I am trying to get 8 square holes within an oval that are equally spaced. Like 12 numbers in a circular clock face, but holes and an oval. I can do 4 holes at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 doing it manually, but when I try the array tool I get the holes outside the oval and not rotated at the proper angle to conform with the oval shape. Once I get that straightened out I would then need to make corresponding tenons on another piece, the walls of the oval box, that line up with the holes in the base plate piece.
Thank you. I will try it later today when I get a chance. I would also like to be able to fit 8 corresponding tenons from another piece into these holes. Any thoughts on that?
What is the plan for the piece that the tenons are on? Is it being cut from a flat piece that you plan to wrap into a oval shape? If so, you’d have to work out the linear distance between mortises and layout the tenons at those distances. You can use the measurement tool in LightBurn to give you the perimeter measurement.
Yes, the other piece is flat and I want to wrap it around a slightly smaller base than the base with the holes in it. So basically you have to manually complete this process, no automatic layout tool available?
There’s no built-in mortise-tenon layout tool that would understand that the holes you’ve laid out are intended as mortises. But that doesn’t mean you’d have to hand position all the tenons. I suggest using the array tool.
Measuring the inner ellipse gives 286.93 mm. Create a rectangle of that width.
Duplicate one of the mortises and position it along the edge on a corner of the rectangle
Using array tool make 8 copies with X spacing matching the “Space Between Copies” seen in the Copy Along Path operation that originally created the mortises (35.87 mm) or calculate this manually. Enable “Distance from center to center” when doing this.
Great. I will try this soon. But I am having trouble laying out the 8 holes. With 1 square hole located at 12:00, I select it and the inner oval, the path. With both selected, I go to Arrange > Copy along path, enable Rotate copies and then select how many I want, which is 8. Six of the square holes do not follow the path, they are outside the path. Only 2 of them are on the path, 12:00 and 6:00. How do I solve this issue?
What is your machine origin setting? I suspect top-right or top-left. If that’s the case then that means your design would have been vertically flipped from the orientation that I was working.
This further means that the node locations for the ovals will be flipped. The copy along path functionality depends on node location for proper function.
Try starting with the reference hole at the 6:00 position to remedy this. Alternatively, you could rotate the oval by 180 degrees.
Okay, starting at 6:00 did the trick. My home position with the machine was setup to be top - left, so that explains that. Thank you once again and I will look at the other part of this problem tomorrow.
