Manual cutting editor

The manual cutting editor is a visual editor in which the parts are laid out on the material sheets by hand. It is needed when a finished layout has to be adjusted: to move a part, add a sheet, or take a part off a sheet and place it differently.

Opening the editor

The editor opens for a specific order and always with a ready map: the cutting is calculated automatically, and the operator edits its result. If the order has no map yet, the editor starts the cutting right when it opens, so it never stays empty. Parts end up in the list on the left not because the cutting “failed”, but when the operator removed them from the sheet or added a new material to the order. And if a part does not fit on any sheet of its material, it never gets as far as the editor: the order shows a calculation error with the reason.

The control buttons are in the top left corner, under the material selector. They are icons with tooltips: “←” — “Back”, “💾” — “Save cutting”, “≡” — “Cutting commands”. While at least one part is not on a sheet, the save slot shows an orange “magic wand” “Cut the rest (N)” instead of the diskette, where N is the number of unplaced parts: it sends those parts to the cutting engine and returns an updated map. It is one slot with two states; there are no separate buttons at the bottom of the editor.

Interface

• the parts list — the parts not laid out yet, with sizes and a quantity counter;
• the working area — the material sheets on which the parts are laid out;
• the sheet previews — thumbnails of all the sheets;
• the material selector — if the order has several materials, you switch between them.

Every part in the stack on the left now has buttons for printing, preview and placing the part on the sheet in a rotated orientation. While dragging a part onto the sheet, the mouse wheel rotates it — no need to click «Rotate» separately. Double-sided (joined) parts are not colour-coded here — their fill is the same as on any other part; the beige highlight only exists on the cutting map. In the editor they are marked by a blue label shown instead of the running number: “PD N” is the base part, “PD N-F” is the face (front) overlay and “PD N-B” the back one. N is the same for every piece of one joined part, so the halves match up by it, while the F/B suffix tells you outright which side you are looking at. The label is shown both in the stack on the left and on the part itself on the sheet; the stack search uses it too — “PD 3”, “pd3f” or simply “3”. The saw kerf in the editor is read-only and comes from the production equipment settings, so discrepancies between the on-screen map and the machine are ruled out. A hint toggle that remembers its state and a separate help window let you learn the editor without training.

Placing the parts

A part from the list is dragged onto the sheet: while dragging, a translucent outline of the part follows the cursor, and if it fits into a free area, you release it and the part snaps into place. The quantity in the list decreases accordingly. An already placed part can be dragged the same way to another spot on the sheet or to another sheet.

• Rotation — while the part is held with the mouse, the wheel rotates it by 90° (parts with texture cannot be rotated). There is no separate “Rotate” item: to turn an already placed part, drag it and scroll the wheel;
• Click on a placed part — opens a mini menu: the header shows the part number, name and size (clicking the size copies it to the clipboard), below are three round buttons with tooltips — “Remove (to stack)” (takes the part off the sheet back to the list on the left), “View” and “Print”, and under them the line “turn N/M” — the saw turn level for this part and the machine limit.

The “Magnet” toggle in the top bar affects only mouse dragging: with it ON the part snaps into the corner of the free area, with it OFF it stays exactly where you dropped it, centred at the drop point. A switched-off magnet does not give numeric coordinates: precise positioning is the job of the “X,Y” button to the right of the toggle (it hides while the cutting is being recalculated, and in some builds of the editor it may be absent). Clicking it opens a small window: you choose a part from the unplaced ones and a sheet, enter X and Y of the top left corner in millimetres and, if needed, tick “Rotate 90°” — parts with texture have no such checkbox. The allowed X and Y ranges for the selected “part — sheet” pair are shown in grey, and the input is checked on the fly: it says “Fits” or “The part does not fit at this point.” / “Coordinates are out of the allowed range.”, and the “Place” button stays inactive until the coordinates are valid.

Sheet operations

• Add a sheet — the «+ Sheet» button opens the «Add a sheet» window. It lists the free leftovers of your firm's warehouse for this material — size, quantity and leftover number — and at the bottom there is a «+ Whole sheet» button with the catalogue dimensions. A leftover already added to the current cutting is shown in grey with the mark «already in the cutting» and cannot be picked twice. When there are no free leftovers, the window says so: «No free leftovers — only a whole sheet is available». For a client material the window does not open at all: a whole sheet is added straight away, because client materials are not kept in the firm's warehouse. A trim is laid in automatically along the edges of the new sheet;
• Rotate a sheet — changes the sheet orientation, the layout is recalculated;
• Delete a sheet — all the parts on it return to the list.

Note: there is no separate undo of actions — a part is returned to the list by a click, and for a complete reset the layout is cleared entirely.

The «Merge offcuts» button rearranges the sheet's free zones so that instead of several small scraps you get one large usable offcut — the option is offered only if it is strictly better than the current layout (fewer offcut zones, fewer cuts, a smaller total cut length), and it never exceeds the machine's saw-turn limit. Clicking a narrow strip where no part fits no longer opens an empty list — the system redirects you to the nearest offcut where the part will actually fit.

Several materials

If the order is of several materials, the working area shows only the sheets of the selected material. Switching the material changes the set of sheets; the count of unplaced parts is kept for the whole order.

Saving and re-cutting

The save slot in the top left corner holds one of two buttons, depending on whether all parts are placed:

• “Save cutting” (diskette icon) — available when all parts are placed. It saves the manual layout as the order’s cutting map and returns, in the same tab, to the cabinet page the cutting was started from — usually the order pricing;
• “Cut the rest (N)” (orange “magic wand”) — shown when some parts are still unplaced. It hands the remaining parts to the optimizer, which cuts them automatically; after the calculation the editor refreshes with the finished layout and the save icon reappears in the slot.

The “←” button (“Back”) returns to the same page without saving — after a confirmation, so that edits are not lost by accident.

If the map was saved from this editor, the order is automatically marked with the “Manual cutting” label: the icon appears in all order lists, and the order card and the form show a large red banner “ATTENTION! MANUAL CUTTING”. The label is removed automatically if the cutting is later fully recalculated.

How to start automatic cutting and what the ready map shows — in the article «Automatic cutting and the cutting map». The business leftovers that stay on the sheets are described in the «Material leftovers» section.