Modeling the Dovetail Pins

Launch Dovetail Jig for Alibre Design by double-clicking it's icon in the start menu. You should see a screen that looks something like the one shown below, and the "pins" part you have open in your Alibre Design session should appear in the "Parts" list.

Select "pins" by clicking it, and the sketch (in this case "Sketch<2>") you just added should appear in the "Valid sketches" list. If it does not appear, make sure (1) it's not activated in your Alibre Design session, (2) it appears in the Design Explorer, and (3) it contains exactly four reference lines, forming the shape of a rectangle (or square).

Select the sketch, and just for kicks, increment the "Blind" value by an eighth inch by clicking once on the up arrow next to it. This will create half-blind dovetail pins by setting the tails back an eighth inch. The preview area shows what the result will look like. The white area represents a scaled version of of reference lines in the sketch, and the dark areas represent what will be removed when pins are created.

Actually, if you're extruding ("Extrude": extending the piece by adding pins to the end), which is the default, then the white area indicates what will be added. On the other hand if you're cutting ("Cut": leaving the piece the same length by cutting slots for the tails), then the dark areas indicate what will be cut away. These operations produce reversed sketches.

Now click "Make Feature". If it's the first time you're making a feature in this session, it might take a second for the application to connect to Alibre Design and produce the feature. When complete, the sketch will disappear from the "Valid sketches" box because it now belongs to the dovetail feature. Switch back to your Alibre Design part (and rotate it if necessary), you should end up with something like this -- the perfect half-blind dovetail pins!

Now let's do the tails.