Tutorial 5 mirrored ends section 2
Ok in section one we drew our box side and we drew the dovetails on one end of the piece. This could be part of a drawer, a box, a cabinet, or whatever. If it is part of a drawer and this project requires 10 drawers we will not have to redraw these dovetails.
The idea is to simply copy the end, reverse it and place it on the other end. Lets take a look at our piece. P5
First we must make the piece into a component. With the select tool draw a box completely around the piece and hit enter. You can accomplish the same thing by triple clicking on the piece with the selection tool. Either way the component will be outlined in a blue bounding box. Now with the piece selected (outlined in blue) make it into a component. Right click on it and select “make component” then select create. You can give it a name if you wish.
Next select the move tool and click on the front corner of the upper tail. As you move the mouse you will see the component moving, now hit and release the control key. The original piece is back in place and you are moving the copy. You may need to shift your view a bit to get the copy to move in the right direction. You can do this with the orbit tool.
Continue to move the copy to the opposite end of the piece. (see picture) P 6
The picture does not show the blue outline on the right end but it should still be highlighted on your screen.
With the right end still selected, right click on the right end, select flip along and select green direction. This is what you should have. P 7
If you did not get the desired result it may be that you are drawing along a different axis.
If this is the case just hit undo and experiment with flipping along different axes.
We now have two components sitting end to end and we must merge them into a single component. We do this as follows.
With the right end selected right click and select explode. Now select the left end and once again select explode. The two ends are no longer components. Now select tie lines separating the two ends and erase them. Make sure to erase the lines separating the edges and back as well. We now have a single piece. Select it and make it into a component.
P 8
At this point we have a single component 24 inches long with dove tails on each end.
You can easily adjust the length of the piece by right clicking on the piece, selecting edit component, now select either end by drawing a selection box around the end. Then use the move tool to make it whatever length you want.
That’s it for how to mirror the ends. All feedback would be appreciated.
