Offset a surface and round its hard edges

- [Instructor] Now that we've completed the design of the seat, we no longer really need to look at it in four different view ports, because we don't need to track the motion of the CV simultaneously from different points of view. So, I'll type vports, enter, and go back to a single view port, and click okay. Now I'm going to orbit, and as I do, it'll encounter something that's called gimbal lock, where you can't orbit past a certain point.

Here I can't go further than that, and it's somewhat awkward. And this is because we've modeled everything on the ground for an object that is really meant to be stood up on its wheels. So we can get around this problem by using 3D free orbit. 3D F enter will get you into this mode, and then you can orbit without these constraints. This will just make it easier to take a look at the underside of the seat.

Now, I'd like to offset this surface to create the underside. I'll go to surface offset, click on the surface, enter, and then the white arrows show the default direction, which is outward, in this case, I'm going to click flip direction, and then I'll specify the offset distance as six millimeters enter, that generates another surface. Let's connect those with a loft.

We're going to loft these two surfaces together, enter, and that generates a new surface that goes around the perimeter. I'll press enter to end that. Now, I'm going to use 3D free orbit again, and get a look at the top, and just navigate so we can see that a little bit more clearly here. Now, there's really a very harsh transition between these surfaces which wouldn't really be represented in a real seat. We need to round this off, and we can attempt to do it with the fillet command here.

I'll click on these two surfaces, and it gives us an error, and sometimes this will happen, especially with complex surfaces. In a situation like this, we do need to round it off. So, my advice is to attempt converting this into a solid, and using the solid tool set. The math behind it is just a bit different, and we might have more success there. Conversely, if you were working with a solid, and it didn't work, you might want to try converting it into a surface, and see if the tools here would work.

I'm going to convert this set of surfaces to a solid using the sculpt tool, and I need to select these surfaces, and I also need to select the undersides. So I'm going to orbit, and as soon as I do, it pops into the regular orbit command, and I need to select the lower surface and press enter. Erase defining objects, yes, and that will leave us with a 3D solid. Now, I'll go back to 3D free orbit, and orbit back around.

Let's get a look at that. Now, I'd like to attempt to round that off. This time I'll use fillet edge. Let's set the radius value to three millimeters, and then fillet this edge, and this edge, enter, enter, and it worked. Okay, we've completed the seat. In the next video, we'll pull it all together, and visualize the bicycle as a whole.