Hi everyone. I'm a casual user, I purchase SW2013 and never upgraded past. I had a tutor to get me started a few years ago, but am now on my own to figure stuff out. I'm trying to make a custom case for a revolver as a gift for my dad. I want to make a relief in a block of walnut to precisely hold the gun. I drew the basic gun shape and did a combine/subtract with a box to get the end product. I am pretty good for making most things, but the curvy roundy parts of the grip are beyond my abilities. I decided to make the grip as an exact profile and do a somewhat but not exact form fitting shape using the chamfer tool. It worked pretty well and I had a model for my cnc software. I should say almost.

I drew the part as accurate as I could and planned to add a layer about 0.030" thick to the gun part, so it would make the relief slightly larger for wiggle room on the fit. I planned to use the shell tool to the outside of the gun part, thinking it would allow me to alter this wiggle room in one place in an easy way. The shell tool would not work on the complex shape. At that point I decided to edit each piece, changing the lines to construction lines, then create offset entities to get me the 0.030". It worked well, except I can no longer use the chamfer tool on the roundy grip parts. I use coreldraw x5 to trace the parts of the gun and create DXF files. I have even gone into Coreldraw and added the 0.030" and made new DXF / grip parts, but nothing seems to make any difference. The chamfer tool doesn't work and I am stuck.

Here is the gun drawn actual size with the chamfer on the grip part. I can not find any reason the chamfer tool worked on this version, but will not work on any newer parts that I create using the same Corel and SW methods. If there was a way that would add a fixed amount of thickness to the entire part that would solve all the problems. I do know that shell is intended to create a hollow part, but it doesn't matter for my purpose a outward shell would make the part larger in every direction by a fixed amount.

Here is the desired result, but it's too tightly drawn.

Of course there is also the possibility I could draw the grip more accurately using the loft tool. But it would take me a month to figure it out. Here is the grip I am talking about.

Here's the grip drawing.

Please help me.