About Cut Optimizer

Cut Optimizer works out the most efficient way to cut linear materials, so you waste less and quote faster. It’s been solving this problem online since 2018.

What it does

It handles windows and doors, steel structures, fences, roofing, picture frames, anything that needs a bar, tube, pipe, or profile cut down to length. Less wasted material, faster price quotes, faster production.

Who uses it

Fabricators and shops working with aluminum extrusions, structural steel, pipe and tube, timber, and PVC, from one-person operations to production floors doing this every day. If you’re currently working out cutting layouts by hand, or wrestling with a spreadsheet that breaks every time a job gets complicated, this is built for exactly that problem.

A bit of history

My name is Pedja, an electrical engineer and software developer. More than two decades ago, my brother, a civil engineer, came to me with a problem. He was managing a company that made aluminum doors and windows, and part of his job was producing optimized cutting lists and fast price quotes for customers. It was 2001, there wasn’t much automated help available, and he was doing it by hand.

I wasn’t an especially experienced developer at the time, but I gave it a shot. He used Excel daily, so we built it as an Excel macro. The optimization math gave me more of a headache than I expected, but it worked. Jobs that used to take hours took seconds, and even the most complicated cases never took more than 3-4 minutes.

Ten years later, my brother had moved on to other work and the macro was mostly forgotten. I didn’t want to let it disappear, so I released it for free, hoping someone else might find it useful.

The feedback over the years was good, good enough that maintaining and extending an old Excel macro eventually became the limiting factor. So I rebuilt the whole thing as an online app, and I still build and run it myself today.

Who am I

My love for engineering started in childhood, watching my father build and fix things with limited tools but real skill. Mixing electrical, mechanical, and construction know-how into whatever the problem needed, that became a way of thinking for me before it became a career. Thanks, Dad.

Why I built this

I built my career on free software other people gave away, tools I used constantly and would never have gotten where I am without. At the same time, years of commercial project work taught me how many of those projects deliver little or no real value before quietly dying.

So this was my way of giving something back, not just anything, but something people would actually find useful. For a long time that meant a genuinely generous free plan, because this was a side project and the income didn’t have to carry anything.

That’s changed. Cut Optimizer became my full-time work, and in a world where free software is getting harder to find, not easier, a side project’s free tier isn’t something a primary income can sustain. So today’s free plan is limited: enough to properly try the tool, not enough to run a shop on. What used to be the free plan, slightly improved, is now the cheapest paid tier. What hasn’t changed: no ads, ever.

The web app, since 2018

In 2018 I rebuilt Cut Optimizer from the ground up as a proper online app, replacing the aging Excel macro. It runs in the cloud, works the same on desktop, tablet, or phone, and doesn’t need installing. An account isn’t required, but it unlocks saved projects, presets, and history, free or paid, depending on what you need.

I kept it close to how the original worked, since a lot of people knew that macro well. It’s faster, more accurate, and doesn’t have the bugs the old macro accumulated over the years. What used to be the free Excel version is now the entry-level paid plan; the current free tier is intentionally limited: enough to see the tool actually works, not enough for real production use.

It’s been running continuously since 2018, and there are people who’ve been using it that whole time.

Try it

Open one of the fully functional demos and see real optimization results immediately. No login needed, every Pro feature unlocked. The only thing locked in a demo is editing the piece list itself (lengths, quantities, adding or removing items); try that and it’ll prompt you to upgrade. Or start from scratch with your own numbers.