New user here, any help is greatly appreciated! 

I have a pair of four part assemblies that overlap, and I would like to subtract an area of intersection from each set, kind of a slot and tab situation.

I have tried many different approaches to get the common volumes subtracted, but none have worked.

The main problem seems to be that the original parts appear in the tree as surface bodies in the part model, not solids. This eliminates all of the options I have found online.

I originally had these parts modeled as lofted shapes, but they were too messy and unstable (many curves were being modified during design), so I went to sheet metal instead.

This made a much cleaner model, and flattened much better for providing future waterjet cutting templates.

The current parts were each created as sheet metal extrusions from a single line sketch. Because they need to be flattened, they were modeled indvidually and then mated into assemblies.

I have saved a modified version of one set of parts (the second assembly) as a single part to be used for cutting, but can't get it to save as a body.

Is there a way to use a surface body as a cutting surface on an assembly?

Or is there a trick to somehow get these models to behave as solids?

The final solution needs to stay linked to the original model and drawings to accomodate any further dimensional changes from the client.

Thanks so much, love the forums, so much great experience here!

db