Slide-in tabs are small “tabs” that reach out from the outside edge of your keyguard and slide under the edge of the case opening. Slide-in tabs have traditionally been found on the long ends of a keyguard but they can be placed on the long ends, short ends, or all four edges of the keyguard. The keyguard pictured above has two slide-in tabs on both it’s top and bottom edges.
Slide-in tabs work well with flexible cases because you often have to bend the edges of the case or lift them slightly to get the tabs to fit underneath. These tabs do NOT work well with screen protectors – the hard plastic inserts that go into a case to hold the tablet firmly in place or to protect the electronics of the tablet from moisture (these latter screen protectors have a transparent sheet of plastic attached to their back). Slide-in tabs can invalidate the implied warranty of a screen protected case because they cause the transparent sheet to pull away from the rigid plastic front, resulting in a path for moisture to reach the tablet.
To add support for slide-in tabs to your keyguard, you first expand the “Tablet Case” category, choose “yes” from the “have a case” pull-down list and provide information about the size of the opening in the case for the tablet screen. Then, expand the “Mounting Method” category of options and then select “Slide-in Tabs – for cases” in the pull-down list of titled “mount keyguard with” . The words “for cases” is included in the name of the option to reinforce that this option applies only to mounting your keyguard in a case. Next, expand the “Slide-in Tabs Info” category and provide information about the sizes of the tabs you want to create.. You can see a video of the process by clicking on the image below. Note that the video focuses only on the mounting aspects of the keyguard. For go here for instructions on how to accommodate the layout of the app and grid of tiles in your design.
Since the video was made new options have been added for slide-in tabs and one of the option names has changed.
You can add slide-in tabs on all edges of the keyguard.
You can control how far apart the tabs should be and how wide each tab should be:
You can create a single, wide tab by overlapping the two tabs. Just make the distance between the tabs a negative number.
In order to ensure a solid connection between the tabs and the rest of the keyguard, the tab has to be limited to be no thicker than the vertical part of the side of the keyguard. The top edge of the keyguard has a 45 degree chamfer. The tab has to be limited to the part of the keyguard below this chamfer:
Because the tab has to stay in this region, you can set a “preferred” thickness for the tabs but the program won’t let it get any thicker than this region. As a result the name of the option is “preferred slide in tab thickness”.
Use the STL file you’ve produced to print the keyguard on your 3D printer. It took our printer about 2 hours and 10 meters (about 60 cents) worth of PLA filament to produce the keyguard for an iPad Mini. The same keyguard, created for an iPad 2 takes about 5 hours to print and uses 12 meters (about $0.72) of PLA.
The video below shows how to install your keyguard.
These small nylon pry bars can come in handy to work the tabs under the edge of the case opening!
If you add additional plastic to the outside of your keyguard, you have to manually create slide in tabs. Read more about this feature at the bottom of this page.