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Angle/miter cuts

To enable the angle cuts feature, follow these three simple steps:

1) In the configuration settings, enable the Angle/miter cuts switch.

2) Fill in the fields Width and Axial symmetry. To correctly calculate the orientation and placement of parts with angles, we need to know the width of the material and the axial symmetry of the material.

What is Axial symmetry?

It is symmetry around an axis or line. An object is said to be axisymmetric if its appearance remains unchanged when transformed around an axis. To best place components with angles, we need to know whether the material can be rotated 180° around an axis. Not all material types are axisymmetric around all axes, so we need to know which axes the material can be rotated around. If the material can be rotated around all axes, select "X, Y, Z" from the Axial symmetry drop-down menu. If the material allows rotation around a single axis, select the correct axis name ("X" or "Y" or "Z") from the drop-down menu based on the orientation of the axes in the image below. If the material is completely asymmetric and you do not want to allow any rotation, select "---".

The following figure shows the most common shapes of materials and their corresponding axial symmetry.

3) Finally, enter Left angle and Right angle for each desired part that you want to cut at an angle. The minimum allowed value is 10° and the maximum value is 170°. If one or both angles are right angles, you can leave the field blank or enter the number 90.

How to enter angles?

The form always expects the values of the bottom angles of the required parts. If the bottom angle is greater than 90° and you prefer to enter the top angle, you must enter it as a negative value. For example: if the bottom angle is 120°, then the corresponding top angle is 60° (since the top and bottom sides of a quadrilateral are parallel and 180-120=60), so you can enter either 120 or -60 as the angle value.

The image below shows some examples.

Solution

The solution shows a complete layout with the exact location and orientation of each part.
The part list for each layout includes the length of each part as well as the left and right angles (in angle brackets).
The cumulative cut position shows the position of each cut that needs to be made. The first number in each square bracket indicates the top position of the cut, the second defines the bottom position of the cut. If the square brackets contain only one number, it indicates a perpendicular cut (the top and bottom positions are the same).