How many boards do you actually have to buy?
The trick that makes a cut list solvable is deciding how many boards to cut each way, not where each piece goes. Four patterns, two requirements, one objective: fewest boards.
Home Starter Optimization free
After you install, this is the model to open.
The Fewest Boards for the Cut List
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
The optimizer lands on:
- Boards used
- 6
- The mix
- 4 boards of three shelves, 2 of four cleats
- Shop-pencil plan
- 7 boards
Six boards, zero waste against the naive seven: this is cutting stock, the same structure mills and fabric shops solve at industrial scale, and the pattern trick is the entire insight. Retype the pattern yields for your stock length and parts.
The model
A board becomes two shelves and a cleat, three shelves, four cleats, or one shelf and two cleats. The optimizer chooses pattern counts to meet twelve shelves and eight cleats.
| Need | 12 shelves (30in), 8 cleats (24in) |
| Patterns | 4 ways to cut a 96in board |
| Boards used | optimized |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
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Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Optimization in Google Sheets.