Hi Dave.
Thanks for that. That's got me a little further - the SVG files are at least giving me some sort of layout diagram, but now I don't seem to be able to get it to show me a layout on a 4×8 ft sheet …?

 

Ah - that was all fine, but I hadn't named the components correctly. Now it's recognizing what needs to come from sheets. Great stuff. Thanks Dave

 

Wow! Just discovered Sketchup a couple of weeks ago and have been loving it. But it got even better today when I found Cutlist! This is great!

My only problem is that the project I modeled in Sketchup is based on 2×2's, which is not an option in the board selections. I did see the workaround for this posted above, so I'll try that, but I wanted to put in another request for customizable sizes on boards and sheet goods. Sounds like it was being considered for the next version, so…PLEASE!

Thanks for such a great plugin!

 

Hi jcsom,

Your best bet is to customize your copy of the plugin for now. Customizable wood for layout is in the works but as a first step, it would still only be a single selection. ie: 1 can allow 2×2 to be specified but everything selected would be layed out on this material.

The ultimate is to enter all of the pieces of wood you have to work with and to have it lay out on what you have but that's a step up in complexity which would be fun to try to do but I can't guarantee that it'll be anytime soon.

In the short term, I can add 2×2 into the current mix of selectable options. Let me know if you need a hand replacing one of the current selections with 2×2 - it should be pretty straight forward.

In any case, your request has been noted!

 

Steve,

Thanks for the offer of help, but I succeeded in customizing it for 2X2s - worked perfectly!

Yeah, being able to enter multiple custom and/or standard sizes would be awesome! I realize that would be a more complex addition, though (v. 5.0???). For now, just being able to customize for a single size without having to go into the code to do it would be nice.

Thanks again for making such a useful plugin available!

 

Is there any way to assign a material type (type of wood such as spruce) to a component and have cutlist recognize it without having to apply a sketchup material to the component. Did that make sense?

Many drawings I do I don't bother with assigning sketchup materials. For example, I draw a 2×4 that I want to show up as spruce in cutlist's output. Do I have to apply a sketchup material called spruce to the component (2×4) to make this happen or is there a different way.

Thanks very much for all your affort that has gone into this plugin Steve! It is an excellent tool.
Brad

 

I was hoping to do it without assigning any materials but I understand what you're suggesting too. Much of the material I use is birch ply and poplar. I could actually make the default material one of these. Most of my work is paint grade builtins and closets so I typically don't apply wood grain materials. I was just looking at other ideas how to accomodate this. One possibility could be through the use of component attributes although I think they are only in Sketchup Pro which would cut out a lot of users.

 

Your idea of changing the material of selected components would work great actually. I'll do some searching too.

 

Perfect - will do so.

 

Dave - thanks for the material change plugin. It works great. I've created several "blank" materials that I've named after common materials that I use (Maple ply, Poplar, Hard maple, etc.) My process now is to create a drawing as I normally would which does not include assigning any materials. After the drawing is complete I select all components of the same material and use the global material change to assign the appropriate "blank" material. Now the cutlist csv contains the proper material name. Saves me some time.

thanks for your help.
brad

 

Hey Dave, could you post the name of that materials plugin?

 

Hey Steve,

First let me say this is a great plugin and I'm glad I found it!

I think I found a bug. I have a fairly simple project of a desk for my wife. When I try to generate a cutlist for the entire project, the cutting diagram for sheets does not correctly display the last sheet. When I select the layer with sheet components only and run the plugin, it creates the cutting diagram fine.

Also on the layout optimization. Is it me or does the plugin optimize layouts for crosscuts? Would it be hard to add support for optimizing sheet goods layout for ripping. I sold my pickup so I now have to have the store rip panels for transport.

 

Thanks Dave,

Doh! I missed that. =/

 

Hi BassPlayer,

Welcome to Lumberjocks!

It could be that you've hit the limit or it could be a bug as you suggest. The html window output for layout has been particularly troublesome in ways that I have no control over when the project gets to a certain size(see footnote 1), which is why the svg output was provided as an option. It picks up where the window output falls off.

There is a 'board' limit, but this was done mainly to try to minimize reaching the window limitations. As I recall, though, I set this fairly high, so most likely you will come to the windows limits first.

(footnote 1) unfortunately this size is not really quantifiable as it depends on your project.

I will contact you offline. If you are willing to share you sketchup project files, I can see if I can get to the root of it. I'm in the process of updating the plugin, so this is a good time to make any changes if there is an issue.

As for layout favoring one type of cut over another on sheets, this is an interesting point. The short answer is that there was no intention for that but it may appear that way or it may come out that way and there is no real option now to try to optimize towards crosscuts or rip cuts, but it's an interesting problem.

