Beveling & Tipping Objects & Text
| The Bevel and Tip tools provide specialized sweeping operations on polygons and objects. | |
Bevel: |
The Bevel tool sweeps the selected face up a smidge and in, creating a small bevel. This is a quick way to get a rounded edge or a new slanted in face. |
| Click on the Bevel tool to create a
very small bevel on the object. Right-click on the Bevel tool to bring up the Bevel panel. Here, you can select how wide the Bevel is and its Angle. This is the default bevel and angle settings. |
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| Here the Bevel width has been changed
in order to increase it: Click on the image to see a rendered version. |
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| Increasing the Bevel amount widens
the beveled edge: Click on the image to see a rendered version. |
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| Here the Angle has been increased: |
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 Tip: |
The Tip tool creates a tip by sweeping the selected face up and welding the vertices into one vertex. |
| Left-click on the Tip tool to create
the tip. The tip is always swept up and in even if the last operation was down and out. Use the Move tool to move the tip up or down as was done here. |
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| Modifying Segments: | |
| Like the faces, the swept tip can also be modified by changing how many segments are created along each new face. Right-click on the Tip tool to bring up the sweep/tip panel. |
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| This shows the result of the default setting for the after using the Tip tool. |
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| Segments determines how many segments
are created along each new face. The X, Y, and Z fields don't work for the Tip tool if you try to enter an amount, although if you move the the tip, it does show you the new coordinates. In order to modify the swept tip, right-click on the current Sweep tool to bring up the sweep/tip panel, modify the Segments, then select the Tip tool and the modified tip will be created. You can also create a tip, undo it, right-click on the tool, modify the segments, and create the tip again. The amounts in the Y and Z fields are numbers I entered just to see if they worked. |
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| An example of moving the tip and the resulting changes in the sweep/tip panel. Undoing the tip and recreating it will not create a tip that looks like this. A default tip will be created instead. |
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| One advantage of adding segments to a tip is
that a tip with one segment cannot be rotated (twisted) while a tip with
multiple segments can be: Click in image for a rendered view. |
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| Tip extruded from a polygon and rotated: Click in image for a rendered view. |
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| Remember that the more segments you add, the more polygons are created, but the larger the object will be. | |
| Sweeping Polygons: | |
| Just to be fair, I'll show how a polygon is
swept (see Polygons page on creating polygons). First, I created a polygon and selected the face. |
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| I then clicked on the Sweep tool and now have a 3D object instead of the 2D polygon. |
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| Sweeping Text: | |
| Text can also be extruded into 3D objects using the Sweep tool: |
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| Swept once: |
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| Moved down along the z-axis: Notice that I selected multiple faces? This was done by selecting the top face of the 'T', then pressing Ctrl while clicking on the top face of the rest of the letters. |
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| Beveled: Click on image for a larger view. |
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| Rendered: Click on image for a larger view. |
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| The next page will continue with sweeping and explain Paths & Lathing. | |