How to make Dovetail Joints in Fusion 360 - Woodworking Joints

so dovetail joints wouldn't it be awesome if there was an easy way that you can figure out all the angles and distances before you actually cut a physical piece of wood out in this video is how you can use fusion 360 a 3d modeling program to lay all the stuff out beforehand so then you have a template you can put right on to a piece of wood and cut them out alright so this is gonna be a fusion 360 tutorial we're not gonna be cutting stuff out we're gonna be sitting on the computer over there because we're gonna be laying out dovetails I'm gonna show you guys a couple different ways to do it whether you are just wanting to create a 3d model and you can have the details inside of it or you actually want to take all those measurements and you want to print a template out and then you can put it right on top of the piece you can even cut this stuff out with the laser and I'll show you how we use parameters so we can make this super custom to your situation alright let's jump into it alright so we're gonna jump into fusion 360 and we are going to model a dovetail joint so let's go ahead and kind of jump right into it then first and foremost before I do anything parameters are the number one reason why I use fusion and so we're gonna set a few of these up if you guys aren't familiar worth with parameters there is a link right up above or kind of walkthrough there are different reasons why I use fusion but let's go ahead and set some up here for us so what I like to do is the dovetail width and I will show you what that is in a minute that's going to point seven-five our dev tail height and for now this is when we point seven-five again since their parameters all these things can adjust so these will not be specific to your situation but I just wanted to do them all right dovetail angle so we're gonna do this as you can change the units we're gonna change them to degrees and I'm just gonna do let's go eight degrees for now then we're also going to do our board height this is going to be 6 inches and honestly this this doesn't really matter this is just to get something in there and then board width and I will call it 12 inches for now okay so we have all those parameters set up now let's actually jump into a fusion 360 and doing some modeling okay so we're gonna come here to sketch and this is where everything starts off before we do that I'm actually going to name this I want to call this dovetail tutorial all right so we're gonna do Sketchup right here you can also hit s for sketch and then you select your plane I'm gonna do it all right here now let's go ahead and draw a box so you can do up here a two point rectangle also the keyboard shortcut is R again as I'm doing this stuff you guys should be seeing these keyboard shortcut to pop up right here as we're going I'm gonna do R for rectangle I'm gonna click on the origin which is right here and then with that clicked I'm not dragging I'm just pulling it up so nothing is being held down and I can either click it right here or I can go ahead and start typing in my dimension so you guys can see on the left it is highlighted that means that's going to be the first one that shows up so this is going to be our height and I believe yeah it's gonna be a lot okay okay so we've got that in there and then you can see that we've got two black lines in one blue line the goal for all of this is we want to constrain everything and constraints or constraints mean that there is nothing that can be adjusted so everything is defined either by a constraint what we'll do in a second or by an actual dimension which is right here so this one's because we haven't put in our overall width so we can hit D for dimension or you can come up here to create sketch dimension we're going to d4 dimension and then you click either between two things or one thing so this right here would give us the height but really not what we want to do is between here and here and that's going to give us the ability to define this and again you could just type in 11 but we don't want that we want this to be a parameter so this is our width all right so now we've got our fully dimensioned sketch and what we could do is go ahead and sketch everything out and actually we're gonna do a few different versions of this so we're gonna kind of do the simple version and then we're going to come back and do the more complicated version but a version once you have it built you can kind of auto adjust everything afterwards so let's go ahead and do our first one and I am going to do a centerline meaning and it's gonna be a construction line so I'm going to l4 line and then I just want something to be going straight through the middle of this guy so I'm clicking and dragging over I was looking for that triangle to make sure I put it right in the middle and then I'm selecting the line and I'm hitting X that makes a construction line which really just means it doesn't make this selectable so like if we had made this a normal line you can now see that these are individual pieces and then if you're making its construction it keeps it one big piece so that's really the biggest thing when you go to actually make a body here in a second all right so the next thing we're going to do is actually go ahead and make our dovetails so our death tail is gonna be something kind of like this so I hit l4 line again and then once you have it going you can pretty much keep on clicking stuff so I'm really not putting anything in