Bevel Tool

Bevel Tool

What you should know first: The all-new Bevel tool has very little in common with the old tool - and leaves almost nothing more to be desired! Bevel turns harsh edges and corners into flattened, rounded, soft elements.

The various component modes produce the following results:

Bevel works differently in each component mode.

What the Bevel tool can do with points, edges and polygons is explained in the description of the individual settings. A taste of possible edge bevels can be seen here:

Various modes for beveling edges.

Use

Note the tool handles’ various icons.

The Bevel tool has a two-level interactivity integrated into it that works as follows:

• First, click and drag in the Viewport to bevel the selected elements (only Offset will be modified interactively). Release the mouse button.
• In the next step, you can now interactively modify the tool’s Offset and Depth settings by clicking and dragging on the corresponding colored handles.

There are basically 3 yellow tool handles available in Use Edge mode (other modes are similar) that are displayed in the Viewport:

• Those on both outer edges created by the Offset value from the original edge (Edge Offset Handle).
• Those on the new edge profiles that lie perpendicular to the previously described handles, which can be used to adjust the Depth (Edge Depth Handles).
• The polygon handle that is only visible in Use Polygon mode that is used to adjust the Extrusion

The following special features are available when in Use Polygon mode:

• If a yellow polygon edge is grabbed, Offset and Extrusion can be adjusted separately by dragging the mouse horizonally and vertically, respectively.
• If a polygon surface is grabbed, Offset and Extrusion can be adjusted simultaneously and proportionally to one another when the mouse is dragged.
• You can bevel interactively by pressing the LMB+ one of the following keys (move the mouse left or right in an empty region of the Viewport):
- Ctrl/Cmd: Extrusion will be varied (only in Use Polygon mode)

- Shift: Offset will be varied

- no key: Offset and Extrusion will be varied simultaneously

The following special features are available when in Use Edge mode:

• Ctrl/Cmd+click on a yellow edge lets you make sub-selections (Ctrl/Cmd+click again to deselect; click on empty region to deselect all), which lets you define Offset separately for the sub-selected edges (either using the mouse or directly in the Attribute Manager’s Offset setting):

Use sub-selection to define different Offset to individual edges without having to leave the tool to make a new selection.

You can also set values for individual edges separately without making sub-selections by pressing the Ctrl/Cmd key.

• If a sub-selection has been made and you select another yellow edge (with a different Offset value) using the Ctrl/Cmd key, both offset profiles will be modified proportionally - not by the same value.