What the tool optimises for

Least waste, fewest cuts or lowest cost, and what a thorough search adds on top.

The three goals

At the top sits Optimize for. There are three choices, and they really do produce different plans.

Least waste: As little wasted sheet material as possible. This is the default, and usually what you want: buy as little sheet as possible.
Fewest cuts: As few saw cuts as possible: faster, simpler cutting. Choose this when you saw by hand, or when a store charges per cut. You waste slightly more sheet but finish sooner.
Lowest cost: Lowest material cost based on sheet prices. Only makes sense when you filled in a price on your sheets, or picked sheets from the library. With two sheet sizes at different prices, one slightly bigger sheet can work out cheaper than two small ones.

When you switch goals, the tool shows below what changed compared with the previous result. So you see straight away whether it was worth it.

Note In the wide layout the goal choice is always visible. In the narrow layout it sits under Advanced.

Thorough search

The plan you see straight away is already good: the tool tries several starting strategies and improves them within a fraction of a second. But "good" is not always "the best". With ⌖ Search thoroughly you let it search much longer.

Search extra layouts to verify this is the best one. While it searches you see how many layouts have been tried, and whether anything has been saved yet. Stop breaks it off; you keep whatever is on screen.

At the end you get an honest answer. Sometimes that is "no better layout found, this is optimal": then you know it cannot get leaner, because the tool compares against the theoretical lower bound. Sometimes it saves a whole sheet.

Note A thorough search re-packs everything freely. If you locked pieces by hand, the tool says Unlock your manual tweaks first; thorough search repacks everything freely. Unlock them first, or accept that your changes disappear. In CNC mode the button is disabled: Not available in CNC mode (straight-cut layouts only).

In the wide layout the button sits in the icon bar above the plan. In the narrow layout you find it under the display options.