Quick and Easy Mortises and Tenons

David Richards, contributor

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Mortises and tenons aren't really very difficult to draw in SketchUp but it can be tedious work when you have a lot of them to do. Recently a mortise and tenon plugin for the commercial Wudworx tool set was released that makes it amazingly fast to draw this joinery. Here's a quick little video I put together to demonstrate it. You can see more and download the plugin from the Wudworx site. There's a nice tutorial page, too. 

One small but important detail to keep in mind. The ends of the two components where the joinery is to be drawn must be in contact with each other and properly aligned. If there is any gap whatsoever, the plugin won't see the interface and will not draw the mortise nor the tenon. 

I didn't realize it when I made the video but after setting the preferences for the dimensions of the mortises and tenons, you can start creating them without choosing the tool from the toolbar.

Although the plugin only does simple mortises and tenons, you can easily edit them afterwards to add haunches or create stub, double or twin tenons as needed. At least with the plugin you'll have little or no layout work to do. Combined with the Wudworx Dovetail plugin, you'll probably have most of your joinery needs covered in a single tool set.

Dave

Addendum: There was a problem with referenced measurements for through mortises when using metric dimensions. The Author has fixed that problem now so it shouldn't cause anyone any trouble.

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Comments (8)

rcataline4738 writes: Dave Richards I tried to click on your name to send you an email it did not work. This is my email address,
rcataline4738@gmail.com
Thanks for your help
Raymond Cataline
Posted: 9:54 am on December 29th

DaveRichards writes: Ray, would you please send me an e-mail? You can do that by clicking on my name at the end of the blog post.
Posted: 7:35 pm on December 28th

DaveRichards writes: Ray, I don't have a video to show the download but I'll help you get it straightened out when I get home from work this evening.

-Dave
Posted: 9:24 am on December 28th

cataline4738 writes: Dave I purchased this plugin I have it on my sketchup files but I cannot get it to open. do you have a video of the exact download for this plugin.
thank you
Ray
Posted: 5:35 pm on December 27th

OTW writes: I purchased the pluggin, followed the instructions from Wudworx including moving the files to the main plugins folder and using preferences to enable the extension, and got Plugins on the menu bar but could not get to this plugin. I noticed from the Help Center that I am not alone in having difficulties with accessing plugins. How do I launch it?
Posted: 9:59 pm on September 4th

sharonlev writes: Thanks for the post! I'll get to work on this and figure out why this is happening. I'll post and send out updates when it's resolved.

As a side note I would like to mention that metric units put in explicitly (ex. 10mm) does work. It's the referenced measurements that don't seem to function as expected when working in metric.
Posted: 9:35 am on June 28th

DaveRichards writes: I had not tried with metric units until now. I see what you are saying, though. I've sent an e-mail to the author to have him take a look. I expect he'll have it fixed in short order.

D
Posted: 6:24 am on June 28th

teamman writes: This is very useful plugin, but have you tried it with metric parameters. When I try *1 to produce through tenons I get a tenon 1mm. Am I doing something wrong. It seems ok in inches mode
Posted: 5:33 am on June 28th

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