It would be GREAT if there was a way to allocate material out of a ROLL, rather than only having the option to allocate out of sheets.  The material would still have an overall width and length (of the roll), grain direction, etc.  But, when optimized, it could make the length of the "placed sheet" equal to the amount of material needed to yield all the parts.  It could then allocate Linear Yards or Linear Feet (or a portion of a roll like .75 rolls) instead of a qty of sheets.  

Currently, we fake this by setting up "sheets" of material that are extra long to represent the fabric.  But, then we have to manually calculate the linear yardage/footage based on how the parts optimized on those sheets.  We thought about "faking it" as banding, since that allocates in linear yards/feet, but since the width of the parts vary a bunch, that wasn't a good solution for us.

If anyone has a better way of allocating fabric-type materials in the meantime, please let me know.