the only thing I'm looking for is I want to make sure this is ninety degrees so you guys can see that little 90 degree icon right there I want that to be to the centerline and then I'm going to here so all that stuff I didn't type anything in because I didn't need to and then I still have the line tool selected so I'm just gonna hit escape and drop out of that so let's go ahead start setting some of these things up that we know the first off all of this is adjustable and you can probably tell I drew this wrong because if we're doing the dovetail this is the shape of our dovetail I am going to hit D for dimension first we're going to set up this dimension this is our width the depth Hale width and then I am going to pull this back down we're going to fix all this here in a second for dimension we're gonna go between here and here here and here and this is our height dovetail height then well we want to do is do a symmetry so you can do a bunch of different constraints so not only can you do dimensions but up here you can actually define constraints and the only one that we're going to use is symmetry meaning that I want this line and this line they need to be the same thing so right now I can drag it and they are actually doing pretty good but you can see I can actually adjust this one independently of the other one so I want them to be symmetric to each other so I'm gonna this and this and then it wants to do a symmetry line which is going to be this guy right here so now you can see this icon has popped up and that is our symmetry constraint so if I adjust this guy they can see the other one is going to adjust down below and if I'd done this from the beginning it actually would've been easier to kind of move stuff around now the only thing we have left is you can see that this line and this line are blue meaning that it does not have a way to figure out basically what this is right here so we are actually defining this by an angle instead of a width we can do it kind of either way in our case this is an angle so I hit D for dimension click this line and then the angle is going to be off of the center line and so right now you can see it saying eleven point one seven but this is really whatever our deft handle is which I think it's eight yes cool and then once you do the dimension sometimes can get kind of confusing like it might have just looked like it made a line going all the way here it really didn't so you can actually just kind of click these dimensions and move them around and that is just for you that isn't affecting the model really at all this is kind of so you can see stuff however you want to see it all right so we have this guy created now we are going to come back and duplicate this going this way in this way so you can either copy and paste it so you literally you can click all of these guys then hit command C command V and then this dialog box pops up and there's a move copy which is right over here and so you can kind of move this around we could drop it right here hit okay then you can see it's not attached so what you could do is do this coincident meaning that this point needs to be connected here and this point needs to be connected here but there's still some things that aren't defined as and it doesn't know what the distance is so you could actually kind of click and drag this whole thing the symmetry angle isn't in there so there you basically would have to kind of redraw it every single time so we're not gonna do that instead I just it ctrl Z to kind of get out of that alright so now we are going to duplicate this instead of doing the copying the paste like we just did let's actually do something called a rectangular pattern meaning that you can basically duplicate this going in this direction as well as this direction you can see right now this is set to 3 and 0 and then you have another dialog box that is also 3 and 0 and those are the two accesses that you can duplicate this but in our case we're only going to do one of these so we're just going to be playing with this one this one we're going to keep at zero because we don't want multiple copies going in this direction so first you're gonna select what you want to duplicate in this case it's going to be this guy so you click all three of those and you're good to go next step you're selecting your direction we're gonna select usually can do a line on the model so in this case it is right here and then you have these arrows so we can click in drag and current start to see what's going to happen so you get this dialog box right here this is the total distance and this is the number of times it's going to duplicate it so it duplicates three times in two inches same exact thing is showing up right here that's the quantity three distance two now a couple things we want to change out first off we don't want it to just go in this direction well we could and then we could kind of repeat it and do the other side or instead of going one direction and click symmetry now you got three with the extent of two inches going each direction it's a four inches total now we want to change this because I don't think I want this to be five and because of the way we made this this number is always going to need to be odd if we do four and make it even not gonna look right because it really needs to be centered between this gap but the way we're creating it we're actually putting a dovetail right on the center which is usually the way make my deaf tales anyway so let's keep that at five now the extent