[Plugin] Cutlister

ishboo

Hey everyone,

I've created a plugin that allows you to take your models and turn them into cut lists for your woodworking projects. A cut list is a table of parts used to make up a piece of cabinetry or furniture (such as a door, wall end, back or finished end).

Here are some screenshots:

Cutlister Interface

Export Individual cut list (web view)

Export Batched cut list (web view)

What Cutlister allows you to do is select cabinets in your model (or the whole model) and generate various parts lists for printing and exporting into various formats. This plugin has similar features to AutoCAD's "Smartlister" software, but without the $2000 price tag.

Currently the plugin can export in:

.csv for importing into Excel/Pages.
Web page for easy viewing and fast printing.
Printable labels which you can print out an affix to your cabinet parts (support for only Avery 5366 labels currently)

You can export your cut lists in a few different formats:

Batched cut lists: Parts are grouped based on Material/Thickness. This is useful when you are cutting out your cabinet parts so you can "batch" your work by material/thickness, which is a common method for cutting large amounts of cabinet parts.
Individual cut lists: Parts are grouped based on the sub-assembly (group of a group). This is very useful when assembling a cabinet when you have multiple cabinets to build.
Full cut lists: Ungrouped list of all the parts in the model. Useful if you need a raw list of parts.

Cutlister understands what type of parts you have in you model based off of the material you give it. For example, if you set the "Sheet Materials" to "mdf, plywood, cdx" it would consider anything in your model with those materials as a sheet good. The names are case insensitive meaning these are equivalent: mdf, MDF, mDf, MdF, etc...

One of the other cool things the plugin allows for is easily creating your own output formats and structures by sub-classing the core classes (see the 'Cutlister/extensions/' folder for an example).

Cutlister could be used for other purposes other than woodworking, but that was what it was designed for. Please let me know if you end up doing something cool with it!

Note: The plugin has not been thoroughly tested on Windows yet, please report any issues you have!

I'll be working on creating a video to explain how to use Cutlister and explain more advanced usage soon.

For more information, please read the README file here:
https://github.com/danawoodman/Google-Sketchup-Cutlister-Plugin

The plugin started life as a modification of Steve Racz's Cutlist plugin:
http://steveracz.com/joomla/content/view/45/1/
... but since then has been completely re-written from the ground up to include a bunch of new features, new design and cleaned up code base among other things.

Download (version 1.1):
.zip file: https://github.com/danawoodman/Google-Sketchup-Cutlister-Plugin/zipball/v1.1
.tar.gz file: https://github.com/danawoodman/Google-Sketchup-Cutlister-Plugin/tarball/v1.1

The code is released under an MIT license and is hosted at GitHub:
https://github.com/danawoodman/Google-Sketchup-Cutlister-Plugin

Hope you enjoy it!
Dana Woodman

Dave R

Interesting plugin. I'll have to take a look at it. I've been using Steve's cutlist plugin for some time now which works very well.

Will it sort sheet goods and hardware/parts by words added to component definition names? I do a lot of drawings from which I need cutlists but I don't usually apply materials.

ishboo

@dave r said:

Interesting plugin. I'll have to take a look at it. I've been using Steve's cutlist plugin for some time now which works very well.

Will it sort sheet goods and hardware/parts by words added to component definition names? I do a lot of drawings from which I need cutlists but I don't usually apply materials.

You can do an "Individual" cut list which will sort parts (e.g. groups or components) by their sub-assembly which is basically a group that contains the items. For example, a sub assembly could be "dresser" which is a group of parts that make up the dresser.

The plugin respects both Group names and Component definition names equally in that regard.

It will not know what is a sheet/hardware/solid part if you do not apply a material to it since that is the mechanism in which the plugin determines what type it is. However, if you just need to sort by part within a sub-assembly, that should be simple in Excel; just export it as "CSV" and "Individual" cutlist and you should be fine.

Let me know if that was helpful or if I miss understood your question.

Cheers,
Dana W.

dedmin

Finlay - something like this is badly needed! I have a different suggestion - why not implement dynamic component's attributes in Your plugin - this way we can put a lot of useful data - banding, grain direction, padding, joinery and etc. I think it is not practical to include cutting layouts - better to use external programs for this. This way the use of the plugin can be extended a lot, not only for woodworking. Now we can put tons of useful data in dynamic components, but no way to export and use it for production. This is a simple bookcase as a sample.
BasicBookcase.skp

ishboo

@dedmin said:

Finlay - something like this is badly needed! I have a different suggestion - why not implement dynamic component's attributes in Your plugin - this way we can put a lot of useful data - banding, grain direction, padding, joinery and etc. I think it is not practical to include cutting layouts - better to use external programs for this. This way the use of the plugin can be extended a lot, not only for woodworking. Now we can put tons of useful data in dynamic components, but no way to export and use it for production. This is a simple bookcase as a sample.
[attachment=0:10rg49s1]BasicBookcase.skp[/attachment:10rg49s1]
`

Thanks dedmin!

