(1) Creating a single contour – you can create a single contour if you input a contour increment of zero. This would create a contour of the solid object by intersecting a plane passing through the line drawn in the Create Contours tool and the plane normal is determined by the view direction and line direction.

(2) Creating NURBS curve offset – You can create offset of a planar NURBS curves by taper extrude. If you need to offset by a distance d, find a combination of height and angle of the taper extrude such that d = height * tan (taper angle). After creating the taper extrude, extract the top curve and change the coordinates of the extracted curve to move it in the same plane as the original curve.

Original Curve	Taper Extrude
Extract top and bottom Curves	Change Z value of top curve from Object Info Palette

(3) Creating Fillet Surface – The surfaces could be positioned such that there is more than one quadrant in which the fillet surface might be created. An example may be when the surfaces are intersecting with each other – in this case there may be four possible quadrants in which the fillet surface could be created. Vectorworks would find the first suitable quadrant and create the fillet surface. If you do not want the fillet surface in that quadrant, you can undo or delete the surface and recreate the surface after reversing the normal of one or both of the surfaces using Reverse Normal button from the object Info Palette.

(4) Section Solid – You can extrude a polyline or polygon and use that as the sectioning surface to section a solid. But as in other solid operations, the polyline or polygon is closed internally. If you want to section with open surface(s), create NURBS surfaces using Convert to NURBS and add the surfaces together using Add Solid and use this as the sectioning surface.

Extruded polygon as sectioning surface	Sectioning result showing extruded polygon that was closed by joining the first and last point internally.	Sectioning result if you convert the extruded polygon to NURBS surfaces and add the NURBS surfaces together using Add Solids

(5) Create planar caps – You can create surfaces or solid by lofting several cross sections. If you create surfaces and then later on want to close off the ends of the loft, you can add the loft surfaces together using Add Solids after ungrouping them if necessary and use create planar caps to close the loft off. You can use Add Solids again to add the caps to the rest of the surfaces.

(6) Reversing curves in a Loft operation – In some situations you may need to reverse a cross section in order to obtain the shape you are looking for. Unless you reverse one or more cross sections, you would get twisted or self-intersecting surfaces. Following is an example of this. Note that you can use a 2D/3D locus point at one or both ends of the loft.

Loft cross-sections	Loft surfaces if you do not reverse the circular cross section.	Loft surfaces after reversing the circular cross section.

(7) Create surface to fill gap – you can create a surface to fill a gap in a solid object or a number of adjacent surfaces using Create Surface from Curves. Extract the edges of the surface/solid that constitutes the gap. Select the extracted curves and create a surface using Create Surface from Curves command. This command can create surfaces from n boundary curves or from a network of intersecting curves.

Gap	Extract Curve	Create Surface from Curves

(8) Create a surface connecting two surfaces – You can extract the curves from the two surfaces and use these curves to create a lofted surface.

You may need to compose the extracted curves into a single curve before loft operation.

(9) Trimming a fillet surface with adjacent surfaces – you can trim a fillet surface with the adjacent surfaces in several ways. Following example shows two different ways in achieving this:
(a) Extract fillet surface curves and use these curves to trim the adjacent surfaces using Project and Trim tool.

Extract curves from the fillet surface edges using Extract Curve tool	Surfaces after trimming using Project and Trim tool

(b) Add all three surface using Add Solids command, convert the resultant solid to NURBS surfaces, and delete the unwanted pieces of the surfaces adjacent to the fillet surface.

(10) Blending open solids – you can blend an edge of an open solid that has exactly two adjacent faces.

Select edge of the open solid	Blended edge in the open solid

(11) Creating Rectangular NURBS surface – you can create a rectangular NURBS surface by drawing a rectangle and using Create Surface from Curves. You can also create such a surface by extruding a rectangle by zero distance and converting to NURBS using Convert to NURBS commands. