Hey everybody, I’m new (to the forums and to blender in general). So excuse any noobish questions. I’m trying to use the knife tool to create several edges on a face, but duplicating its edges is not behaving exactly how I assumed it might. Here’s my process :
Start with a face - this is going to be a set of shelves, I’ll be using the knife to cut out the shelves and pushing the faces in for their depths.
Knife tool works as expected and three cuts were made to signify where the shelves will be.
This is my process to make the shelves thicker (as an edge-thin shelf won’t look good) I take the edges generated with the knife tool, and shift+D to duplicate. Then I lock to z axis and move up. However, this results in them NOT creating a new face, but being ignored. I was wondering if I’m doing something essentially wrong or if there’s a way to force an edge onto the face it’s above/near (a problem I seem to be running into a lot when managing geometry)
Sorry for the wordiness, the images should explain :
This is my process to make the shelves thicker (as an edge-thin shelf won’t look good) I take the edges generated with the knife tool, and shift+D to duplicate. Then I lock to z axis and move up. However, this results in them NOT creating a new face, but being ignored. I was wondering if I’m doing something essentially wrong or if there’s a way to force an edge onto the face it’s above/near (a problem I seem to be running into a lot when managing geometry)
Sorry my explanation was a bit crappy. I know of the extrude tool, and that isn’t necessarily the issue. Basically I used the knife tool, then duplicated the edges made by the knife tool, but the duplicated edges were not fixed to the face the original ones were from, even though I locked movement to a single axis and just shifted them up. The newly duplicated edges were not part of the face the original edges were from. I’m pretty workflow-oriented so I was looking for answers as to why this happens and how to resolve it (ie force edges to “stick to” or “cut through” the face they’re on.
a problem I seem to be running into a lot when managing geometry
…using the wrong tool and the wrong process. This is easily and correctly done with the three operations loop cut (ctrl-R) inset (I) and Extrude (E). The Knife is for those situations where these are not applicable, although there is room for overlap… just a FYI addition to the advice already given, since you are starting out.
You still think in terms of “drawing” and copying lines (edges) and so forth. When working in 3D, your mindset has to change: away from “drawing” and towards “building”. Imagine building that cabinet in real life - you can’t just copy an edge from the real cabinet and attach it to somewhere else. If you want another edge on a real cabinet, you have to cut it into the surface.
And that’s exactly what you have to do with your mesh, by using the tools DruBan has just pointed out…
Thanks for the info guys, I’ve managed to do just fine in building the shape I wanted, and I know that extrude is the tool I’m looking for with the final result. I think I might have poorly worded my question. I’m aware I could use loop cuts(I don’t like them much because they cut through the entire shape rather than the single face), and I could also use subdivide (which I hate because it’s a mess to clean up). In any case my original question is the following :
If I cut a face using the knife tool, then duplicate those edges and move them slightly on a single axis on the same face. Why are the duplicated edges not cutting the face (i.e.) creating new faces. Is there a way to force the edges to cut the face as expected?
I wasn’t having trouble making the shape or extruding it, it’s just a workflow based question.
