Im looking for a tool on the net that you can put in a size of a sheet of wood/material/fabric and then make up the shapes you want to cut out of said material, thus minimising waste, I could do it with a sheet of paper and sit in the front room for 2 days making it but I cant be bothered!!

There is probably a name for the tool (not my laziness!!)

Cheers people!

yeah theres programs out for cutting 8x4s

google " sheet cutlist" or "cutting optimisation"

i looked for software a while ago and noticed afew free trials for windows, i still havent found a free mac version tho if anyone can point me in the right direction?

No, I have looked for some time in the past and never found one. I am a bit wary of downloading a free trial version, you never know what comes with it.

DWD

i general get 95 to 98% out off pre planed timber[1-2% saw cut waste]
this often means working from several offcuts and full lengths 3-3.3-3.6-up to 5.1 the maximum i can store is 5.1 indoors or 3.5 in the shed
i tend to buy 15-40m off any timber i order and have most ex1" sizes from 2x1 up to 9x1

i do the scale drawing write all the measurements on the drawing then write all timber sizes in a cutting list individually in size groups i the write the timber list according to timber length for example
3.9m [1]1068+1068+558+558+558=3810 +15mm=3825 and live with the offcut as a clamping block
i then write [1]on the length off timber at the end away from the cutting end

repeat process till all timbers have a number on them
starting with the longest length [1068] removed off all the timbers working down to the shortest measurement
i count each component as i go as in [1068x6] before moving on to the next size

you actually pick up instinctivley what will fit on a length so you dont waste to much time

other times when i am really busy i will just cut all the same sizes from a length and stop when the timber has around 1m left again working from largest size down

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we are all ------------------still learning

Most days i have to work out ways to cut parts from sheets, quite often expensive sheets at a good few hundreds of pounds a sheet, so minimising waste. Often small quantities of various sized parts.
It becomes quite easy with practice.

As for computer programmes, only good ones i have ever seen seem to be cad related. Theres a few about, but not brilliant.
This one for example-
http://www.applicationprogram.net/glop21dv.aspx

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Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

Take a look a CutList. I've used the Pro version of this in the recent (and distant) past and it was a very effective piece of software, although there are doubtless FreeWare/ShareWare products out there which will emulate it. The (free) demo version allows you to do simple sheet optimisation but I think that the printing is disabled. Might be enough, though