so we don't want this to be two inches although I mean honestly you can make it two inches but what I want is I basically want the distance from here to here to be half of this distance and I can kind of eyeball this I could try to do some math to figure it out but I can also just set this up as a formula so then even if I scale this it will always adjust so let's actually do it that way so I'm gonna come will do right here it makes it a little bit easier for me to type it out first off we're gonna type an overall height you can see which is nice is it's going to adjust as we go actually it's board height not overall height and so you can see it is doing the overall height so from here or actually from here to here is own overall height so since we're doing symmetry we need to divide that by two now that's great but it's not taken into account the fact that we already have one of these made so let's actually do - our dovetail width close that parentheses divided by the other two that's great but then really that's a great but you don't want a dovetail coming right at the edge again we want that gap so and that gap is going to be half of one of these meaning that we really want to times this guy and there we go that is what we are shooting for and again what is great about this I just hit okay I am gonna go over here to modify I'm gonna go to change parameters and what's awesome is let's say we adjust the board height to eight you can see everything scales and this is still half of that distance now you might actually want it to be like half of this gap and what you can do you just kind of have to rework the formula but in my case I usually do a half of the the distance of the dovetail alright let's jump this back down to six and we are looking a pretty good so let's go ahead and finish the sketch come over here click finish sketch now what we've got is a sketch that we can actually do and extrude from so what I'm going to do now is it e4 extrude you can see up here under tools you can modify you can create a bunch of different things but in our case efore extrude or this one right here press pull is going to be what you're going to be using then you're gonna select your profile so again this is that centerline if I had that as an actual line it would be giving me two different points I could select which is fine but with making a construction line that makes it faster because all we have to do let's click that then you can see that it is asking for a distance again it's exact same thing up here and we're going to do this as 0.75 this could also be a parameter but for now it's not going to be then you can define to the direction so it's going to positive direction and if you do negative 0.75 it would be going in this direction but we're gonna do it in this direction and then just as a rule of thumb we won't get deep into it here anytime I make a new piece of wood that is going to be cut and then glued together screwed together or whatever that's going to be an you component I hit okay and then under here you can see this is that component you can turn it on and off alright so that is a one side of our dovetail but we actually want depth Hills on the other side as well so let's go ahead and go back into our sketch so this is the timeline what's great about the timeline is you can always go back in time you can make a change and then you can pull it forward but for sketches you can just go directly into the sketch and edit it because we want to do the exact same thing here on this side so we could have done the rectangular pattern so if we change the quantity to two instead of one in the distance to two and kind of play with this you can see that we're gonna make a copy but we really need the mirror of that so we're gonna set this back to one we're gonna set this to zero so if you were just doing like a box joints that would be a way you could do it and they could set your total distance but in this case we're gonna cancel out of that what we want to do is an actual mirror so before we mirror though we actually need a mirror line so just like we made one here we're going to do one going in this direction as well and I am kind of scrolling across the top I get the triangle right there I'm gonna pull this down and again I'm looking for the triangle and then also it can give you like that 90 degrees and then you know you're good to go escaping out of that clicking it because we're gonna make a construction line and I'm hitting X you don't have to type in X you can just click it right here does the exact same thing all right now we can actually do our mirror so up here under the sketch tools under the create tools is Mir click that then click all of your lines then you select your mirror line right here and now you can see those have mirrored over which is great and you can see is doing all the constraints so tons of our symmetry constraints came over everything looks great finish that sketch so whenever you make a new component it's always going to turn that sketch off so you'll probably need to come in here under the sketch folder turn that sketch back on and you can do a couple things so you wicked right now just go in we get an e for extrude and then extrude this through meaning it's going to cut this piece and so instead of distance you can doall and what that's going to do is this cut through the entire piece and then hit okay so that's one way to do it also instead of that so I'm just going to ctrl Z out of that when we actually made this guy so right