Material is usually the largest line in a laser job. Before you buy nesting software, apply the rules that matter most — they are free and they work on any machine.
1. Use the smallest spacing that is safe
Spacing exists to keep parts from touching and to leave room for the kerf plus heat. Many shops default to 8–10 mm because it looks tidy. For most 3 mm plywood jobs, 4–5 mm is enough and it can add several parts per sheet.
Check for heat distortion on thin material and for parts that share an edge — shared-edge nesting removes the gap entirely but makes the cut sequence critical.
2. Rotate before you scale
A 120 × 80 mm part on a 600 × 400 mm sheet fits 16 times in one orientation and 21 times rotated. That is a 31% improvement from a single click. Always test both orientations, and test mixed orientations if your software allows it.
3. Group identical parts, not similar ones
Nesting similar-but-different parts fragments the sheet into unusable strips. Identical parts tile cleanly and can share cuts. If two parts differ only by an engraving detail, consider cutting them as one part and engraving the difference.
4. Plan the offcut, not just the sheet
The leftover strip at the end of a sheet is material you already paid for. Decide in advance whether the offcut is large enough to keep — if it is not, move parts so it becomes one clean, stashable piece instead of several scraps.
5. Verify utilisation before cutting
Utilisation is the area of your parts divided by the sheet area. Anything below 60% deserves a second look: usually rotation, spacing or part order will fix it. Our sheet yield calculator gives you parts per sheet, utilisation and how many sheets a run needs in a couple of seconds.
What nesting software adds
Software earns its keep on irregular shapes, grain direction, shared edges and mixed-part sheets. For rectangular production work, the five rules above already recover most of the available savings.