The cutting list

This cabinet has eight parts: two side panels, a bottom, two cross rails, a back, a shelf and a door. Before the saw, every one of these parts becomes one row in the cutting list. In this lesson you'll see what that row says, how to read the sizes along the grain and the edge tape, how the list is sorted, and how the parts are marked after they're cut.

0:28What a cutting list is

The cutting list is the list of all the parts in a project. For each part it says what it's made of, how big it is, and which edges get edge tape. Cutting and banding follow it, so it's really the order for the saw. The saw knows nothing about the kitchen: it only knows what's in the list.

If something in the list is missing or wrong, the saw will make it exactly that way. So the list is checked before the first cut.

0:54The columns of a cutting list

A row of the cutting list always holds the same information. First, the part number. Then the material, that is the decor, and the board thickness. The cut size, length and width. The edge tape on each edge. The part name and the cabinet it belongs to. A good list also has the finished size, so the part can be checked later, and a note for anything else.

For example, take the left door of the sink unit. It's in the Cashmere grey decor, on an eighteen millimetre board. The cut size is seven hundred and twelve by three hundred and ninety-two, with two millimetre edge tape on all four edges, and the finished size is seven hundred and sixteen by three hundred and ninety-six.

1:37Length along the grain

The first size in the list, the length, runs along the grain, and the second, the width, across it. On a door the length is the height, because the grain runs from top to bottom. A drawer front six hundred wide and one hundred and forty millimetres high, with vertical grain, has a length of one hundred and forty: its shorter side.

So the length isn't always the longer side of a part. When the list is written that way, the saw knows how to lay the part on the sheet, and the grain runs as designed.

2:08Edge tape in the list

Edge tape is given for each edge separately, for the two longer and the two shorter edges, with its thickness. A blank field means an edge without edge tape. A shelf banded on its front edge only has one filled edge and three blank ones.

2:24Sorting the list

The list is sorted in two ways. For assembly it goes cabinet by cabinet, so all the parts of one cabinet are together. For cutting, the same parts are grouped by decor and thickness, because only parts of the same decor and thickness go on one sheet. The three millimetre backs go on their own sheet, and the fronts on theirs.

Identical parts, for example two shelves of the same cabinet, can be two rows, or one row with a quantity. All that matters is that the number of pieces isn't lost.

2:57Marking the parts

After cutting, many parts look almost the same: two side panels, several shelves, doors of the same height. So every part gets its own mark straight away, with its number from the list, either on a label or on a face that won't be seen later.

The mark matters. The left and right side panels are the same size, but their holes are mirrored. Swap them, and the cabinet won't go together properly. The number on the part is the same as in the list, on the cutting diagram and on the label, so the part can always be found.

The note carries what the sizes don't say. For example, that a filler is cut to the wall on site, or that drawer fronts are cut in order from the same board, as you saw in the lesson on decors.

3:42In short

In short. The cutting list is the list of all the parts with their sizes, material and edge tape, and cutting and banding follow it. For each part it gives the material and thickness, the cut size, the edge tape per edge, the name and the cabinet, and a good list also has the finished size and a note. The length runs along the grain and the width across it, so the length isn't always the longer side. Edge tape is given for each edge, and a blank means none. For assembly the list goes cabinet by cabinet, and for cutting by decor and thickness. Every part has its number and is marked straight after the cut. And the note carries what the sizes don't say.

In Easy Form Studio you get the cutting list with one click: in the EFS tab, in the Export panel, click Cutting list to Excel. Each row in the file is one board, and the row number is the same one used on the cutting diagrams and on the labels.

In the list, Length always runs along the grain. You set the grain direction in the EFS Board tab, in the Grain field, with Longer or Shorter. The edge tape is in four columns, in the same order as the edges in the Edging Tape box.

You type the note in the EFS Board tab, in the Note field, and it goes into the cutting list. The labels carry the same numbers as the cutting list when you export them from the same version of the project, best in one go, with the Production package.

The whole process is shown step by step in the tutorials Cutting list and cut size, and Labels and assembly instructions.

A three-question quiz and the summary are on the academy page, the link is below the video. In the next lesson: cutting optimisation, and what to do with offcuts.