Dynamic component attributes are something I've had on my mind as well. Theoretically it should be somewhat simple to implement. Some issues would be people's various conventions for labeling things. Things I could see as attributes (which include some of yours):

grain direction (length, or width)
edge banding (1L, 2L, 1W, 2W, or combination)
adjustable shelf holes
rabetting
notes (anything specific for the part)

Maybe if we could compile a list of properties that would be useful to have, I could start thinking of how to implement...

I'd love to see how people apply this to things other than woodworking as it should have the capability of doing so.

In regard to cutting layouts, I'm assuming you mean the Layout feature the original Cutlist plugin had? I know in our shop we don't necessarily use them but if they existed maybe we would. I felt the other implementation wasn't as flexible as I would have liked, that is why I have held off on integrating it.

I have (hopefully) built the plugin so that you could theoretically export parts to CNC files or other programs that need lists of parts in a particular format. I'd be interested in hearing any suggestion on this front.

Cheers,
Dana W.

dedmin

Hi ishboo,
and thanks for this plugin!
I don't have experience with CNC, so cannot help much. That is the main problem with making software that works for all - everybody has different needs and conventions. But with dynamic component's attributes one can make them as needed. Panels in my SampleBookcase were made to meet the way CutList Plus works - others can have their needs. But if Your plugin exports this data the output will be what one needs. Take a look at this treads -
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=29515
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=32789
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=29835
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=30259

dedmin

Does it exports only inches?

Dave R

Dana,

Thank you for your reply. I'll have to take a look at it.

ishboo

@dedmin said:

Does it exports only inches?

Currently there is no support for metric but if I get nagged enough I'll work on adding it

bagatelo

Metric options is very interesting to me... Thanks....

ishboo

@bagatelo said:

Metric options is very interesting to me... Thanks....

Well, I guess I'll have to start working on metric integration...

Dave R

Thanks for offering your plugin here. It's a good thing although it doesn't work for me with my preferred work flow.

ishboo

@dave r said:

Thanks for offering your plugin here. It's a good thing although it doesn't work for me with my preferred work flow.

Could you elaborate more? I'm interested in hearing what others are doing out there... Is it doing something different than what you are used to with Steve's plugin?

This plugin is very much a work in process and new features/functionality will be added as time goes on. Always open to suggestions.

Dave R

As I said before, I rarely apply materials to models from which I generate cut lists. I don't want to have to add another step to the modeling process so that things can be sorted into lumber, sheet materials or hardware. Steve's CutList v4.x works perfectly for me in that respect. I think I'll stick to that. It does metric, too.

thomthom

@ishboo said:

@bagatelo said:

Metric options is very interesting to me... Thanks....

Well, I guess I'll have to start working on metric integration...

SketchUp Length class is pretty much all you need to use. Everything in SketchUp is internally in inches, but the Length class will convert the internal units into a presentable string in the current model units.

Length, Numeric and String all have methods useful when dealing with units.

ishboo

@dave r said:

As I said before, I rarely apply materials to models from which I generate cut lists. I don't want to have to add another step to the modeling process so that things can be sorted into lumber, sheet materials or hardware. Steve's CutList v4.x works perfectly for me in that respect. I think I'll stick to that. It does metric, too.

I see. Are you using the sort by component name option in his plugin? Could you send me a drawing so I can see what you're doing and maybe I could integrate it.

I'll be working on metric shortly, shouldn't be too tough. I left it out initially because I needed to focus on other aspects.

ishboo

@thomthom said:

SketchUp Length class is pretty much all you need to use. Everything in SketchUp is internally in inches, but the Length class will convert the internal units into a presentable string in the current model units.

Length, Numeric and String all have methods useful when dealing with units.

Thanks thomthom I'll be looking into that shortly!

Dave R

Dana, I am adding words like 'ply', 'MDF', etc. to component definition names to get them to sort into the Sheet Materials section of the cut list.

I don't have a model available at the moment but I'll hunt around and see what I can find.

Dave

Bertier

hello,

I am a woodworkertoo, and I use cutlist
I had great talks with Steve about it and what I'd like to do...

one of the main things is we have sheets around here that don't match US or NZ ones...

I'd like to be able to create a list of standard boards and sheets for us...

that would be great to start

and of course I talk metrics...

MERCI !

unclebim

@bertier said:

hello,

I am a woodworkertoo, and I use cutlist
I had great talks with Steve about it and what I'd like to do...

one of the main things is we have sheets around here that don't match US or NZ ones...

I'd like to be able to create a list of standard boards and sheets for us...

that would be great to start

and of course I talk metrics...

MERCI !

That is what would matter most for us here in Europe I think. Thank you ishboo for your contribution with this plugin!