here right click that edit that feature make sure these are not selected then hit OK gonna do the exact same thing except we just did it on the timeline so that is pretty fine you make the actual dovetails let's go ahead and make it the pins for the dovetails and it's really really easy if you have gotten to this point I am going to need to make a board that is going in this direction as well as a board in this direction so I'm just going to do this off of this base sketch right here and the only thing that I need is basically a line going in this direction and I am going to have it these aren't going to be like half blind dovetails anything crazy these are going to be a destroyed up right on the edge so this line is growing right here and this is like if you're doing a side view of the board finish that sketch so now if I go for extrude just select all of these geometry points we have all of those that we can select and then we're gonna call this overall width and you can see right now it wants to automatically cut it we don't want it to cut we want it to make a new component and then for the distance is still want to cut it so make sure you've got that overall width so then the board width now it's going all the way across hit okay cool so we've got this set up I'm gonna turn this sketch back off now so I'm just going to hit this I that turns it off then if we make that disappear you can see that we've got the board there but it's interfering so what you could do you could go in turn the sketch back on and then do the extrude on the side but there is a great command inside of fusion that is called combine that literally lets you do things once they are intersecting each other so this dialog box pops up but this is our target body meaning this is the thing that we want something to happen to so in this case we want to have all of the dovetails cut out so the pins are all that's left then you select your tool body meaning literally this geometry and so now you can see that it is going to cut that out we want to set to cut not to join or intersect and then we won't have make sure this is always selected meaning that this isn't just a tool that we're using to remove material we actually want this part of the piece so make sure that selected hit okay now turn this off you can see there are our pins on that side looking great now again if we go over to parameters what's great about this is we can adjust all of these things and it's going to adjust for so let's say we want to do 10 degrees instead of 8 all of these adjusted on both sides so I'm not doing the board over here you do the exact same thing that I just did here really easy then maybe we want to make the dovetail width we want it to be skinnier make it point 5 I'm making it a lot skinnier those are looking pretty cool do it like that as well so that was a great part about the parameters actually be able to adjust the dovetails once you make them but moving on to the second part what if you actually want to change the number of dovetails you can see that we set that up in the actual sketch so you come over here to the sketch then you can come into here and you could adjust this number but this won't affect further down the line so I'm gonna make this seven right now and okay so now we have the sketch which is right but you can see that first off it didn't mirror the other ones over because if you remember we actually individually selected all of these pieces mirrored it over so even when you adjust it it you haven't selected these new things to bring over so if we finish the sketch you can see the exact same thing on the actual components everything's scaled except for this two new guys so we're not gonna have the pins we're not gonna have the dev tails so how can we actually fix that so before we get into the second part I want to let you guys know this video is actually brought to you by me I have done a few courses on fusion 360 this few guys like this we really take it that next step and I'll walk you step-by-step through an entire process we have the big coarse furniture design in fusion 360 and actually just put out a smaller one if you want to make a workbench so if you want to go way more in depth and get lots of examples and really learn how you can use fusion 360 inside of your shop before you make your first cut then these could be a good option for you guys there is a link right down below where you can save 25% whether you're taking the smaller course or bigger course there's also a free one as well on making a bed in fusion 360 so check all of those out all right so let's jump back into Fusion and we are going to set our details up so they are a parameter so we can adjust the number depending on the situation so not only can you make a pattern out of a sketch you can also make a pattern out of pretty much anything so you can see under the create in the the normal Solid menu there is the rectangular pattern which looks pretty much the same thing as a sketch except instead of just doing components or bodies you can do features and so what we're gonna do is make this cut an axe feature because then we can do a rectangular pattern of that feature that will apply across and we can set that up as a parameter so in order to do that I'm actually gonna go all the way back to the very beginning I'm pulling this timeline all the way forward then I'm gonna right-click I'm gonna delete everything I just wanted to keep my actual parameters still in there and now we're actually gonna set up one more