Miter Joint
Plugin for AutoCAD and BricsCAD AVC_Miter.
Miter joint. Cutting the solid along the bisector of the angle of joining of two surfaces.
In the furniture industry, carpentry, woodworks and at exhibitions, the connection of two sheet parts "Miter joint" is often used. This is such a connection when it is necessary to saw off the edges of the parts not at a right angle, but at 45 degrees, so that then the parts can be glued into a right angle. The connection is not difficult to modeling using regular AutoCAD/BricsCAD tools, but you need to either drag the edges of two solids, or glue two rectangular parts together with the _Union command, and then cut them with the _Slice command, defining the cutting plane at three points. To save you time on cutting, I came up with a simple Miter command. Instead of a dozen clicks, it will be enough for you to click once on any linear edge of the solid and the program itself will measure the angle between adjacent surfaces, itself will build a section plane and call _slice itself. In fairness, I'd like to note that some versions of BricsCAD already contain a powerful L-connect command for miter joint. But it doesn’t cut the whole solid, but pulls two non-docked solid to each other, i.e. used a little in other cases and is not included in the Pro version of BricsCAD.
Program features
No settings required.
The edge through which the cut will pass can be arbitrarily located in space.
The angle between the parts is not necessarily straight (90°). The program will build a bisector of any angle.
Surfaces adjacent to the edge do not have to be flat at all - these may be the surfaces of a cylinder or cone. The angle will be measured tangentially.
You can select an edge before calling the Miter command, or after calling.
Command perfectly complements the AVC_Slice command (ASL = VO). Select immediately a couple of solid surfaces via Ctrl, peel them together, and cut for miter joint.
The program runs in a loop until you press Esc. You can cut as many details as you like at a time.
Read about downloading and installing the program here.
To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation 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.
Instructions
Select one straight (linear) edge of a solid using Ctrl.
Call the command "Miter Joint" with a button from the ribbon or by typing Miter on the command line.
If an edge has not yet been selected or several edges have been selected, the program will ask you to select an edge. Just click on it once.
The edge must be linear, arcs and curves will cause an error.
The program will stand the bisector of the angle between the tangents to the adjacent surfaces and cut the solid into 2 parts.
Next, the program again asks you to select an edge. You can choose an edge on the same or on another solid. Keep in mind that all changes made to the same command are rolled back at the same time.
If you don’t need to cut anymore, press ESC
Known Issues
Plugin can work with 3D-solids only. It not works with Meshes, Surfaces and Blocks.
Just like other AutoCAD commands, this program is in most cases not be able to work with the solids imported from other programs.
The angle bisector does not have to get into the joint of the surfaces on the back of the part. The bisector section only works when the parts to be joined have the same thickness. Joints of curved parts can also be drawn not according to the bisector. For such cases, use regular _slice.
The cutting plane is infinite, therefore, a sinuous or annular solid can be cut in several places. Extra cuts can then be glued together with the _union command.
Do not use edge of dadoes and pockets for Miter. The presence of the bottom at the dado confuses the program and the secant plane can be constructed unfolded 90 degrees. Use only ribs that pass through the entire part.
In some versions of AutoCAD, the _slice command can cause fatal errors. Do not forget to save for more often.
Cutting solid by any means leads to the loss of information about the color / material of the faces. This is an irreparable AutoCAD bug. Paint surfaces only after modeling is complete.