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Cutlist and Layout from Sketchup

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286K views 319 replies 81 participants last post by  danielsheppard  
#1 ·
Cutlist and Layout from Sketchup

If you're a fan of Sketchup for creating woodworking models, then the next obvious step is to use Sketchup to help you create cutlists and layouts. Sketchup plugin Cutlist 4.1 does just that. CutList 4.1 sketchup plugin helps you determine how much of each material you need to produce your design, taking into account nominal sized lumber with allowances for finishing to final size. Then it goes one further and lays out all of the pieces on boards or sheet good sizes of your choosing. Then you should be all set to head for the lumber yard to get all of the materials that you will need with no return trips.

CutList 4.1 was beta tested by our very own Lumberjocks and is now ready for download.

It's being released exclusively to Lumberjocks first. You can download v4.1.10 here . This is a completely free plugin. This plugin has been around since about 2005 but continues to be maintained and enhanced. It's got the look and feel of old Woodsmith magazine cutlists and layouts. A very early version v3.3 was reviewed in the Fine Woodworking blog 'Design.Click.Build.' by Dave Richards and a later follow up.

Note that there is now a forum on Lumberjocks for further discussion.

Cutlist 4.1 has been tested with both Skletchup 7, Sketchup 8, SU2013 and SU2014 on both Macs and on Windows PCs.

Installing. There are now 3 ways to install this.

Method 1 (easiest) Get and install it from Sketchup Extension Warehouse
  • Start up Sketchup
  • from Sketchup choose: Window->Extension Warehouse
  • Search for and select 'CutList'
  • click on install ( big red bar on top right)

Method 2 (easy) Download and install it using the Sketchup extension installer
A relative foolproof way to install is now available with the latest versions (from v4.1.6 and up).
  • Download it from link above
  • Start up Sketchup
  • from Sketchup choose: Window->Preferences
  • click on 'Extensions'
  • click on 'Install Extension', hen navigate to and select the .rbz file you just downloaded

Method 3 (if all else fails) This is a two step process and more error prone

  • The file is a .rbz (a zipped ruby source) file. Extract the entire contents into your sketchup plugin directory not just the startup ruby script (srcutlist.rb). There is also a folder called srcutlistui which contains everything else it needs to work properly. The exact locations of the directories required for Sketchup plugins for Windows or Mac are found documented further down in the blog.

Running on a Mac. This is functional. Only the html output window for the layout does not work because of issues with the Safari browser, however, there is a workaround using the SVG export.

Someone in the forum asked a great question which I will repeat here:

Q. What is the point of the cutting diagram?

A. Why indeed would you want a cutting diagram? There are a few reasons:
  1. Regardless of whether or not you have a cutting diagram, eventually you are going to have to cut some wood to get a project built. How many boards do you need to buy? If you go by the board feet measured ( or calculated by something like the cutlist plugin) you're going to find that it falls short. Why? because when you to to cut the pieces out of the board, you'll find that you will inevitable have waste. By having the cutting diagram, you can see how much waste there is going to be and you know how much to get when you to the lumber yard.
  2. You've got a lot of parts to cut and you want your parts to be as accurate as possible before you even do anything else to the pieces. Ideally you want one setup for each size of part, so that you can cut each of the parts which are the same size at the same time. The cutting diagram lets you visualize how parts may be laid out to minimize on the cuts and the number of setups.
  3. Ok, you've decided to build your project out of sustainably harvested plantation teak. It's selling for $50/square foot(!) for 3/4". You might be interested in using those $200 boards as efficiently as possible. A cutting diagram may also be used to minimize waste. Even if you have waste if you could have a larger part left over which you could reuse for another project vs having a lot of offcuts, you've saved yourself some money and you are using the planet's resources efficiently and responsibly.

So, to sum up, it gives you more accurate project requirements, it minimizes setup time and shop time spent cutting the boards while increasing accuracy and finally it helps to use the resources as efficiently as possible.

Finally here are some screen shots in case you still can't quite figure out what it does or why you would want it or can't imagine what it looks like.

