I'm trying to split my model in the style of a dovetail using a stopper layer at the bottom. The front half will be removable and then placed on the back half with the stopper layer preventing gravity from pulling the front all the way through. Here are the surfaces I created inside the model for the split. I am new to creating surfaces for splitting, but this is what seemed to be doable. I also don't understand when knitting is required.
Imagine the outline of this image as the shape of a prism in my model that I wish to cut into two bodies. There is also a hole going through the prism for a bolt to be passed through. Surfaces Used to split; front view Solid part with hole and cutting surfaces
Here are some more views of the surfaces to help get an idea. Iso-ish view; attempted loft surfaces instead of planar for the stopper layer surfaces Side View
Aside from the best practices for making this cut, I would really like to know where I can learn more of the in-depth fundamentals of how each of these types of surfaces can be used as well as when knitting surfaces is important, why I can't knit some surfaces but can others, etc. The documentation from a cursory search on splitting and surfaces leaves a lot left out and inaccurate.
I made a plane to crosscut the prism for the stopper layer and drew the dovetail connector pattern on it as a sketch.
I then extruded a surface from the sketch going upwards to the outer face of the prism.
Then I drew a line connected to the front side of the dovetail sketch and extruded a surface from it to the bottom of the prism.
After that, I copied the dovetail sketch 4 times and used coincident or pierce relations (weirdly some cases took away pierce as an option and others didn't properly fix the sketch in place using coincident) to fully define them. I used each sketch once to loft surface the remaining gaps of the stopper layer.
I then attempted to insert split feature but it would not let me use all of the surfaces as trim tools. First it accepted the extruded surfaces but not the planar surface. Then it accepted the loft surfaces, but not the extruded surfaces. If I click them, nothing happens. Cut never divides the body into two bodies.
I attempted knitting each loft to the top extruded surface, and daisy chained to get a final knit which I expected to be all of them together, but then the none of the knits were not allowed to be used as trim tools. I used merge as I was knitting, and that was not default, so possibly that was the error.
There are a few ways to this. Your approach is not the easiest.
If it was up to me, I would make a copy of the part, cut both and make an assembly out of them.
But if you absolutely need to have them on the same part file:
This results in 2 bodies (with an exploded view for clarity)