is flagged in red above the diagrams; the layout proceeds without it so the shortage is visible before the truck is loaded.

Cut list nesting vs. area-based sheet counting

This page and the site's plywood cut calculator solve two different problems, and using the right one saves real money. The area-based tool answers the buying question: this surface is 100 square feet, how many 32-square-foot sheets, how much waste, which direction wastes less. It has no parts list because a floor, a wall or a roof has no parts. The nesting planner on this page answers the building question: these 38 labeled cabinet parts, how do they fit, on how many sheets, and what does sheet three look like when the saw starts.

The two tools agree on the seam between them. For a cabinet job, run the area math first as a budget floor — 38 parts at 47.6 square feet cannot come out under two sheets no matter how clever the nesting — then run the planner for the real answer, which respects kerf and grain and usually lands one to three sheets above that floor. If the planner lands far above it, the parts list is fighting the sheet module, and the fix is on the drawing board, not the saw.

A standard cabinet carcass on 4×8 sheets — worked example

The planner ships preloaded with a single 30-inch base cabinet — the unit every kitchen run is built from. Here is how its six part types land on 4×8 stock with grain locked and a 1/8″ blade, so you can read the numbers before entering your own:

Worked result for the default list: 18 parts, 21.9 sq ft of parts, nesting to 2 sheets of 4×8 (64 sq ft) — 65.8% waste on a single-cabinet run, which is exactly why cabinet shops gang five or ten identical carcasses into one nesting pass before ordering.

📋The printed cut sheet earns its keep at the saw

The printed cut sheet earns its keep at the saw

Print the cut sheet and cut in sequence

The planner's Print button lays out the same sheet diagrams and part table you see on screen — one diagram per sheet, labels and dimensions included — sized for a shop wall. Cut in the order the diagrams imply: rip the shared columns first (the tallest parts), crosscut within the column, and leave every offcut uncut until a smaller part claims it. A part cut too early is a part with no home; the diagrams keep each offcut's remaining inventory visible right up to the moment it is claimed.

A plywood cut list calculator is only as honest as its inputs, so calibrate the two numbers that drift: the blade kerf (measure it, don't trust the package — a nominal 1/8″ blade with 20 hours of use runs wider) and the sheet itself (measure the actual panel; metric 1220 mm stock is 3/64″ wider than 48″ and that gap lands between the first and second column of a tight nesting). Everything downstream of those two numbers is exact arithmetic.

Ready to price the order the planner just produced? The plywood calculator on the homepage converts any sheet count into a material cost, and the full calculator directory covers the rest of the job — edge banding rolls, fastener counts, and the weight you will be carrying. For a cabinet parts list, this plywood cut list planner is the step that turns the drawing into a saw plan.

Last updated: November 2026 · Published by the Plywood Calculator team · Nesting method: first-fit-decreasing guillotine shelf packing, kerf-charged per cut line.