Starting up cutlist. Highlight your project and select CutList from the plugin menu. Make sure all of the parts in your project are named and are either a component or a group. ( Nested components or groups are handled ok as well)

Image


The screen that comes up allows you to select your cutlist options from the type of output you want, what you want to have included in your parts list, which parts are solid wood parts, which are sheet goods parts and which are hardware

Image


and the next page allows you to select the layout options. There is a general options section, a tab for board options and a tab for sheet options.

Image


Here is a sample of cutlist output. This is the cutting list in html format. This page can be printed.

Image


If you scroll down, then there is a summary of the board feet and the materials and sheet parts and hardware are broken down to their own lists with their own summaries

Image


If you selected the layout output, then another window will open and place all of the selected parts on boards of your choosing in a layout which minimizes waste.

Image


Sheet parts layout is placed on the sheet sizes you specified.

Image


There's lots more. There is built in help on each option. Just click on the blue ? next to the option.

Feel free to pass along any comments, questions, enhancement requests or bug reports. I'm committed to maintaining the plugin and make it as useful as possible.
 
#153 ·
Hello woodworking sketchuppers and cutlist enthusiasts!

I am currently having an offline discussion about a particular use of SU for prototyping different design options using layers. By putting options on different layers, say a solid wood door vs a frame and paneled door or even no door, you can visualize one option vs another simply by turning one layer off and another one. This is a neat idea that I hadn't thought of. I'm sure some of you have thought about using layers this way already.

When it comes to creating a cutlist or a layout, ideally you would want it to represent the chosen option.

If you resort to letting the cutlist plugin 'select all' for you, right now, in the current version, you will get all entities on all layers, whether they are visible or not because there is no checking for this.

If you select the components manually, then the cutlist plugin will only work with the selected set ( if it's not visible then you can't select it manually) and so this would seem to be a workaround for now.

However, if your door was a sub-component within another component, say cabinet, then since cabinet is on a visible layer, all door options would also get selected even though 1 or more of them are not visible! ( This is because a sketchup's selection set internally is always the highest level component )

The question I have is, does it make sense for the cutlist plugin to check all components at all levels/layers for visibility and only include those which are? I think this makes sense but are there cases where this wouldn't do what you would expect?

Thanks for any feedback and suggestions.
 
#154 ·
Hi Steve, thanks so much for this plugin! I was thinking about trying to write the exact same thing myself and was very relieved once I found this post via Google. :) How did you go about learning the API? Just from experimentation? The docs out there aren't the best I've ever read. :(

I haven't started using layers for different options so I don't know if I'm qualified to answer your question. Personally, I don't mind opening up my file and deleting things which I don't want to go onto the cutlist before exporting it. As long as I don't save the file after the delete, no harm no foul! So if cutlist, by default, added everything, hidden or not, I'd be fine. I'll just manually remove the things I really don't want on the list…but I can see where some people would be a little put off by the idea of deleting a bunch of stuff to get a feature to work!
 
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#155 ·
Steve,

The layer thing makes a lot of sense for me. I use layers in all my drawings.

Let's say I am showing a client a cabinet for their project. I use the SketchUp animation feature which transitions between snapshots of different views for the presentation. I put the doors and hardware on separate layers and turn the door layer off so the client can see the inside of the cabinet. When I sell the project I usually order my doors and hardware from another source and I don't wish to have the doors as part of my cut list since I further process the output from your plugin with CutList Plus.

Components haven't worked well for me for this reason. I have been doing a work around for a while. I have been making everything into groups instead, so I can toggle layers on and off and then select the groups that I want your plugin to process. As long as I label the groups, everything works great in the output of the plugin. It really doesn't seem to have to be a component.

Thanks for all the effort you put into this very useful tool!
 
#156 ·
Hi Cannikin,
Thanks for the feedback and the support. I was lucky enough to inherit an earlier version of this plugin and have added quite a bit to it, but a lot of the basic heavy lifting had already been done. The things which I have added comes from looking for examples online or from the available online documentation. In some cases, there are things which are undocumented but seemed intuitive and so I simply tried it, especially some object methods which 'just had to be there'! I agree that the docs are not the best but the best things seems to be to find examples of what you want to do and adapt.

Hi ecarlson,
Thanks for your feedback. I have decided that selecting only visible layers makes sense based on the feedback I've received and thinking about how some people use layers. This is in the next version 4.0.7 which I hope to release soon.
 
