Account for every single bar of steel.
Zero waste is the target the cutting plan works towards, and it is what you should hold your yard to. What we can show you is a real project in the app where the plan took the waste from 13.93% down to 1.23% — 469 stock rods down to 410 — by carrying footing off-cuts into the columns.
From the drawing to the man holding the cutter.
Five tabs: the shape library, the schedule itself, what to buy and what it costs, the store and issue register, and the reports. They are one chain — the schedule decides the cutting plan, the cutting plan decides what you buy, and the store records what actually happened.
Element by element, bar by bar.
A member is one sheet: F1, C1, B2. You name it, pick its type, its stage, its concrete grade and its steel grade — and the app fills the member's variables for you. A footing arrives with L, B, D, cov and spc waiting. Type the drawing's values over them.
Then one row per bar: bar mark, shape, diameter, how many members, how many bars, cutting length, total length, kg per metre, weight and a remark. Weight is never typed — d² / 162 gives 0.889 kg a metre for a 12 mm bar, and the row does the rest.
| Bar | Dia | No. of bars | Cutting length | Total | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1-X | 12 | (B-2*cov)/spc+1 = 11 | L-2*cov+2*0.42*d = 1410 mm | 15.51 m | 13.79 kg |
| F1-Y | 12 | (L-2*cov)/spc+1 = 11 | B-2*cov+2*0.42*d = 1410 mm | 15.51 m | 13.79 kg |
| Footing F1 — 1500 × 1500 × 250, cover 50, 12 mm at 150 c/c | 27.58 kg | ||||
With 2.5% wastage that is 28.27 kg, and at ₹70 a kg this one footing carries ₹1,979 of steel. Copy it, rename it F2, change L to 1800 and save — the second footing is done in three clicks.
69 bar shapes, ready to use
34 from IS 2502 and 35 from BS 8666, each with its standard cutting-length formula and its bending allowance already in it. Click the shape box on a bar row, pick the shape, and the formula is written into the cell as a template with A, B, C to fill in — a 12 mm rectangular stirrup with A = 300 and B = 400 comes out as 2*(A+B)-3*d+2*hook135 = 1,652 mm.
And a bend nobody standardised
Draw your own shape on screen — click the points, snap to 15°, lift the pen for the hooks, undo a stroke — or upload an SVG. Give it a code, the dimension letters it uses and its cutting-length formula, and it behaves like any other shape from then on.
Try to call it "14" and the app refuses, because IS 2502 already uses 14 and the reports resolve a bar by its code. Call it 14C and it is yours.
Check it before you order
Check Schedule goes over the whole job and lists the errors, the warnings and the notes — odd cutting lengths, diameters that look wrong, lap, weights, and two bars sharing one mark ("F1-X and F1-Y have the same mark"). Revisions freeze today's schedule as a named version, so Rev-0 at 4.20 MT against today's 4.65 MT reads as +450 kg — a number you can put in front of the client when the drawing changes.
Repeat work, once
Duplicate a member and edit the sizes. Tick a block of members and copy them into another sub-project when Tower B repeats Tower A. Nothing is saved until you press Save to Schedule, so a duplicate you decide against costs you nothing.
Planned, cut, bent, installed
Each member carries where its steel has reached at site. With the stage on the member as well, the Stage Report shows planned steel against issued steel, stage by stage — which is where the plan and the site actually meet.
Already have a BBS in Excel?
Smart Import reads it — Excel or PDF — and rebuilds every bar as a formula, not as a number. The preview shows the app's cutting length beside yours, row by row, so a mismatch is obvious before a single bar is imported. "Imported 26 bars into 7 members."
1410 is an answer. The formula is the reason.
Both the cutting length and the number of bars are free-form formulas written in your member's own variables. That is the difference between a schedule somebody can check a year later and a table of numbers nobody dares touch.
Read it out loud and it makes sense
The main bar of footing F1, 1500 mm long, 50 mm cover, 12 mm bar:
L - 2*cov + 2*0.42*d
hook and Ld are waiting for you as well — hook is the greater of 9d and 75 mm, and Ld starts at 50d. Names like d, dia, hook, PI and ROUND are reserved, so you cannot accidentally shadow one with a variable of your own.
Why this matters a year later
The drawing is revised. The cover becomes 40, or the footing becomes 1800 long. In a typed schedule that is an evening of finding every affected row and hoping you found them all. Here you change one variable and the member recalculates — every bar, every count, every weight.