parameter and we're gonna call this a dovetail number and again if you click in the units you can actually click no units and then make sure this is always an odd number all right so we basically went back to this point when we had created the overall sketch then we had created our dovetail right now I've got this at three quarters for the height and half for the width again all this is going to change but if yours looks different you can go into the parameters and change it so at this point is when we made our rectangular pattern within our sketch but we don't want to do that so instead of we're gonna do is go ahead and finish our sketch then we're going to create our entire board so I want this and this this is before we cut out the dovetail make sure this is set up to new component and this is gonna be 0.75 for the distance and turn our sketch back on now we are going to cut this out we the reason we're doing this now is this now will become a feature and that's the feature that we're going to be able to do the pattern off of so I hit F or extrude I selected this for our distance we're gonna select all meaning it's going to cut it all the way through so even if we adjust this thickness later we could have made that a parameter it's gonna always go through hit cut everything looks good so now that we have this we are able to go in and actually create a rectangular pattern this is going to look pretty much the exact same as we did before except the feature is going to be what we're doing instead of the sketch so down here in the timeline we are going to select this that is our feature so literally what we did that extrude right there that's the feature the direction again this is the exact same as we did before the extent make sure it's set to symmetry now we can actually type in our dovetail number so this can is always going to adjust and then as we move this you can see that five is coming in there so right now we've got this at one and a half and again this is our board height - our dovetail width times 2 divided by 2 and then hit ok awesome now let's pull up our parameters and we can adjust it so let's set this to you and make sure it's always an odd number again hit at 7 and now you can see that it's going to adjust the actual number of things that we've made which is exactly what we're looking for all right so to get this to the other side we are going to actually do a mirror just like we would do with our sketch which is right here but we don't have a center line and the center line in the sketch even if we had it wouldn't work we actually need a center plane so go up here to construct hit mid plane then you're going to select two services that you want basically this plane to be inside of and then this guy is gonna be selectable so this is just a different plane that you add it to the sketch that you can use when you are doing anything with construction so come up here to create hit mirror now make sure we've got this selected as well as this you can see everything is selected hit the mirror plane and hit OK now that has adjusted to the other side let's turn the sketch off actually let's go back into the sketch again and we're doing what we did before where we're gonna make our other wall looking for 90 degrees there it is and then we're making sure these are collinear finish that sketch then I'm gonna hit a for extrude and I am going to go our width our board width and then make sure this is set to a new component all right so now we're trying to sketch off just like before that is there but nothing is cut out so we're gonna use combine so the exact same process it's like this just like this make sure cut tool body done turn it off and now you can see that we've got that guy made now you have an idea of what your deft tails are going to look like you can adjust them however you want it to be maybe you want the height to be shorter want to be 0.5 maybe you want this to be thicker maybe 0.75 and at this point you are not doing any math and so maybe you actually want to cut this out and you want to use this as a template so what you can do you can come up here you can go create sketch click this surface and then what that basically does finish that sketch what this does is it captures that geometry if I turn this off you can kind of see right there that is the entire geometry that we had in there then at the sketch level you can right click it you can save as a DXF and then that DXF file you could bring into a vector editing software or you could cut out on a laser or a CNC and then you could put that directly on to a piece of wood and then cut it out or at least you would have a template to do all of your lines to where then you could go in and chisel out or however you guys are going to cut it so you can make that DXF file you can send it to a printer you can use a marking knife draw it out cut it out this is a super fast way especially if you want to kind of see what the look looks like so if fusion is something that is new to you guys and maybe you haven't checked it out before actually just put out a video kind of walking through the main reasons I use diffusion for a upcoming bed build and there is a free tutorial that is along with that that is actually right there but we will jump into it right now so until next time go make or break something in your shop so yes [Music]

Channel: Make or Break Shop

Views: 4,582

Keywords: diy, woodworking

Id: zKqXvDsYKxo

Length: 27min 48sec (1668 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020