Benchmarks
SmartCut Max, benchmarked head-to-head against Biesse OptiPlanner on 2,000+ real production jobs: 123 stock saved — around £2,460 of material. Every number below is measured on real customer jobs with identical inputs, and checked against the fewest stock each job could ever need.
Head-to-head
The strongest test we could set: Biesse OptiPlanner — the optimiser shipped with Biesse beam saws — across all 2,000+ real production jobs in our benchmark library, identical parts, stock, kerf and trim on every job. OptiPlanner needed 11,083 stock to finish them; SmartCut Max needed 10,960.
Stock counts are compared job by job; the saving is the total difference. Run with SmartCut Max (the deepest search mode) at its standard budget. Every layout is checked as genuinely cuttable in the saw's own file format before it counts. Valued at £20 each, the 123 stock are around £2,460 of material.
Head-to-head — Magi-Cut & Ardis
We explored our corpus of 2,083 real production jobs and pulled out the 11 that pack the tightest — 1,136 parts in all — then ran them through SmartCut, Magi-Cut and Ardis with identical parts, stock, kerf and trim. SmartCut finished on 94 stock — the fewest these parts could ever have fitted into, on every single job. Ardis needed 99; Magi-Cut needed 103.
The dashed line is the hard limit: below it, the parts simply do not fit. SmartCut's column stops exactly on it because every one of the 11 layouts used the fewest stock physically possible — there was nothing left to save. That is 8.7% less material than Magi-Cut and 5.1% less than Ardis, on identical work — and 8.1 points more of every stock used than Magi-Cut.
| Parts | Fewest possible | SmartCut | Magi-Cut | Ardis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 98 | 11 | |||
| 80 | 8 | |||
| 64 | 5 | |||
| 85 | 8 | |||
| 156 | 9 | |||
| 86 | 8 | |||
| 170 | 14 | |||
| 67 | 7 | |||
| 162 | 8 | |||
| 76 | 5 | |||
| 92 | 11 | |||
| 1,136 parts · all 11 jobs | 94 | 94 · 90.3% | 103 · 82.2% | 99 · 85.4% |
Every SmartCut figure was re-run three times to confirm it. All 11 are real customer jobs from the same benchmark library as the OptiPlanner study above — a separate, deeper test on the jobs that pack the tightest.
Layout visualisations
The same parts, arranged by each tool. Pick a job, then switch between SmartCut, Magi-Cut and Ardis to see where the extra stock goes — and zoom into any piece. Every result in the table above opens straight to that layout.
The SmartCut layouts here come from SmartCut Max — our deepest setting, not the everyday Fast one. Max keeps hunting for a better arrangement until its time is up, so it can land on a slightly different layout from one run to the next. What you see is the exact set of results captured for the published study, rather than something you would reproduce cut for cut.
Every layout shown is the tool's own result for that job, on identical parts, stock, kerf and trim — the SmartCut layouts come from SmartCut Max. Every result in the table above opens its layout, including the two jobs where all three tools tied on the same stock: SmartCut is never beaten, even where it can't pull ahead.
Tool comparison
Same parts, same stock dimensions, same kerf for every tool. Results show stock required to fit all parts — less stock means less material waste. Times measured end-to-end including network round-trips where applicable.
