Kerf
A cutting-list configurator for carpenters. You work in workshop language, in onderdelen, kopmaat, lengte and start- en eindbewerking, and the machine file stays out of sight until you export it.
Somebody always
retypes the numbers.
A cutting list gets written on paper or in a spreadsheet, then entered again at the machine by someone who was not in the conversation. Every re-entry is a chance to lose an angle, a length or a part.
The software speaks the wrong language
Timber CAD is built for engineers. A carpenter who wants four beams with a mitre on each end should not have to open a modelling package to say so.
The machine speaks a third one
A Hundegger reads its own binary. Cadwork, hsbcad and Viskon exchange BTLx. Neither is something a person types by hand.
So the drawing and the cut drift apart
The preview says one thing, the machine file says another, and the beam is the one that turns out to be wrong.
Kerf builds the machine file from the shape you drew, not from a second list somebody typed.
Four screens,
no manual.
Dutch and English, following the browser unless the user picks. Everything follows the choice: screens, validation, import warnings, undo labels, and the generated PDF and CSV.
Add the parts
Pick a profile, a quantity and a length. Choose the start and end treatment from a picker of shapes, and type only the fields that shape actually needs.
Drag the geometry
Control points sit directly on the live 2D preview and move with a mouse or a finger. What you drag is the geometry the export will use.
Read the warnings
Validation is written in workshop language, not in error codes. It says which part, which end, and what is wrong with it.
Export
A real PDF and CSV for the shop floor, and the machine file for the saw. An incomplete list cannot leave, so nothing half-finished ever reaches the machine.
Import works too: Kerf reads machine files back, detects the format by extension and by sniffing the content, and preserves anything it cannot yet model rather than silently dropping it.
Three jobs,
start to finish.
Illustrative jobs rather than customer case studies. We do not publish a carpenter's work without their name on it, so these are written from what the tool does.
Sixty rafters before lunch
A roof needs sixty rafters, each with an angle at both ends. The carpenter types the parts in the words they already use and drags the angles until the drawing looks right.
One file goes to the saw. Nobody at the machine retypes a measurement, so nobody cuts sixty of the wrong angle.
A job that arrives as a machine file
The engineer sends a file. Kerf reads it and shows it as a list you can actually read, so you can change three parts and send it back.
Anything it does not yet understand is carried straight through rather than quietly dropped on the way.
The client moves a wall on Friday
Six parts change length. The cutting list, the PDF for the shop floor and the file for the saw all change together, because they are the same thing seen three ways.
No version of the job survives that is now wrong.
Three formats,
three kinds of proof.
“Supported” means different things depending on whether a specification exists. Here is what each claim rests on, including the one that is calibrated rather than specified.
Specified and schema-validated. The open Design2Machine standard that Hundegger, Cadwork, hsbcad and Weto Viskon all accept. What we write is checked against the official schema before it leaves.
Calibrated, not specified. There is no public specification for BVX. We calibrated it against a corpus of 12 real production files, 879 parts and roughly 9,100 operations, and every release is checked back against that corpus. The corpus belongs to the customer whose jobs they are, and it never leaves their hands.
Documented, and checked on a machine. The fixed-column predecessor that K1, K2 and K3 read natively. A calibration part was loaded on a real Hundegger installation: seven of eight operations landed exactly as intended. The eighth is written down as still open.
If you run something else, tell us what it eats. Adding a machine is a piece of work we have now done three times and expect to do again.
Importing a 3D model and picking out the beams automatically is the next thing. Reading machine files back in already works today.
We would rather calibrate on your files than guess.
Kerf is in trials with carpentry businesses, not on general release. If you run a Hundegger, a Cadwork workflow or anything that eats BTLx, a trial is a genuine exchange: you get the tool, we get the reality check.
In the browser. Projects persist locally; nothing needs to be installed on a shop-floor machine.
Nederlands and English, including the exported documents.
Calibration corpora stay with their owner. They are never committed, published or reused for another customer.