And when your junior opens F1 next March, he does not see "1410". He sees L-2*cov+2*0.42*d, which he can check against the drawing in ten seconds.
The reference block from your drawing
Most drawings carry the same set of lengths and covers again and again. Type them once into the Input Sheet — an Excel-like grid that belongs to this project — and refer to the cells straight from a bar: (B2-2*B5)/B9+1. Named variables and cell references work side by side in the same formula.
There is a + button in every formula cell too, which lists the member's variables, the reserved names and the functions — ROUND, CEILING, SQRT, POWER, PI — so nobody has to remember the spelling.
A bar longer than the rod
A 39.10 m column bar cannot be cut from a 12 m rod, so the app joints it and says so: cut 12000 ×3 + 5980 (incl. lap 960 ×3). The lap steel is already inside the weight and inside the cutting plan — it is not a correction you have to remember to add.
The app reads your formula and draws the bent bar.
Not a catalogue picture that looks roughly like a stirrup. The app splits your cutting-length formula into its parts, works out what each part is worth in millimetres, and draws that bar: every leg in its true direction, every leg labelled with its own length, the hooks curled at the ends, and the total printed underneath — checked against the cutting length the row is carrying.
- It knows the family. Straight, L, U, Z, cranked, closed ring, triangle, circle, spiral, zig-zag — the bar is classified from its shape code, or from the formula itself when you wrote your own, and the legs are laid out accordingly.
- A bend allowance is not a leg. L-2*cov+2*0.42*d draws as a straight 1410 mm bar, because 2*0.42*d only references the diameter. Draw it as a leg and you get a fake 10 mm crank on the end of a straight footing bar.
- A circle shows its diameter. A ring written as 3.14159*A is labelled Ø 300, not 942 — the circumference is the cutting length, not the thing the bender measures.
- Rotate and mirror a bar to match how it sits on your drawing. The bar turns; the dimension labels stay upright and readable.
You can also switch the shapes off for a member. That setting follows through to the PDF and the Excel, so a schedule you want plain prints plain.
Where the picture comes from
A rectangular stirrup written the way an engineer writes it:
2*(W-2*cov) + 2*(D-2*cov) + 2*hook
| Part of the formula | Drawn as | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 2*(W-2*cov) | two legs, across the width | 2 legs |
| 2*(D-2*cov) | two legs, down the depth | 2 legs |
| 2*hook | a curl at each free end | 2 hooks |
| Printed under the picture and checked against the row | Cut length | |
The same drawing appears three times and is generated once: live in the bar grid as you type, in the schedule PDF, and as a picture in each row of the Excel. There is nothing to keep in step, because there is only one of it.
Who this is for
The fabricator. He is not going to read 2*(W-2*cov)+2*(D-2*cov)+2*hook — he is going to look at the picture, check the four leg lengths against the total, and bend it. A shape drawn from the real formula is the only kind he can trust.
Type the member size. Get the bar set.
For a normal member you should not be typing every bar by hand. Pick the member type, fill the sizes, and the app generates the bars — as live formulas you can still edit, not as frozen numbers.
The bar sets follow IS 456 and, for ductile detailing, IS 13920. Your cover comes across from the member you are already in, and any variable the generated formulas need is added to the member's variable list for you.
Generated, then yours
This is the part that matters: what comes back is editable. Every generated row carries its formula, so if your drawing puts an extra bar in, or your consultant wants the stirrup spacing changed at the ends, you change the row — you do not throw the generated set away and start again.
Then it is checked, not trusted
A generated set is a starting point, so Check Schedule runs over it like it runs over anything you typed: cutting lengths that look wrong for the member, diameters, laps, weights and repeated bar marks. The app does not assume its own output is right.
A rod cut in month one cannot be used in month nine.
This is where the steel is actually lost, and where it is actually saved. The problem is not arithmetic — it is that the site cuts each stage when that stage happens, so every rod's tail is thrown away before the next stage arrives to need it.
The plan everybody draws, and why it fails
Plan the whole building's cutting in one go and the arithmetic looks beautiful: one 12 m rod cut into a footing piece and a terrace-slab piece, almost nothing wasted. On site it is impossible. The footing is cut in month one and the terrace slab in month nine, and by then that rod is long gone.
So Civil Limitless plans the cutting in the order the building goes up. Footings first. Whatever is left over is tagged and stacked. When the columns come, those tagged pieces are opened before a single new rod is touched. Whatever is left from that feeds the beams.
