Every one of these is something the optimizer asks for, because every one of them changes the answer. Nothing else on this page is guesswork layered on top.
Not the total. Two cut lists that add up to the same number of metres can need very different bar counts, because what matters is which pieces combine to fill a bar and which leave an end too short to use.
A longer bar is not automatically fewer bars. Whether a length is the better buy depends entirely on how cleanly your particular pieces divide into it — which is why this page compares two lengths rather than recommending one.
The blade turns a few millimetres of every cut into dust. On a bar carrying five pieces that is enough to decide whether the fifth one fits, and it is the most common reason a hand-calculated order comes up short.
If your saw squares both ends of a bar before the first real cut, that length is gone from every bar you buy. At 20mm a side it takes 40mm off a 6000mm bar before any part is placed.
Stock on the rack is stock you do not order. Give each length the quantity you actually have and the plan works within it; leave a length blank and it is treated as available in any quantity, which is the setting to use when you are deciding what to buy.
Offer more than one stock length in the same job and the optimizer places patterns across the whole mix rather than working one length at a time. It reports how many bars of each length the plan needs.
There is no separate calculator here and no second set of numbers to reconcile — the quantity comes out of the same solve that produces the cutting plan you take to the saw.
One row per required length in the parts table: Length (mm), Qty and an optional Label. If the list already lives in a spreadsheet, copy the columns and paste them straight in.
Under Stock lengths, one row per length you could buy. Leave Qty blank — it shows ∞ — so the length counts as available in any quantity and the plan is free to say how many you need.
Saw kerf in mm, Machine end trim in mm/side, and Min. useful offcut — the length below which a leftover stops being worth racking. These three decide whether the answer is achievable at your saw.
One button. The engine searches the combinations of pieces per bar and returns the plan that uses the fewest bars.
That is the purchase quantity. The summary breaks it down by stock length underneath, so a plan drawing on two lengths tells you how many of each to order.
Parts placed and Status report the full count. A part longer than any stock length you offered is called out as impossible rather than quietly left out of a plan that then looks complete.
Every figure quoted below came out of exactly that sequence. What each of those settings does →
Thirty pieces at 1200mm, from 6000mm stock, at 4mm saw kerf, 20mm end trim per side and a 250mm minimum useful offcut. 30 × 1200 is 36 metres, and 36 metres over a 6-metre bar is six bars. The engine returns eight.
You can check it in two lines. The 20mm end trim takes both ends off, leaving 5960mm of usable bar. Each 1200mm piece needs its own 4mm separating cut, so it costs 1204mm. 5960 ÷ 1204 is 4.95 — four pieces per bar, not five. Thirty pieces at four to a bar is eight bars, seven of them full and one carrying the remaining two.
The two settings are what did it, and either one alone is enough. Set both kerf and end trim to zero and the same job takes exactly six 6000mm bars at 100% yield. Put the 4mm kerf back with no end trim: eight bars. Put the 20mm-per-side end trim back with no kerf: eight bars again. Which is the practical argument for measuring your own saw's kerf rather than entering a round number.
Both jobs below are solved at the same saw settings, once against 6000mm stock alone and once against 6500mm alone. They disagree about which length to buy — and that is the point.
| CUTTING LIST | 6000MM STOCK | 6500MM STOCK | BETTER BUY |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 × 1200mm | 8 bars · 48,000mm · 75.0% | 6 bars · 39,000mm · 92.3% | 6500mm — two bars fewer |
| 2150 × 6, 1400 × 8, 980 × 10 | 6 bars · 36,000mm · 94.2% | 6 bars · 39,000mm · 86.9% | 6000mm — 3 metres less metal |
The first job wants the longer bar: five 1200mm pieces fit a 6500mm bar and only four fit a 6000mm one, so 6500mm stock closes it in six bars instead of eight. The second job wants the shorter one: it takes six bars either way, so buying 6500mm simply means paying for 3000mm more metal and racking it as offcut.
Two jobs, two opposite answers, same saw settings. There is no rule to carry forward here beyond the obvious one: run your own cutting list against each length you could buy, one length at a time, and compare the bar counts. It takes a minute and it is the only way to know which way your particular list falls.
Entering both lengths at once answers a different question. That gives you the fewest-bars plan across the mix, which is what you want when both lengths are already on the rack — for the second job it returns six bars, four at 6500mm and two at 6000mm. It is not a purchase recommendation, and where several plans tie on bar count it has no reason to prefer the one that consumes the least metal.
An aluminium profile cutting list — 2150mm × 6, 1400mm × 8, 980mm × 10 — worked through bar by bar, with the kerf and end-trim arithmetic that decides which pieces share a bar.
Worth being plain about, because the two questions arrive together and only one of them is a cutting problem.
There is no price field anywhere in the product. Barcut Pro cannot tell you what an order comes to, what a job costs in material, or which supplier is cheaper — it works in lengths and quantities only.
It does not hold a supplier price list, minimum order quantities, delivery lead times or stock availability. What it gives you is the quantity to take to whoever does hold those.
Every length in and out is in millimetres. There are no imperial or fractional units, so a cut list in feet and inches has to be converted before it goes in.
The plan reports what each bar leaves and which leftovers clear your minimum useful offcut. It does not keep a running remnant inventory between jobs, and it does not deduct from one.
Cutting is one dimension here too: bars, profiles, pipe, tube and timber bought and cut by length. Sheet and panel nesting is in development and does not run on the site today →
Ordering off the back of an ERP? The same solve runs over a JSON API →
Enter the cutting list, add the stock length you can buy with its quantity left blank, set your saw kerf and end trim, and run the optimization. The "Bars used" figure in the summary is the number to order, broken down by stock length when the plan draws on more than one. It is not a number you can reliably get by dividing total part length by bar length: that ignores kerf and end trim, and it assumes your pieces happen to divide evenly into the bar, which they usually do not.
Yes. Stock lengths are entered in millimetres, so 6000 and 6500 are just two rows, and any other length your supplier carries is a row too. There is no fixed list of lengths to choose from.
Yes, by running the same cutting list twice — once with only the first length entered, once with only the second — and comparing the bar counts and material yield. That is how both worked examples on this page were produced. Entering both lengths together answers a different question: it gives you the fewest-bars plan across the mix, rather than telling you which single length is the better purchase.
It can, and it does in the example on this page. Thirty 1200mm pieces from 6000mm bars takes six bars with no kerf and no end trim, and eight once a 4mm kerf and a 20mm-per-side end trim are applied. Either setting on its own is enough to cause it: at 4mm kerf with no end trim it is eight bars, and at 20mm-per-side end trim with no kerf it is also eight.
Yes. Copy the length and quantity columns out of Excel, Google Sheets or any spreadsheet and paste them into the parts table — the rows map across as they are. Barcut Pro is a browser tool, not a spreadsheet add-in, so there is nothing to install alongside Excel.
No. There is no price field anywhere in the product, so it cannot tell you what an order comes to. It answers the quantity question — how many bars of which length — and what that costs is a matter for your supplier price list.