Adding shapes

Drop parametric primitives onto the build plate.

Primitives are fully parametric — box, cylinder, sphere, cone, torus, pyramid, wedge, tube, text, and a rounded box and rounded cylinder. Every dimension stays editable, so you can change a size at any time without rebuilding the model. The Thread shape can also name a published size: pick a Standard such as M8 or 1/4-20 UNC and its diameter and pitch come from the ISO or Unified table instead of being typed, so a printed thread actually mates with real hardware. Beyond fasteners the list also covers garden-hose couplings and Edison lamp caps (E27, E14, E40 and the rest of the light-bulb sizes), which are a rounded thread rather than a 60° vee — pick one and the shape changes with it, so a printed lamp-base adapter screws into a real socket. It also shows the tap-drill diameter for the matching tapped hole. Leave Standard on Custom to enter your own diameter and pitch.

The palette is grouped by kind, and two of those groups exist to be cut away. Solids and Rounded hold the everyday shapes; Sketch holds the four you draw rather than dimension — Extrude, Revolve, Sweep and Loft; Mechanism holds the involute Spur gear, Ring gear and Rack alongside the Worm and the Thread.

Fasteners is the hardware you have to leave room for. Screw hole, Insert pocket, Nut trap and Slot arrive tinted translucent red because they are cutting tools — place one and subtract it — while Washer, Hex nut and Standoff are ordinary solids you print or fuse on. Each takes a Standard size, so an M3 hole is 3.4 mm to pass through, 3.2 for a close fit or 2.5 to tap, without you looking any of it up, and a Nut trap already sits 0.2 mm wider across the flats than the nut it holds. Bolting a part to something walks through a whole joint.

Panels holds a single shape and it is the same idea at scale: a Vent is a whole field of slots, round holes or honeycomb cells in one object, spaced by its pitch and the bar width left between them, ready to cut out of a wall — see vents and grilles.

1. Open the Shapes panel and search or scroll to the primitive you want.
2. Click it to drop it at the origin, already selected.
3. Edit its dimensions in the Properties panel on the right.