Editing Tools¶

All editing tools live in the Topology tab of the Modelling panel. They act on the current selection.

Many of them also work with whole Editable Mesh objects selected, outside component editing: they then act on every visible component of the mesh. For example, Extrude and Inset use all the faces, Bevel all the edges, and Fill, Grid Fill and Bridge the open borders of the mesh. The shading buttons shade the whole mesh.

Quick tool search

Right-click in the Scene view (without dragging) while editing a mesh to open Modelling Tools, a searchable list of every tool. It shows your Recent and Pinned tools at the top. See Modelling Tools search.

Tools with options¶

These tools show an options panel in the Scene view. Adjust the options, check the preview, then press Apply, or Cancel to leave without changing anything. The ... button next to each tool in the panel shows or hides its Scene view options.

Extrude¶

Pulls the selected faces or edges out to create new geometry.

Distance: How far to extrude.
Keep faces together: Extrudes connected faces as one region. Turn it off to extrude each face separately.
Follow normals average: Moves the extruded geometry along the average direction of the faces.
Shell: Keeps the original faces, flipped, as an inner cap. Useful to give thickness to an open surface.
Merge on Contact: On by default. Stops the extrusion at the first surface of the same mesh it reaches and merges with it: the covered part of that surface is removed and the edges are welded, opening a passage. Useful for windows and doors through walls.
Hard Edge Angle: Edges created by the extrusion are marked hard (sharp shading) when the angle between their faces reaches this value. Flatter edges stay smooth.

Tip

In edge or face mode, you can also extrude by holding Shift when you start dragging a move, rotate or scale handle. See Transform.

Drawing a rectangle on a wall with Shapes, then extruding it inwards to open a doorway.

Inset¶

Creates a smaller copy of the selected faces inside them, for panels, windows and borders.

Inset Mode: Region insets the selection as one area. Individual insets each face on its own.
Distance: How far inward the new edges are.

Bevel¶

Rounds or cuts the selected edges or vertices.

Distance: The width of the bevel.
Segments: How many faces make up the bevel. Use 1 for a flat cut, more for a rounded edge.
Profile and Profile Shape: The curvature of the bevel.
Junctions: How corners where several beveled edges meet are filled: with segmented faces (Segmented) or with a single polygon (Ngon).

Bridge¶

Connects two selected face groups, edge chains or edge loops with new faces. Handy for joining two parts of a mesh or closing a gap between them.

Merging two objects with Merge Meshes, then bridging their faces.

Merge¶

Merges the selected vertices.

Variant

Center: all selected vertices become one, at their center.
Cursor: all selected vertices become one, at the custom pivot position (see Transform).
Collapse: each connected group of selected vertices becomes its own vertex.
Distance: only selected vertices closer than Distance are merged.

Knife¶

Cuts new edges across faces by hand.

Click on surfaces or edges to place cut points.
Hold Shift over an edge for a loop cut all around the mesh, then click to apply.
Press Enter or right-click to apply the cut.
Backspace removes the last point, Esc cancels.

Selected Only: Only cuts the selected edges or faces.
Step: Snaps cut points along edges in steps. 0 is continuous; 0.25 snaps to quarters of the edge.

Cutting faces by hand and adding loop cuts with the Knife.

Slide¶

Slides the selected vertices or edges along the surrounding edges, without changing the shape of the surface. Step snaps the slide amount.

Sliding an edge along its neighbours.

Subdivide¶

Splits the selected faces or edges. Cuts sets how many times.

Deformation¶

Clicking one of these buttons applies it right away with the current amount; its ... button shows its options in the Scene view instead, where you set the amount and press Apply. The amount is shared with the Distance of Extrude and Inset.

Smooth: Smooths the selected vertices. Strength from 0 to 1.
Relax: Evens out the spacing of the selected vertices along the surface, without flattening it. Strength from 0 to 1.
Shrink/Fatten: Moves the selected vertices along their normals by Distance. Positive values inflate, negative values deflate.
Push/Pull: Moves the selected vertices away from or toward the transform pivot by Distance.

Preserve Borders, in the Smooth and Relax options, keeps the vertices on open borders of the mesh in place.

Modify¶

Tool	What it does
Duplicate	Duplicates the selected components inside the same mesh.
Connect	Connects the selected vertices, or pairs of edges, with a new edge across the face.
Merge Meshes	Merges the selected objects into the active one.
Separate	Moves the selected faces into a new object.
Rip	Tears the selection open, so it can be pulled apart. In face mode the button reads Extract: the faces are detached as their own island.
Rip Fill	Tears the selection open and fills simple gaps.
Dissolve Verts	Removes the selected vertices but keeps the surrounding faces.
Dissolve Edges	Removes the selected edges but keeps the surrounding faces.
Dissolve Faces	Merges the selected connected faces into one.
Triangulate	Splits the selected faces into triangles.
Tris to Quads	Joins pairs of adjacent triangles into quads.
Poke	Splits each selected face into triangles around a new center vertex.
Fill	Creates a face from the selected vertices or edge loop.
Grid Fill	Fills a closed edge loop with a grid of quads.
Join Edges	Welds two open edge chains with the same number of edges.

