Chamfer (geometry)

In geometry, chamfering or edge-truncation is a topological operator that modifies one polyhedron into another. It is similar to expansion, moving faces apart and outward, but also maintains the original vertices. For polyhedra, this operation adds a new hexagonal face in place of each original edge. In Conway polyhedron notation it is represented by the letter c. A polyhedron with e edges will have a chamfered form containing 2e new vertices, 3e new edges, and e new hexagonal faces. In the chapters below the chamfers of the five Platonic solids are described in detail. Each is shown in a version with edges of equal length and in a canonical version where all edges touch the same midsphere. (They only look noticeably different for solids containing triangles.) The shown duals are dual to the canonical versions. The chamfered tetrahedron (or alternate truncated cube) is a convex polyhedron constructed as an alternately truncated cube or chamfer operation on a tetrahedron, replacing its 6 edges with hexagons. It is the Goldberg polyhedron GIII(2,0), containing triangular and hexagonal faces. The chamfered cube is a convex polyhedron with 32 vertices, 48 edges, and 18 faces: 12 hexagons and 6 squares. It is constructed as a chamfer of a cube. The squares are reduced in size and new hexagonal faces are added in place of all the original edges. Its dual is the tetrakis cuboctahedron. It is also inaccurately called a truncated rhombic dodecahedron, although that name rather suggests a rhombicuboctahedron. It can more accurately be called a tetratruncated rhombic dodecahedron because only the order-4 vertices are truncated. The hexagonal faces are equilateral but not regular. They are formed by a truncated rhombus, have 2 internal angles of about 109.47°, or , and 4 internal angles of about 125.26°, while a regular hexagon would have all 120° angles. Because all its faces have an even number of sides with 180° rotation symmetry, it is a zonohedron. It is also the Goldberg polyhedron GPIV(2,0) or {4+,3}2,0, containing square and hexagonal faces.