Making The Box 3D

Drawing a flat rectangle is nice, but now we need a way to transform that rectangle to a 3D entity. This is easily done by clicking the "Push/Pull Tool", . Once the tool is selected, we will pull the top face of the rectangle upwards. Just like creating the rectangle, we can either manually pull the top face, or enter a dimension. We chose a 3mm dimension.

Aside: Easily Create Walls

Although this isn't the direction I am going with this tutorial, I figure that this is a good place to show how to easily create walls and borders around a box. While viewing your new 3D rectangle, click the "Offset Tool", . With the tool selected, you need to click one of the four corners on the top face of the rectangle.

Like any other tool, you are now allowed to manually create an offset, or type one in. In our example we will type in 3.0 to create a 3mm offset. Next, we will click the "push/pull" tool again, and click on the outer edge of our rectangle.

You will now notice that you can pull up the outer edge of the rectangle without affecting the interior. This is a nice and easy way to create a perimeter around the main shape that you created.

Creating Slots

One of the easiest ways to create an enclosre that quickly assembles is to use a 'slot and tab' style design. To get started here, we need to get familiar with getting measurements so that our slots are lined up and not too close to the edge. To do this we will use the nifty "tape measure tool", . In this example we want the slots to be 3mm away from the perimeter, and 3mm long. You can easily do this by clicking on the long side of the rectangle, and typing 3 in the dimensions box which will create a dotted line across the plane, and then do the same for the adjecent side of the rectangle.

Once the measurements have been made, you can select the Box tool again, and create a 3mm x 10mm rectangle. In my example, I created another slot 6mm from the first slot.

Hollowing Out The Slots

The next step in creating the slots is to hollow them out so that tabs can fit in. Thanks to the push/pull tool this is a very easy step. Now that you have made your rectangles for the slot, use the "Push/Pull" tool to push the top face of the slot into the back face. You will know that this is happening when you lower the face of the rectangle and a pop up shows that says "On Face".

What I have done on the next picture is made the faces transparent so that you can see how the slot has been hollowed out.

Creating Tabs

The next topic is how to create tabs. One common misconception is that people create rectangles and use the pull tool to pull the rectangle out and make a tab. Although this method does work, it is not recommended because it multiple entities and the tab wouldn't be "attached" to the object. Instead what we are going to do is use the Pull tool to pull one of the side faces of the rectangle out by 3mm.

Once that has been done, we are going to use the measuring tool and lay out a line that is 3mm back into the face. This gives us the reference point on the face so we can pull back the pieces that are not part of the tab.

Next, I wanted two tabs, both 10mm long and 6mm from the ends of the rectangle, so I am going to create a rectangle from one corner 6mm long and 3mm in, and the same on the other end of the rectangle. Next, I measured out 10mm from the corner of each new rectangle, and created a large rectangle in between. We can now see how the tabs are going to be made

Now you can use the "Push/Pull" tool to take each of the rectangles and push them to the opposite face thus making them dissappear.

Using The Tabs To Lay Out Slots

Since we went over a freehand way of making slots, we can use an alternative method by taking a copy of our design, and rotating it along where we want the slots, and tracing the tabs. Let's start by making a copy by either using the selection tool to drag across the object, or since this is the only object on our plane using "Select All".

Once we have made a copy, we can take that copy, and rotate it so that it is perpendicular to the first object. What I have done to make my positioning more accurate was take the measuring tool and measured 3mm from the side. This was helpful as it then allowed my copied rectangle "snap" to that plane.

Next, we can take the rectangle tool and simply trace around the tabs of the second rectangle. By using the same method as described earlier, we can use the push/pull tool to push the top of the new slot back into it's rear face. Once you have made the slot you can move your perpendicular rectangle away to see the results.

Here is what your project can look like if you were to hollow out both slots, and line up the tabs of one object to the slots of the second.