The lengthier answer: While no intention was made to favor one or the other, I do have to make an assumption about part orientation since Sketchup has no representation of the grain of a solid (not even the application of a material imparts this attribute since the material itself is just an image on the surface). So it goes like this.:The grain direction is assumed to be in the direction of greatest length.This is true for the boards and for the sheet goods. Parts are placed in the same orientation as the material. That's part 1 of the answer.

Part 2 has to do with the algorithm used to place parts.I won't bore you with the details (it's in the ruby code if you really want to know ) but same-sized parts do end up being laid across the board looking like it favors the crosscut but only because it is more efficient this way but not necessarily easier to cut the pieces out.

It's an interesting enough point, that I might have a think about an option which might favor ease of cutting parts vs optimization of the board. It just might show up as one of those crazy experimental options in the next version!

This plugin is fascinating to me in that I am trying to codify intelligent decisions which we make as woodworkers practically without thinking. Experience can guide us on layout but what is the process in a person's mind when he/she makes those decisions? The computers only advantage is that it can try many different combinations. (Sorry I am getting all geeky now thinking about this interesting problem …)

 

Thanks for the explanation, I just sent you my project file.

I have no problem using the SVG option. I just tried it now. One suggestion though, it would be helpful to have a web page that links to the SVG files so I can just click on them and access them directly instead of navigating to the directory and opening them individually. Maybe some sort of frames thing where you can click on links from a list in the left frame and the SVG file would display on the right frame.

 

Hi David ( BassPlayer),

Received and responded to your email. You have the classic symptoms of having reached the limits of the windows output (which is actually a limit because of the way the graphics is drawn, not the window itself).

Having a window with clickable links to the svg files generated is an excellent idea! Having it display there might work too as long as I can be sure that MSIE and Apple's Safari both support svg. I have no choice with Sketchup because these are its default browser selections when running as a plugin ( it ignores your default browser setting). Thanks for the idea!

 

We looked at using SVG for an in house tool I wrote and AFAIK, pre version 9 internet exploder browsers do not provide native support for SVG. There was an adobe plugin that displayed SVG but since MS is coming out with there own scalable vector format, big surprise, adobe has EOL'd the plugin. =/ No idea on Safari's support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics#SVG_and_Microsoft_Internet_Explorer

The Ssrc SVG Plugin looks very interesting.

HTH
db

 

David ( BassPlayer )

I'm in the thick of my yearly update of the plugin and you'll be pleased to know that , while I haven't yet implemented your idea yet to have clickable link to svg (uniform browser support might still be an issue), I have overcome the issues with displaying an unlimited size layout in a window AND it can be printed now - though it's less than 100% perfect, it's a huge improvement over what was there before. It's also a lot faster

Be on the lookout for a v4.1 pre-release being made available for testing out some of the new features.

Still lots of improvements to go.

 

Cutlist 4.1 pre-release is now available for trialing.

Rather than repeating myself in many places, I've started a new blog series on cutlist 4.1 to inform on new features and updates as available, receive any feedback on any issues and provide fixes - all leading to a release version of 4.1

Please go here for more details

 

Would there ever be a possibility of being able to list, by size, several rough cut 8/4 lumber/boards and have cutlist use the sum of that list of various sized boards to generate your "best" Cut List? In other words using 10' 8/4 boards with the following widths: one 6", two 8", three 7 1/2", two 9", etc. the stuff you get from the lumber yard ;-)

 

Hi HorizontalMike - The short answer is yes, someday. I'd like to introduce the idea of listing your own boards and to have the program do its best to lay it out on what you tell it is available. Most of the infrastructure is there, the interface is not. one of these days, I'll get around to putting the interface in and seeing how well it works.

In principle now, it already lays out on boards available, it's just that I limit it to a certain size and an unlimited number of them.

Note: Having the boards available for layout is one thing, the other half of your request - getting the best possible fit - is quite another. My current algorithm is ok but could be improved. I'm sure ( I know ) that is the stuff of PhDs! What I tried to do was to recreate the way we would go about doing it, but believe me, the mind is incredibly complex and adept and doing things which are difficult to describe to a machine!

Stay tuned - just don't hold your breathe!

 

This is BY FAR the best cutlist/layout option for mac people! You just have to follow the changes above suggested by daltxguy.

Cheers

Warren

 

That's some pretty head swelling comments there, Warren. Thanks! I hope to keep the plugin functional for all platforms which SU supports.

 

this program is amazing, and it works with metric! at least for the panels, well the standard panels that is.
is there a way to input custom board and panel sizes? none of the common board sizes i use are in the list (170×60 mm, 130×25mm etc… plus the length of the boards is quite limited, the shortest i use is 3m, the longest 4.80m
and when i use oak then none of the boards have the same width, but there i may be asking too much to input every single board…
anyway big thanks for making this program!

 

Thanks for your comments idl. I've never used eCabinet though I see the price is right. I'm not associated with any manufacturer or even Google for that matter.

Greedo - the request is in the pipeline but not there yet