Shapes¶

The Shapes section of the Topology tab draws new edges onto the faces of the selected mesh, like a stencil:

Shape	Draws
Freeform	A free stroke that follows the cursor. End it near its start to close it.
Line	A straight line from where you press to where you release.
Ellipse	An ellipse inside the box you drag.
Rectangle	A rectangle from corner to corner.

Click a shape.
Press on a face of the selected mesh and drag. Hold Shift to keep a Rectangle or Ellipse at 1:1.
Release the mouse: the stroke is cut into the faces it crosses.

Esc cancels. The Shape Settings panel in the Scene view has the options:

Projection: Visible Surfaces projects the stroke through the camera onto the faces under it. Initial Face Plane keeps the stroke on the plane of the face you started on.
Simplification Tolerance: How much a Freeform stroke is simplified, in world units. Zero keeps every captured point.
Ellipse Segments: The number of segments of an Ellipse.

Mirror and Subdivision Surface¶

These two whole-mesh tools are run from the Modelling Tools search. They rebuild every face of the selected meshes, whatever components are selected, in a single undo step.

Mirror X, Mirror Y and Mirror Z: Adds a mirrored copy of the mesh across the object's local X, Y or Z plane, through its pivot. Vertices lying on that plane are shared by both halves, so half a model joins up into a whole one. Materials, flat faces and hard edges are mirrored too.
Subdivision Surface: Smooths the whole mesh by one level: each face with n corners becomes n quads, and the shape is rounded toward a smooth surface. Hard edges and open borders stay sharp. Faces keep their material and flat shading.

Note

Both tools skip meshes with faces that have holes. Vertex colors and custom normals aren't kept, and a mesh with manual UVs switches to automatic UVs.

Boolean (destructive)¶

Surface Cut: Cuts the active mesh with the other selected meshes. The cutting meshes are kept. Select the mesh to be cut last.

For non-destructive booleans, see Booleans.

Normals and shading¶

Modify Normals: Flip Normals reverses the selected faces. Recalc Outside and Recalc Inside make the selected faces point away from or toward their center.
Modify Shading: Flat Faces and Smooth Faces set flat or smooth shading. Smooth by Angle smooths everything except edges sharper than Smooth by Angle Limit. Mark Hard and Clear Hard set sharp shading on individual edges. Set Custom Normals and Clear Custom Normals store or remove the current face normals.

For automatic smoothing of the whole mesh by angle, see Auto Smooth in the Editable Mesh inspector.

Cleanup¶

Tool	What it does
Weld	Under Weld Doubles: welds the selected vertices that are closer than Weld Distance. With whole objects selected, it welds every visible vertex of each mesh.
Delete Loose	Deletes selected vertices and edges that don't belong to any face.
Remove Degenerate	Removes broken, zero-area faces and edges.
Dissolve	Under Limited Dissolve: removes the selected interior edges between faces that are nearly flat, under Limited Angle.
Create Support Edge	Adds an edge between exactly two selected vertices.
Validate Mesh	Writes a report of topology problems to the Console.
Delete Unused Materials	Removes material slots no face uses.

Vertex colors¶

Click Paint in the Modelling Edit toolbar to paint vertex colors by dragging over the mesh. Click it again to stop.

Color: The paint color. White visually erases painted color.
Radius and Strength: The brush size (in screen pixels) and how much each stroke blends in.
Face Corners: Paints only the corners of the face under the cursor. Turn it off to paint every face inside the brush.

Painting vertex colors with the brush.

Apply to Selection fills the selection with the current color, and Pick from selection takes the color from the selection.

Filling the selected faces with Apply to Selection.

Materials¶

The Materials section lists the mesh's material slots.

Add Material adds a slot.
Assign gives the slot's material to the selected faces.
Select adds the faces that use that slot to the selection.
Delete removes the slot.

Drag and drop

In face mode, drag a material from the Project window onto one of the selected faces in the Scene view to give it to all the selected faces.

Modelling Tools search¶

Right-click in the Scene view (without dragging) while editing a mesh to open Modelling Tools, a searchable list of every Modelling tool. It also has tools without a button in the panel, such as Mirror and Subdivision Surface.

Type to filter the list, pick a tool with the arrow keys and press Enter to run it. Esc closes the list.
The pin button next to a tool pins it. Pinned and Recent tools are listed above All Tools; Recents first decides which of the two comes first.
The … button next to a tool opens its options in the Scene view instead of running it.

Repeating the last action¶

Press Enter in the Scene view to run the last operation again on the current selection: an extrude, bevel, inset, bridge or slide, most buttons of the Topology tab, a move, rotation or scale (also a Shift extrude-and-move), or a tool run from the Modelling Tools search. A message in the Scene view confirms it (Repeated: Extrude) or says it can't (Cannot repeat Extrude on this selection).

It doesn't apply while the Knife is active or while you create a primitive, where Enter finishes the cut or the shape.

While you edit UVs (the UV tab), Enter repeats the last UV action instead, both in the Scene view and in the UV View: a button of the UV tab such as Sew, Normalize or Pack, a typed Move Selection, Rotate Selection or Scale Selection, or a move, rotation, scale or rect drag of UVs in either view. A repeated drag applies the same offset, angle or factor to the current selection, around its own pivot.