On most sites, bars are cut one length at a time and the short ends go on the scrap pile. Planning the cuts for the whole schedule together usually saves bars, and on a big job that is real money.
This page does that planning for you. It runs in your browser, so nothing you enter leaves your computer.
How it works
Every way of cutting one bar is a pattern: two 3.2 m pieces and five 1.1 m pieces from a 12 m bar, for example. A schedule can have thousands of possible patterns. The tool sets the whole choice up as an integer program, the standard maths for cutting and packing problems, and hands it to HiGHS, an open-source solver. HiGHS does not stop at a good answer. It keeps going until it can prove that no plan uses fewer bars.
Each plan is then checked piece by piece: every bar fits within its length, and every piece on your list is cut exactly once.
What to check before you cut
- Lengths are cut lengths. Include bends and hooks, as your bar bending schedule does.
- Laps follow your drawings. The default of 50 bar diameters is a common tension lap, not a rule.
- Keep the long offcuts. The plan gathers waste into as few bars as it can, so the leftovers come out longer and easier to use.
- The tool plans cuts. It does not check the structural design.