topic Re: Tab and slot in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Tab and slot

ghost777ghost141 — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 05:08:30 GMT

Hi ,i work in laser cutting/engraving , i am graduating this year so i no longer have access to Solidworks license , so i thought Fusion , but can't seem to find any feature that replicates the "Tab and Slot" feature in Solidworks , which is a feature that i use everyday , it's been in solidworks since 2018 ,
this feature automatically creates extensions and holes into sheets of metal (finger joints ) so they lock in place
i hope this feature gets added , sketching these tabs and slots manually is pretty time consuming.
Many thanks to Autodesk/Fusion team .
see this reference :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USg3hKAD-8o

Re: Tab and slot

Warmingup1953 — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 05:37:59 GMT

Congratulations on Graduating from Solidworks to Fusion! There is a very good 100% Free add-in that will/may give you what you need.

FingerJoints

Re: Tab and slot

ghost777ghost141 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 04:02:52 GMT

thank you , yeah in know a bout it but it has very few options to customize , and it also requires the two object to overlap in order to work , which is very annoying
you cant even define an offset from the edge parameter in it , i hope Autodesk will consider adding this as a native feature (try solidworks Tab and Slot feature and you will have a better idea of how finger joints addon for fusion is very basic )

Re: Tab and slot

kgiss — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 18:44:36 GMT

Did you ever find working method for tab and slot? Im in the same situation moving from solid works to Fusion.

Re: Tab and slot

TheCADWhisperer — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 19:46:41 GMT

@kgiss

Can you File>Export your *.f3d file of your attempt to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

Re: Tab and slot

kgiss — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:10:41 GMT

Im not actively working on a design at the moment. I literally just started exploring Fusion in the last 2 days. But that was one feature I knew I would be using a lot and could not find it. I can do it manually and add all the slots, then use combine/cut to create the tabs. It's just cumbersome especially when you need to add 0.010 to the slot tolerance for laser cutting.

I just gave you a follow on YT, looks like you have some great tutorials there.

Re: Tab and slot

TheCADWhisperer — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:34:54 GMT

@kgiss

Somewhere I have a video on this process in Fusion.

It is manual, but I think I showed how to make it as painless as possible.

I will try to find the link.

Re: Tab and slot

ebryan8ZTHD — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:14:01 GMT

I feel like i need to learn how to code to fix this problem,

I've contacted Autodesk asking for this several times idk

that it will ever happen. The most brilliant use of tab and

notch is with with the Trumpf tube laser software. Import

a model, choose an intersection, choose a connection type

and you're done. This turns days of work into hours and

changes the way we manufacture because of it. It baffles

me that this doesn't exist in fusion in 2026. Please take my

money and make this happen, please, I'm begging you

whoever you are, lol

Re: Tab and slot

schneik-adsk — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:34:02 GMT

The add in linked above does this. And for Free.

Re: Tab and slot

ebryan8ZTHD — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:03:53 GMT

Thank you, I've tried it out but its just to basic to do what i need to do. Check this out (watch the demo):

https://www.trumpf.com/en_US/products/software/programming-software/programming-tube/

Re: Tab and slot

kgiss — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:36:09 GMT

I agree, I was thinking about exploring if AI can program an add in for this.