#157 ·
I have a quick question..my first time trying this plugin with a simple shelf project, and it works great..I like it allot so far on first impressions…but when I want to print out the cutting diagram page the print button is grayed out. I can print the cut list page no problem but not the cutting diagram page ..anyone seen this yet?
 
#158 ·
Dave's right. The Print button was grayed out on purpose. No amount of trickery on my part could convince IE to print the layout page properly using the drawing tools I used. This is why I created the SVG option. MSIE doesn't support SVG without a plugin, but as Dave mentioned, Firefox does -but I have no control over the browser which is launched from Sketchup. It's been a source of frustration for me.

I'm looking at a solution to generate pdf documents which I think could restore the print option, but svg is the best option for now and works the same for Windows and Mac.
 
T
#160 ·
Steve,

Thank you so much for your great plugin. I just discovered that version 4.0 was out, and was very excited to see the bug for Cutlist Plus 2009 has been worked out. I can't tell you how much time this will save me.

Is there a way to have the plugin export to Cutlist plus with material types labeled as "Primary material" and Secondary material"? One of the features of Cutlist Plus that I love, is the ability to create project settings for primary and secondary materials. For a cabinet I normally make the sheet goods (for the carcase) as primary, and the dimensional lumber as secondary (for the face frames, doors, and drawer fronts.) This allows the ability to quickly change a paint grade cabinet using birch plywood and poplar to a stain grade job using all cherry. I can see the change in material cost by simply changing my primary and secondary preferences.

I was planning on creating materials in sketchup called "primary" and "secondary" and applying them to the components. Do you think this is something that I could easily change in the script?

Thank you again,

Todd
 
#161 ·
Hi Todd,

Welcome to Lumberjocks!

I'm glad to hear the changes made are useful to you.

I'll have to take a closer look at the interface to CutListPlus. If I recall correctly, there were two material fields expected for each part, the first being the primary, the other being the secondary. The single material field found in Sketchup was always mapped to the primary material. As there is no way to define two materials in Sketchup, it would have to be something like you suggest ie: if the keyword primary is found in the material name, then map to the primary material, otherwise to the secondary material. This would have no effect on non CutListPlus users, so this is a reasonable approach.

I'll have another look and get back with a definitive answer. If this is possible, I can send you trial version if you contact me offlist ( go to my LJ home page and click on 'send a message')
 
#162 ·
Hi, Steve -

I'm a very apprentice woodworker, but several long days a veteran of Cutlist! It really is a great program, and is actually the reason I'm learning Sketchup.

I'm on a Mac, and I think I've worked around most of the issues folks were having. Printing to SVG is fine - one note, the easiest way I've found to handle these is Illustrator. Photoshop (at least my old CS2 version) doesn't want to open them. But you can manipulate them very well in Illustrator and then export as jpgs or whatever if you want.

I have one question which seems obvious enough, but I haven't seen on the blog - when you generate the layouts for each piece of board or sheet goods, would it be possible to generate the dimensions of the pieces on the layout as well (within the area of each component)? It would get a bit weird for sheets with lots of small pieces, but it would save a lot of back and forth when actually laying out sheets for cutting. If it's not clear, I can post an example.

Thanks for all your hard work on this, it really is great.

Regards,

Myles
 
#163 ·
Hi Myles,

Thanks for the hints on using Illustrator for the svg files. I just open them with firefox which handles it without any plugins. Hopefully I'll find a way to generate pdf in a straightforward way, which might be even more preferable to some.

It's a valid question you have about showing the sizes of the pieces on the layout. Sometimes the layout piece is not even the same size as the final part size( for example if the part had to be split for a wide glue up), so even referring back to the cutlist may not give you the right size. It's a bit problematic on smaller pieces because there is no room to display it. I'm hoping at some point to give each part a unique part number (probably a letter actually) and to use the letter notation for smaller parts and then, if I get really clever, I can figure out a way to draw arrows to the really small parts, so the display doesn't get cluttered.

There has been some discussion offlist about having another cutlist for the layout and even regenerating the bd ft measure and taking into account kerf sizes (still planned) as well as some tolerance for waste/planing, cutting checked ends off etc. ie: approaching real world a bit more. I think this too is a good idea. In other words, this would be a rough cut list vs final finished size pieces.

