Quick chamfers using Unfold

- Hi, I'm George Maestri and, today, we're going to do chamfering using the unfold tool. Now, if you're not familiar with the unfold tool, it's really just a simple extension of the move tool, and it's a great way to create very simple and quick chamfers. So let's take a look at this. So I've got this object here and let's say we wanted to put a chamfer around the edge. Well, we can do that using the move tool. So the first thing I want to do is I want to add in a little bit more geometry, so I'm going to select my offset tool and then I'm going to offset this, let's just say, five inches.

And then I'm going to select this internal face. Now, if I use my move tool, you'll see that, well, I can only move along green or red. I can only move basically on the same plane that this face exists on. But if I hit Alt or Command, notice how I can now move up in the vertical axis, and now I can create my chamfer. And, in fact, if I want to, I can type in an exact distance, in this case, five inches, and that will make a perfect 45 degree chamfer.

Now, this also works for other types of surfaces. So if I wanted to create something on a curved surface, I could certainly do that. Again, move tool and Alt or Command. Once you get that to snap, it works just fine. And there we go. And it can even work for irregular surfaces. So, again, select a face. Use offset. Move and then hold down Alt or Command.

Now, for even more complex surfaces, such as this arched window, we may have to actually do more than one offset. So, in this case, I'm going to go ahead and select this face. Do offset here. Do another offset along the inside edge here. And I'm not very concerned about distance at this point. And then, when you move and hold down Alt, again, in this case, it snaps to green.

And if you want to, you can hold down the Shift key to lock that in. So what you would do is hold down Alt or Command to get it started and then hold down Shift to adjust it and lock it in. So we've created some very simple chamfers just using the move tool and one extra keystroke. So hopefully this will make your chamfering life much easier from here on out.