Single dovetail finger in 3D printing project

[fangly]

Hi,

Thank you for the good work.

I am working on a small 3D printing project. For the first time, I have a large flat design that does not fit on the printer's plate. My thought was to spit the design and have a single dovetail finger between each pair of parts. I installed your macro and gave it a try.

I could create a "female" dovetail finger of appropriate size and correctly positioned. But I have some issues with the second part of the joint:
1/ I expect the second part of the joint to be "male", i.e. protrude from the face instead of being cut into it. I have not found a way to do this. It may make sense in a CNC or woodworking context for the joints to be female, but not in a 3D printing project. Either I missed the option or that is a feature request.
2/ The second part of my joint seems to contain more fingers than I wanted, despite setting the width property to something small (1).

Best regards

[mwganson]

Reply to this topic on the freecad forum with your freecad file and screenshots. It's hard to give specific recommendations without the file.

https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=64298

The box joint might be better for what you are doing unless you need the angles of the dovetail joint. The "Use Odd" property can be experimented with for better alignment of the fingers. You could make an additional pad, and then use the macro to cut from that or just make that part a little bit longer in that direction. You can experiment with the "Show Tool" property. Make the Width a little bit less for that piece so you don't get the extra finger off to one side, then play with the Position property and the Use Odd property to get the desired alignment. This macro is admittedly not the easiest thing in the world to use.