Sheet Nesting
A free online nesting tool for laser cutting and engraving. Drop SVG or DXF parts, pick your sheet, and get a true-shape layout in seconds — parts keep their engraving and interior cutouts, and the readout tells you what you saved. Nothing is uploaded; the nesting runs in your browser.
Drop SVG or DXF files, or click to choose
Parts keep their engraving and interior cutouts. Nothing is uploaded — nesting runs in your browser.
Sheet
Drop your cut files, pick your sheet, hit Nest. The layout, the utilisation and what you saved appear here.
Why LightBurn sends you to a website from 2015
LightBurn ships two answers to nesting. Quick Nest packs parts by their bounding box — its own documentation notes that complex shapes can't nest into each other densely that way. For true-shape nesting, Nest Selected exports your parts and opens your web browser at svgnest.com, an open-source project from 2015, where you nest, download, and re-import.
That round trip fails in well-documented ways: runs of 20+ minutes at full CPU with no result, files with arcs rendering incorrectly, placements that overlap, and jobs of 30–50 parts that never finish. This tool exists to be the working version of that workflow — same browser, same free, finishes in seconds.
Parts with engraving stay whole
LightBurn's nesting export won't include graphics contained inside another graphic, because interiors would lose their position during nesting. Read that plainly: a name engraved on an ornament, a slot in a box panel, a hole in a keychain — none of it can go through the only true-shape path the incumbent offers.
Here the unit of nesting is the whole part: the outer boundary plus every cutout and engrave line inside it, moved by one rigid transform. Interiors cannot drift, because nothing ever moves them independently — and stroke colours ride along, so your layer assignments survive.
Nothing uploads — nesting runs in your browser
Your files are parsed, nested and re-exported entirely on your machine; the site never sees them. That is also why it is fast to try: no account, no upload wait, no queue. The layout improves live — every few hundred milliseconds the search reports its best arrangement so far, and Keep improving lets it keep looking while you watch the sheet count.
Made for your bed
One-tap sheet presets cover the common machines — Glowforge, xTool S1 and P2, OMTech, K40 — plus stock sizes like 12×24", with custom dimensions for everything else. Cutting on a Glowforge or xTool? The Glowforge-ready files, xTool SVG files and OMTech laser files pages pair ready-made designs with the machines these presets match.
Frequently asked questions
Does it work with LightBurn files?
Yes. Export your parts as SVG from LightBurn, nest them here, and re-import the result. Stroke colours are preserved, so your colour-to-layer power and speed assignments survive the round trip. DXF output is included too.
How is this different from LightBurn’s Quick Nest?
Quick Nest packs parts by their rectangular bounding box, so complex shapes cannot tuck into each other. This tool nests by the true outline — concave parts, rings and L-shapes settle together — and shows you the sheet count against bounding-box packing so the saving is measured, not claimed.
Can it nest parts that have engraving or holes?
Yes — that is the point. Each part is grouped with every interior it contains: cutout holes, engrave lines, everything. Placement moves the whole group as one rigid piece, so interiors never drift. LightBurn’s own nesting export refuses parts with interior graphics for exactly this reason.
What file formats does it accept?
SVG and DXF. SVG handles transforms, arcs and curve shorthands; DXF handles LINE, LWPOLYLINE with bulge arcs, ARC, CIRCLE, ELLIPSE, SPLINE, and INSERT/BLOCK references — the structure most parts libraries use.
Is it really free?
Yes — free, no signup, no watermark. The nesting runs entirely in your browser, so your files never leave your machine.
What about wood grain direction?
Tick “Lock rotation” and every part keeps its original orientation, so grain-matched or pre-oriented parts stay the way you drew them. Leave it off and parts rotate in 90° steps for a tighter fit.
Why is it faster than SVGnest?
SVGnest computes exact no-fit polygons, which is why it can run for 20+ minutes and still produce overlaps on messy files. This tool tests collisions on a fine raster instead — robust to imperfect files by construction — and shows a better layout every few hundred milliseconds instead of going silent.
