With this plugin, you can quickly make the connection of parts type “dado joint” or “rabbet joint”. Such joints are widely used in the furniture and woodworking industries, the production of frames, walls and exhibition stands. The program itself will find solids that come into contact (touch) with each other and will extend one solid (makes tenon) and create dado/rabbet in another.
Program capabilities:
Automatically adjust the dado depth to the thickness of the part to make a through window or leave a specified wall thickness behind the dado.
Make curved dadoes.
Extrude the tenon and dado along rectangular and round beams joined at an angle.
Make a stop pad so that the part does not fall into the dado.
Lengthen rectangular dado in the whole detail to make them on a circular saw.
Make dadoes with a gap for soft compound parts and additional gap (Backlash) along the dado depth.
Make multiple dadoes in one command. Simply select the entire assembly and call the command Dado Joint.
Ignore suspicious small contact of solids.
Customize all options in a dialog box or in the command line.
Customize up to 9 styles to quickly switch all settings at once.
The program is especially useful for assemblies built by the method cut-off parts from the workpiece (see examples and description of AVC_Slice plugin).
Read about downloading and installing the program here.
To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance or receiving bonuses.
Then you can activate one of the licenses:
Annual license - 10 EUR.
Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.
The trial period is 20 days.
Select 2 or more solid and call the command DadoJoint (DDJ). When selecting multiple of solids, the program will check the contacts of each of the solid faces with faces of the other solids. It may take a long time. So do not select just too many solids. Any objects, except Solids will be discarded. If nothing is selected before calling the command - program will ask you to choose the parts.
Then the program will ask you to specify the dado depth. This request can be disabled in the options, but then you will not be able to configure the program from the command line.
Enter the dado depth or 0. Note that the command line at this point displays options for switching styles and for configuring the command.
Then everything happens automatically:
The program finds contact regions and discards small ones. Contacts with the same face areas of both parts are also discarded, since in this case it is not clear how to make a dado.
The region can be offset inward to create a stop pad along the perimeter of the joined beam. The stop will be the same on all sides. If you need to make stops on a sheet metal part only on two sides, and not on 4 (without reducing the thickness of the part), then you need to use the Tab-Slot command with one tab and start pads.
The contact region is extruded into a solid. Usually, pulling is done strictly perpendicular to the contact plane. This means that a break will appear on the faces of parts approaching the contact plane at an angle. In most cases, this helps to make a dado that can be cut without tilting the cutter. But you can try to enable the "Extrude along the beam" option and the program will try to determine the direction of the part. If it is possible to determine the direction, then the tenon and dado will be extruded along it.
This solid is added to the part with a smaller contact face area and subtracted from the part with a larger face.
If necessary, the solid is increased by the amount of the gap and backlash before subtraction. Also, the subtracted solid can be extended to the edges of the part in which the dado needs to be made.
If there are many contacts, then the order of subtraction will be random and it is possible that one of the dadoes will spoil the other. Check the resulting dadoes and, if necessary, redo one by one.
The program settings are saved in the Windows registry, in the current user section.
Follow the messages on the command line. There may be program messages.
The program can be configured in the A>V>C> Options Palette or in the dialog called from the command line options.
Style name - you can configure up to 9 styles of the Dado Joint command and quickly switch between them. The style name is only needed to avoid confusion.
Depth - sets the dado depth. The program will maintain this value even if a gap or backlash is specified (i.e. these settings shorten the length of the tenon).
If you set 0, the program will cut a through window instead of a dado.
A negative value sets the remaining material thickness after milling the dado, and the depth will be calculated for each part as Part Thickness - |Depth|.
Gap - the distance at which it is necessary to push the dado in all directions, to provide clearance. Default 0.
Backlash - Backlash in the depth of the slot. If you specify a value greater than 0, the cut slot will be deepened. This will allow for a tight fit of the parts, even if there are chips left in the dado. The program does not sum Backlash and Gap, but the larger value is chosen. Default 0.
Stop pad - If you set a size greater than zero, the program will make an stop pad along the perimeter of the tenon. That is, the tenon and dado will be smaller than the region of contact of the parts. For example, if you make a stop pad on a beam, the pad will rest against the second part and will not allow the beam to fall inside a deep dado or into a through window.
Minimum Area - minimum area of contact between two solids, which is regarded as the place of manufacture of the dado. Default 16x16mm or 3/4x3/4 inch. You can assign a zero, and all contacts will be counted.
Extrude along the beam - Extrude the tenon along the edges or axis of the beam being joined. The option works only on rectangular or round beams that are not connected at a right angle to the second part. If the option is disabled and if the direction of the beam axis could not be determined, then the tenon is pulled out perpendicular to the plane of contact of the parts.
Dado across the entire part - Extend the dado along its long side to the edges of the part so that it can be made with a circular saw. This option only works with rectangular dadoes and is automatically disabled if the result is not a dado but a through window.
Request depth every time - Prompt for depth and show command line options each time the command is called.
Setting "Extrude along beam".
Top connection - off,
Bottom connection - on.
Setting "Dado across the entire part"
Setting "Stop pad"
The program works only in 3D, only with solids.
The contact surfaces should be flat, they should be based on the Region, and not the Surface. Therefore, the contacts of imported solids may not be found.
Sometimes there are crossing the dadoes and tenons from each other. As a result, erroneous connections may be obtained. It is recommended to check the results of the program and redo the connections again one at a time, consciously choosing the order.
"Extrude along the beam" is only triggered on high-quality modified round and rectangular beams or shelves. Either the surface of the beam should be whole cylinders, or all sides of the ribs of the beam (shelves) should go from the joint strictly parallel to each other. The axis of this cylinder or the direction of these ribs will be used as the direction of pulling out the tenon and pressing out the dado. In all cases when the program cannot find the direction of the beam, stretching is carried out perpendicular to the surface of the joint of the parts.
Settings "Dado across the entire part" will only work if the contact region is a rectangle. If there are holes in the joined details at the junction, the elongation will not work. The dado can be elongated in a maximum of two. If the joint is much shorter than the details, then the dado will end earlier than the edges of the part.
When joining at an angle with extruding along a round beam, if a stop pad is also set, the tenon will turn out not round, but oval.