Creating Negative Image to Fit Parts Together

[xeddog]

I am VERY new to Fusion 360 and have no other CAD experience to speak of.  I am still trying to work through all of the new terminology as well, so I hope I can get my question through ok.

I am a woodworker and I am considering F360 as a tool to design my projects.  The very first thing I wanted to try and design was a raised panel door.  So far I have created a simple stile (a vertical piece of the door frame), and a rail (the horizontal piece of the frame).  I have also profiled the inside edge of the stile with a centered groove and a roundover along the front edge.  Now I want to use the stile with the groove and the rounded profile as a pattern to create the mating profile on the end rail so the two pieces will mate together perfectly.  How can I do this?

I realize that this will probably be difficult to visualize, but I hope this is clear enough to understand what I am trying to do.  I am unable to attach any other information at the moment because the only machine I can use F360 on is a laptop.  I installed Screencast on it and the instant I launched it, the screen got very dark and it is quite difficult to see.  That is what I will be trying to fix next.  Life would be so much easier for me if Autodesk supported Linux, Linux with Wine, or a Windows 10 32-bit vm.  Oh well.

Thanks,

Wayne

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @xeddog,

Yes, it's a bit hard to visualize.  Can you post a picture of what you are trying to accomplish?  In general, the tool to use here is multiple bodies and the Combine tool.  You create your body that you want to make a negative image for as a separate body, then use Combine, selecting the "Cut" option with the "Keep Tools" option.  This will retain your body, and also remove material from the main body, leaving a perfect place for it to fit.  Of course, in real life, you'll probably need to leave some clearance room, but there are techniques to do that, as well.

Jeff

[xeddog]

Thanks Jeff,

I guess my description wasn't TOO awful because you nailed it.  I still have a couple of things to do to get my laptop fully functional again, but I did try your method and all I can say is "  How easy was THAT?!?" 

Thank you,

Wayne

[narvi]

and which are techniques to add clearance after these boolean operations?

[jeff_strater]

Usually, what I do in these cases is to select the mating faces, and use Press/Pull to offset them by your tolerance distance.

The only trick is to make sure that Press/Pull is set to "New Offset", for the "Offset Type":

Jeff

[narvi]

Do i need to pull all the faces separately? I select all  3 faces, press pull and only one remains selected.

[jeff_strater]

You should be able to do this all in one Press/Pull operation.  Here is a screencast of a simple example:

Jeff