Guillotine · tidy pass
When a job doesn't fill its last sheet, the free space is usually split into several narrow gaps between the parts. On a sparsely-used sheet, SmartCut rearranges the parts so the free space joins up into one rectangle — a single clean offcut you can keep and cut into next time. The parts, the sheet count and the efficiency don't change; only the shape of the leftover does. Every rearranged sheet is re-checked as cuttable on your saw.
How it works
A guillotine pattern splits a sheet into strips — full-height columns or full-width rows — each holding its own stack of parts. On a partly-used sheet, SmartCut reorders those strips by how full they are. That puts the emptier strips next to each other, so the free space that was scattered across the sheet lines up — and that is where the reusable offcut is cut from.
It is a geometry-only change. The parts stay the same, on the same sheet, and the number of sheets never moves — so it can't save material and doesn't claim to. What it changes is the shape of the leftover: one clean rectangle instead of several unusable notches.
Real production sheets
Three real customer jobs, straight from the production pipeline: the same parts on the same sheet, before and after the tidy pass. The amber regions are the free space — the offcuts. Their total never changes; what changes is how much of it sits in one clean rectangle.
Two columns of different heights: reordering them merges the two separate gaps into one clean corner offcut.
2430 × 1210 mm · 4 parts · 65% used on both sides · largest clean offcut 1.2× bigger
The last sheet of a beam-saw job, built from rows. Reordering the rows by width collects the slack into one wide band.
2730 × 1810 mm · 10 parts · 78% used on both sides · largest clean offcut 1.6× bigger
Short rows scattered between long ones. Grouping the long rows together joins the leftover into one tall rectangle.
2740 × 1820 mm · 5 parts · 79% used on both sides · largest clean offcut 1.2× bigger
On every sheet the parts, the fill and the total free area are identical before and after — nothing was saved or lost. The first example comes from the column re-order, the other two from the row re-order. All three after-patterns are real production output, re-validated as cuttable before being kept.
When it runs
The tidy pass only rewrites a sheet when the sheet is sparsely used and the offcut measurably improves. It then re-checks the result as a legal cut on your saw, and puts the sheet back the way it was if the check fails. Most sheets are left exactly as they were packed.
FAQ
No — and it never claims to. It keeps the same parts on the same sheets at the same efficiency; only the shape of the leftover changes, so more of it comes off as one reusable piece. Material savings come from the optimiser's packing, not from tidying.
No. It is deliberately selective: it only rewrites a sheet when the sheet is sparsely used and the offcut measurably improves, and it reverts the change if the result does not validate. Most sheets are left exactly as packed.
Yes. Every tidied pattern is re-validated as a legal guillotine cut on the configured saw — checked for overlaps, cuttability and saw safety — and reverted per sheet if it does not pass. A tidied sheet is never a layout your machine cannot run.
No. The tidy pass runs by default on the Fast model and on every Max tier, so a sparse sheet comes back tidied automatically. There is nothing to configure.