How do you bevel, yet maintain curves

[Anonymous]

I need to bevel this letter and maintain the curves and not have them scaled up. By extruding, then scaling I can sort of get there, however the extrusion is then uniformly scaled from the middle of the object and not in every direction along the border. Any ideas? (The model is originally a spline, and not a text element btw.)

[domo.spaji]

1. Why not use Bevel (spline) modifier?

 It's "invented" for that.

2. Take a look at (half) sphere topology - in the end, on the pole all loops meet at single point.

You should edit spline to have single vertex on problematic areas (between sharp angle segments).

Try weld (all) vertices with low threshold or select and weld them.

After beveling, chamfer edges/loops going from that vertices - that way keep them parallel and with much more control.

Do everything with modifiers! Never collapse the stack!

[domo.spaji]

Here's mod.stack for suggested workflow.

And snapshot with main steps...

Bevel settings:

modPanel.setCurrentObject $.modifiers[#Bevel]
$.modifiers[#Bevel].Cap_Top = 0
$.modifiers[#Bevel].Cap_Bottom = 0----No start/end capping
$.modifiers[#Bevel].Side_Type = 1---Curved sides
$.modifiers[#Bevel].Segments = 2

 and smooth:

modPanel.setCurrentObject $.modifiers[#Smooth]
$.modifiers[#Smooth].autosmooth = on
$.modifiers[#Smooth].preventIndirect = on
$.modifiers[#Smooth].threshold = 35---30-40 should work in most cases