The offcut management tools help you optimise material usage by viewing and adjusting the automatically generated offcut layout. These tools reduce waste and provide clearer installation guidance for your teams.
Note that this method has been found to be less effective for optimising cuts and offcuts than the various Blocking routines, especially Block-Cut and not often used.
🔧 Modify Offcuts Tools
The Modify Offcuts feature provides several tools for managing your offcut layout:
Tool | Function |
Verify-Combo | Highlights matched pairs of triangular panel areas that make up cut/offcut combinations |
Delete-Combo | Removes a combined cut/offcut pair from the job |
Merge-Off-cuts | Combines a selected panel/sheet with adjoining cut/offcut triangular areas |
Delete-Sheet | Removes individual panels from the cut list when offcut strips from other roof areas can be used instead |
Change-Length | Modifies the length of a cut/offcut combination |
Change-Sheets | Adjusts total sheet count by adding or subtracting sheets from the job |
🛠 Merging Panels for Efficiency
Strategic panel merging can significantly reduce waste. For example, panels can be merged with adjoining areas around the entire job:
Sht-12 can merge with C11
S5 can merge with O4
S6 can merge with O3
In practice, removing Sht-12 (0.18 of a sheet width) and merging it with C11 changes the area from 5.51 sheet widths to 5.69 sheet widths. This provides enough material coverage without adding an extra panel/sheet.
The installers can see at a glance where all material should be installed, improving job efficiency.
🧾 Tally Offcut Panels
This command generates the cut list for optimised panels and provides essential job information:
Total number of panels required
Total length of coil needed
Optimised material layout
Important: You must run Tally Offcut Panels before creating cut lists or determining costs under Reporting.
🔧 Del Offcuts
This command removes offcut areas from the model entirely when they're no longer needed.
💡 Report Template Tips
When setting up your report templates:
Use the key text string ###SheetList to display panel lengths in a table on reports
If panel area text appears too small in Microsoft Word reports, adjust the plot scale of the roof for legible on-screen text before generating the report
The text size issue relates to plot scale, not template problems
⚠️ Important Notes
Always run Tally Offcut Panels after making any modifications to ensure accurate material calculations and cost estimates.