I'll consider your idea as an improvement in a subsequent release but it may come as a phased in approach - lettering parts first for cross reference, then including size if there is room and something else if there is isn't.

Thanks for the feedback and the ideas.!
 
#164 ·
Steve, thanks for the quick reply - it's great having access to the guy that wrote the software!

I can't remember which option I checked (at a different computer) but I know there's some sort of unique identifier on the csv cutlist. Seems also that if one is clever with naming components, you should be able to get at least part the way there. Having just gone through and renamed every component in a kitchen, though, I won't be doing that again anytime soon… :^)

I'll take a look and see what I did. I've finally managed to generate a cutlist and layout that make sense, so I'm very pleased. Thanks again for all your efforts.
 
#167 ·
Hi John,

Yes, good morning, I am here now…

I have had one person report this before. Even after they sent me the model, I did not have the same issue on my setup. We compared SU versions, operating system versions etc. and I tried it on Vista, XP and XP Pro. I know that hearing this is not that helpful for you right now. This person did have success if they did not choose any components and let the plugin choose 'all' components. Not sure if this would work in your case, but worth mentioning.

I will also contact you offlist to see if I can get a copy of your model. I would really want to be able to reproduce this issue and sort out, once and for alll, what might be happening in this case. I suspecting a Sketchup bug because my plugin only deals with whatever sketchup tells me has been selected.
 
R
#168 ·
I am completely frustrated. I can get Cutlist to work with Sketchup 7 on my XP laptop but no amount of flailing around has resulted in success on my Vista Home Premium desktop machine with Sketchup 7. I fear it's something to do with the #$%&^* UAC but I will not turn that off. Anybody got it working with Vista and UAC??
 
#169 ·
Hi Ralph,

Welcome to Lumberjocks!

I run Vista Business with UAC enabled on my laptop and I use this sometimes to develop the plugin. I have had no issue with either SU6 or SU7. It might be something else. Can you describe what is happening?

( Note: I also use XP Pro and XP Home on two other computers. I run both SU6 and SU7 and have no issues with the plugin on any of these systems )
 
R
#170 ·
Did you turn off UAC to install?? I'll try to get onto that machine and Sketchup tomorrow and tell you exactly what happens. I am going to remove cutlist, then turn off UAC, install it and try it. If it works then I'll turn on UAC and try it. I am doing this from an account with Admin privilieges BTW.
 
R
#172 ·
OK, I deleted all of the files and folders having to do with Cutlist in both the Program Files and Program Data folders. Then, instead of double clicking the cutlist zip file to extract the files within, I started Winzip by right clicking it's icon and selecting "Run as Administrator", then opened the cutlist zip file and extracted all the included files, pointing to c:\program files\google\sketchup 7\plugins and using the option to use the folder names in the zip file. Now it works! I wonder if one extracted the file with the Vista utility rather than Winzip, if it works OK then as long as you are an administrator account. Anyway, I have finally gotten it to work.
 
#174 ·
Cutlist 4.0.7

At long last, I have a new version. I have had some suggested changes brewing in the background for quite some time.

Here's a list of the changes included in this new version:

  • Improve SVG pagination. 4×8 sheets come out in separate pages now.
  • Hardware parts are now matched on either their material name or their part name using the 'part words'.
  • Fixed bug in component selection: If a part appeared in a nested component, sometimes the top level component would get included in the cutlist
  • Layout only displays selected set of components now. Previously the component/sheet 'type' setting was ignored.
  • Add model name to the cutlist output and each page of the layout.
  • Select ALL' when prompted by the plugin, ( if nothing was selected) will now select only the visible components, allowing layers to be excluded from the cutlist. In addition, the getSubComponents parser will select only visible sub-components
  • Minor field naming cleanup for partwords/sheetwords in cutlist.html. No functional change.
  • Some field names on the menu have been changed to hopefully make what they mean more intuitive

The link in the original post now points to v4.0.7 or you can download cutlist v.4.0.7 here

Enjoy and let me know if anything doesn't work as intended.

There are more changes that people have requested/suggested that are not yet incorporated, so stay tuned if you've made a request and it's not here yet.

Steve
 
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