Creating parts which slot together - Ask for technique or FS Feature

barnaby_relph

Hi All. I'm designing a laptop stand to be laser-cut and have hit an issue where I feel I'm likely missing a technique or a cool bit of FeatureScript. 

In the image below, the grey crossbar provides stability for a laptop and is intended to slot into the two blue uprights. Because it pierces the uprights at an angle, the slots cut into the uprights and the crossbar itself need to be as wide as the widest parts of the entry and exit sides of the slot seen below (because this is laser-cut and I can't achieve the diagonal slot shown below. 

I think I managed to get something working for the intersection of the two uprights (which don't cross at 90 degrees) , but it involved quite a lot of fiddly sketch creation and extrude/remove to get it working. 

Is there a plugin or a better technique to create this sort of slot-together construction in OnShape?

Thanks!

NeilCooke

if you build those parts using sheet metal, the cutouts will be generated automatically - you can't use boolean but you could extrude/remove the flat face of the grey part with the blue parts as "merge scope".

Also, to get the half cuts in the blue parts, you could create a sketch on one face and extrude/remove

NeilCooke

Like so:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/83d9de27bb3d6b9c33ec4027/w/328d0a592b79013b31fe03b6/e/df4f247665c9d3687f06bff6

barnaby_relph

@NeilCooke Thanks so much for looking at that for me! I'd not used sheet metal before, so that's really useful to see how it behaves. I'll go try that approach on my project this evening.