Plywood nesting optimizer

Every part on the sheet, the way you'd lay it.

The design's parts, nested true-shape and grain-locked onto sheet stock, with the yield on every sheet.

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The sheet optimizer

The real thing, on a real job.

This is the shipping optimizer, not a diagram: a seven-cabinet job nested onto seven sheets of prefinished ¾ at 81.5% yield, every part labeled with its name and cut size, the yield on each sheet, and the 31 solid-stock face-frame members routed to the lumber list instead of onto ply. A second run, nested for one big offcut, took eight sheets; both are kept in the list above, so two runs compare side by side.

  • By material — case parts, backs, finished panels and doors each nest onto their own stock; tick what runs today.
  • Your numbers — sheet size per material, tool diameter (⅜ compression as the standard), sheet rim, and a wider gap for parts under 6″.
  • Per-sheet control — rotate, remake, or move a part to another sheet by hand when you know better than the packer.
  • Drops, not waste — every offcut reported by size and rackable as stock for the next job.
  • Out the door — G-code for your router, or a layered DXF for your CAM; every program checked in a simulator, first one on scrap.
The WoodWright 1.0 sheet optimizer on the Sample Kitchen: two nest runs kept (7 sheets at 81.5% and 8 at 71.3%), the seven 4 by 8 sheets of prefinished plywood as thumbnails with each sheet's yield, the first sheet drawn with its labeled parts and Lock, Mark cut, Rotate and Remake, the part gap and sheet rim settings on the left, and 31 face-frame members routed to the lumber list
sheet optimizer · prefinished ¾ · 7 sheets · 81.5% · two runs kept
Questions

Straight answers

What sheet sizes does it nest onto?
Any you set. The default is a 4×8 sheet with the oversize your supplier actually ships (48½ × 96½), and each material class — door stock, prefinished, case ply — can carry its own sheet size or follow the default. Tool diameter, sheet rim and the small-part gap are yours to set too.
Is it true-shape or just rectangles?
True-shape. A corner deck cut on a 45° is nested as the shape it is, so two of them can interlock across the diagonal — a placement rectangles cannot make. Grain direction is respected per part.
What happens to the offcuts?
Every sheet reports its drops by size. Rack a drop and it is remembered as stock for a later job instead of being written off as waste.
How does the nest get to my CNC?
Three ways. WoodWright writes G-code straight from the nest for SCM Xilog, ShopBot, Biesse, Homag and Mach/GRBL/LinuxCNC/Masso — every program checked in a simulator, none cut on a real machine yet, so the app asks you to run the first one on scrap. From 1.0.0 it also writes a layered DXF of each nested sheet, every part where the nest put it, for your CAM to toolpath. Or export the parts as a layered DXF and let the CAM you already run nest and toolpath them — that DXF is the parts, not the nest. The CNC page has every file format from real emitter bytes.

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