What the plan does, stage by stage
13.93% down to 1.23%.
All of that comes from planning, before anybody buys anything. No new machine, no new supplier, no change to how the bars are bent.
One rod, both ways
A 12 m rod of 20 mm, cutting three column main bars of 3.60 m.
Cut the columns on their own
10.80 m into the columns. The 1.20 m tail goes to the scrap pile, because nothing is being cut that day that needs it.
The stage-wise plan
Same three bars. The 1.20 m is tagged OC-20-01 and stacked, because the beam stage still needs 20 mm pieces.
At the beam stage — the saved piece, at its own scale
1.20 m of steel that used to be scrap became a bar. What is finally lost is 50 mm — and the plan says so, in kilograms.
So what is the 1.23%?
It is the honest part, and it is worth understanding, because it is the number that tells you the rest is real.
A leftover is judged twice. First: is it long enough for a bar still to be cut later in this job? If yes, it is carried forward. If no, second question: is it long enough to be worth stacking in the yard at all? That threshold follows the diameter, the way a storekeeper actually thinks — about 0.8 m at 12 mm, 1.0 m at 16, 1.2 m at 20, 1.5 m at 25 and 2.0 m at 32. Below that a piece takes up rack space, rusts, and gets scrapped anyway.
Only a piece that fails both tests is counted as waste. And anything under 150 mm is scrap whatever the arithmetic says. That is the 1.23% — the ends that were too short for any bar left in the schedule.
Reusable off-cuts are deliberately not counted as wastage — that is how steel reconciliation is done in India, and counting good steel as loss would make the figure meaningless in both directions.
What the discipline costs — printed, not hidden
Following the site's sequence is not free. On that project it needed about ten rods more than cutting the entire building in one go. Both plans are on the same screen — Stage-wise (site order) and Whole project at once — so you can see the difference and decide.
We keep the stage-wise one as the default for one reason: the yard can actually work to it. A plan nobody can follow saves nothing.
Three more things we were careful about
- Utilisation counts only steel you bought. A piece that came from a saved off-cut was already paid for by the stage that bought it. Counting it again would flatter the number.
- Two percentages, never mixed. Waste as a share of the designed steel is the figure your 2.5% wastage allowance compares against. Where every kilo bought ended up is a different sum, and it adds to 100%.
- The plan does not move. Same schedule, same plan, every time you open it. A card the bender has already started cutting to must not reshuffle itself overnight.
Your supplier sends 9 m rods instead of 12? Change the stock length and the whole plan re-cuts, with a new rod count and a new scrap figure.
A plan is only useful if the man holding the cutter can read it.
The schedule is for the office. This is the sheet that goes to the cutting yard: one big card per rod pattern, printed on paper, in the language he reads.
Take one full new rod — 12.00 m, 20 mm
Cut it into (longest first)
Cut this many rods the same way
Tick one box per rod. Above twenty-odd rods the card prints a running count instead.
Where each piece goes
Leftover
Feet are printed beside every metre value, and the card always prints on a white background — a site printer must never be handed dark-on-dark.
English, Hinglish or हिंदी
Pick the language your bar bender reads. The same card, the same numbers, different words:
| On the card | Hinglish |
|---|---|
| Take one full new rod | Ek pura naya sariya lo |
| Cut it into (longest first) | Isko kaato (pehle sabse lamba) |
| Cut this many rods the same way | Itne sariya isi tarah kaato |
| Where each piece goes | Har tukda kahan lagega |
| KEEP IT — it will be used later | SAMBHAAL KE RAKHO — aage kaam aayega |
| Too short — scrap it | Kaam ka nahi — kabaad me daal do |
| Measure twice, cut once. | Naap do baar lo, kaato ek baar. |
And the bar mark itself is translated
A mark like Rectangular Stirrups II to Y - L & R means nothing at a cutting bench. The plan turns every mark into one plain sentence:
The wording is generated on the server and shipped with the plan, so the screen, the Excel and the printed card can never say it differently.
The word choices are decisions, not translation
"Sariya", never "chhad"
छड़ (rod) and छत (slab) differ by a single character. On a printed card, read quickly, in bad light, that is a real misreading — so the cards say sariya everywhere and never the other word.
Never "khamba" for a column
On an Indian site khamba means an electric pole, and dharan means a timber beam. The loanwords column, beam and footing are the site words — the "proper" Hindi ones are the trap.
