KITCHENER, ONTARIO --  Optimalon Software has launched a new version of a free web-based application that provides cutting optimization for rectangular panels. It got a completely new user interface with plain registration and project management functionality.

This new version provides the long-wanted ability to specify the panels and parts-measurement units. It supports both metric (millimeters, centimeters and meters) and imperial (feet, inches) units. Users can now specify inches in fractions or decimals in a convenient and simple way.

Users can designate any parts that need to be cut from the stocks as "non-rotatable" during the calculation to preserve the grain orientation. In a labour-intensive and fast-paced cabinetmaking environment, reduction of cutting operations and time is highly important. The online cutter has an option to minimize the number of cutting layouts. Hence, several stocks can be place in a pile and cut at once.

The material utilization rate depends on the complexity of the cutting layout. Usually more complicated layouts provide higher utilization rates; however, they require more turns and cuts. The online panel cutter provides five levels of cut complexity to satisfy all possible working conditions and used materials.

Rough and damaged edges of stock panels must be trimmed before processing, and Optimalon's optimizer provides a separate web page where the user specifies trim sizes for each side of the panels. These sizes are taken into account during the calculation, and the working size of the panels is adjusted accordingly.

With this upgrade, Optimalon also implemented a new calculation page that displays the status of the current optimization run, as well as start and elapsed times. The calculation time depends on the size of the projects and can vary from a couple of seconds to several minutes. If the optimization process takes a long time, the user has the ability to stop it.

The result summary gives the used and waste areas, utilization rate and number of cut parts and un-cut parts (if any). For each cutting layout there is graphical web page with navigation and zoom-in and zoom-out functionalities.

Premium users now have the functionality to save the resulting graphical layouts and locations of each part and cutting sequence into an Excel spreadsheet file, which can be printed and provided to the cutting operators. Should they require any post-processing steps, the online panel cutter provides export of the cutting layouts into AutoCAD DXF file (R12 format).

The online panel cutter is free to anyone and accessible from Optimalon's website at the following link: http://www.optimalon.com/online_cut_optimizer.htm