| Benchmark | SC Fast | SC Max | Magi-Cut | OptiCutter | CutList Optimizer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 parts2400 × 2000 mm | 2 stock 50 ms | 2 stock 0.2 s | 2 stock | 2 stock 2.6 s | 2 stock 27.6 s |
| 10 parts2400 × 2000 mm | 1 stock 76 ms | 1 stock 0.3 s | 1 stock | 1 stock 2.6 s | 1 stock 8.3 s |
| 20 parts2400 × 2000 mm | 1 stock 2.0 s | 1 stock 18.9 s | 2 stock | 1 stock 8.3 s | 1 stock 103 s |
| 22 parts2400 × 2000 mm | 2 stock 0.3 s | 2 stock 5.1 s | 2 stock | 2 stock 10.5 s | 2 stock 95.9 s |
| 39 parts7 shapes · 2800 × 2050 mm | 2 stock 0.4 s | 1 stock 58.1 s | 1 stock | 2 stock 11 s | 2 stock 121 s |
| 60 parts2785 × 2055 mm | 10 stock 0.5 s | 9 stock 8.2 s | 9 stock | 10 stock 4.5 s | 10 stock 122 s |
| 96 parts6 shapes · 2400 × 2000 mm | 5 stock 0.7 s | 4 stock 167 s | 4 stock | 5 stock 12.9 s | 5 stock 122 s |
| 160 parts4 shapes · 2785 × 2055 mm | 5 stock 1.4 s | 4 stock 24.8 s | 4 stock | 5 stock 28.9 s | 5 stock 122 s |
| 256 parts2785 × 2055 mm | 14 stock 2.7 s | 13 stock 192 s | 13 stock | 14 stock 24 s | — |
SmartCut Fast completes in under 3 seconds on all nine jobs — 10–100× faster than web-based tools. SmartCut Max matches or beats every other tool on all nine benchmarks, and on every one of the nine it finishes on the fewest stock a saw could ever cut from these parts. Magi-Cut is a Windows desktop application, so its timing isn't directly comparable (stock counts use the same saw input format). CutList Optimizer returns results on 8 of 9 benchmarks; the 256-part job exceeds its part limit, and it hits an internal ~2-minute ceiling on larger jobs regardless of budget. Choosing between installed suites and SmartCut? See the full comparison with Ardis and Magi-Cut.
Fast vs Max: Fast returns in under 3 seconds and is right for most jobs. Max (150 s budget) runs deeper search passes and recovers material on larger jobs — across 147 large production jobs it saves 59 stock versus Fast. The full mode story is on the beam saw page.
Methodology
For any cutting list there is a hard limit: a number of stock below which the parts simply will not fit, no matter how clever the software. We calculate that limit for every job and check our result against it. When the two match, the layout cannot be beaten — not by us, not by anyone.
Measured across 2,083 real beam-saw jobs: 82% came back on that limit exactly. The remaining 18% are jobs where the geometry leaves a genuine gap — typically very large panels, unusual aspect ratios, or head-cut-heavy patterns — not algorithm inefficiency.
FAQ
For every job we first work out the fewest stock the parts could ever fit into — a hard limit set by the geometry, not by software. When a result lands on that limit, no tool anywhere could have done better on that job. Across 2,083 real jobs, SmartCut's result is on the limit for 82% of them.
SmartCut Max and Biesse OptiPlanner were run on the same 2,000+ real production jobs with identical parts, stock, kerf and trim. Stock counts were compared job by job; in total SmartCut Max used 10,960 stock against OptiPlanner's 11,083 — 123 fewer.
We took the 11 hardest-packing jobs in our benchmark library — 1,136 parts in all — and ran each through SmartCut, Magi-Cut and Ardis with identical parts, stock, kerf and trim. SmartCut finished every one on 94 stock, the fewest stock physically possible, against 103 for Magi-Cut and 99 for Ardis. Every SmartCut figure was re-run three times to confirm it.
On nine real benchmarks with identical inputs, SmartCut Max matches or beats every other tool on every job — and on every one of the nine it finishes on the fewest stock a saw could ever cut from these parts. SmartCut Fast returns results 10–100× faster than the web-based tools.
Most beam-saw jobs finish in under two seconds in Fast mode. Max mode uses a larger budget (150 seconds by default) to recover extra material on the hardest jobs.
Yes — efficiency is measured across 2,083 real customer jobs, not synthetic test cases, and every competitor comparison uses the same parts, stock and kerf.
Try it on your jobs
Run your own cutting lists against these numbers — a test environment is available on request.