Pairs, so either half lands
Hinglish is printed in pairs — RING (kadi), Column (pillar), Chhat (slab) — so a man who knows one word and not the other still reads the card correctly.
Scrap has no single word
Kabaad, bhangar, kachra — it changes by region. So the card leads with the description, kaam ka nahi, "not usable", which is understood everywhere, and puts the regional word after it.
Numbers are never translated
8 mm, 12 m, M25, X, Y stay exactly as they are printed on the drawing, because they are what the bender matches the card against. Translating an axis letter would break the one thing that has to line up.
Say nothing rather than guess
A shape is never described from its code alone — a wrong shape sentence is worse than none, so the card stays silent and the drawn shape on the schedule does the talking. "Ring" is matched with word boundaries too, or "bea-ring" would go out as a stirrup.
The reuse has to be real on site, not only on paper.
A cutting plan is a promise. The store register is what happened. Record the rods that arrive, issue them to a footing or a column, bank the leftovers, and at any moment you can say how many rods of each diameter are actually left in the yard.
- Receipts. Date, vendor, diameter, and either the rods or the weight — fill one and the other fills itself, because one 12 m rod of a given diameter has one weight. Type what the challan shows.
- Issue & Cut. Pick the element you are casting today. The app uses the fitting scrap pieces first — the smallest that fits, before the longer ones — takes each piece for as many bars as it can hold, and opens new rods only for what is left.
- Every tail longer than 50 mm goes back into the scrap store with its weight. Below that it is genuinely gone, and the register says so.
- A mistake is corrected, not erased. A wrong receipt is cancelled with a written reason and printed struck through. Cancel an issue and the rods come back — unless a later issue has already eaten those off-cuts, in which case they stay consumed.
One footing, from challan to scrap rack
Footing F1 needs 18 main bars of 12 mm, cutting length 1400 mm. A 12 m rod of 12 mm weighs 10.668 kg.
| Step | Number |
|---|---|
| Receipt entered | 20 rods of 12 mm = 213.36 kg |
| Cuts from one 12 m rod | 12000 ÷ 1400 = 8 bars, 800 mm tail |
| Rods drawn for 18 bars | 3 rods = 32.00 kg gross |
| Cut into bars (net) | 22.40 kg |
| Banked to the scrap store | 3 × 800 mm = 2.13 kg |
| Available now | 17 rods |
The next element that needs a 12 mm bar of 800 mm or less takes those three pieces first, before a single new rod is touched. That is the whole idea, recorded rather than hoped for.
The ledger, per diameter
Received, rods drawn, available now, and reusable scrap — for every diameter, on one screen. Open the arrow beside a diameter and it tells you where it went: "Footing F1 (2 bars) — 3 rods · 32.00 kg". Available is counted in whole rods, and a red negative means you have issued more than you have entered receipts for.
What to buy, and what the steel costs.
Two questions, two screens, both reading the same schedule. Nothing here is typed again.
The purchase BOM
Per diameter: how many bars, the total length, the unit weight, the net weight, your purchase wastage, the weight to order, and how many 12 m rods that is. Following footing F1 through:
| 12 mm | Value | From |
|---|---|---|
| Bars | 22 | 11 + 11, from the schedule |
| Total length | 31.02 m | 22 × 1.410 m |
| Net weight | 27.58 kg | 31.02 × 0.889 kg/m |
| With 2.5% wastage | 28.27 kg | what you order against |
| Rods of 12 m | 3 | 31.02 ÷ 12, rounded up |
| Cost at ₹70/kg | ₹1,979 | one footing |
Beside it, the cutting plan gives the number you actually order from — 410 rods on that project — with the utilisation, the reusable off-cuts, and what the plan saved against cutting each stage on its own: 59 rods, about 309 kg.
The Bill of Steel
An element × diameter weight matrix with your rate per kilogram, so the steel cost of the job is a number you can defend line by line — and a number the billing team can use without asking the designer anything.
Set once for the project: steel rate, wastage %, binding wire, labour, the 90° / 135° / 180° hook factors and the coupler diameter. Change the market rate later and every total moves together.
And the reports that follow
A dashboard of the project's steel, a stage report of planned against issued, and an analysis of where the diameters and the money are going. All of it reads the same schedule you entered once.
Bring one drawing.
Send us one footing or one column schedule. On the call we will build it in the app, run the cutting plan, and print the card your yard would actually work from.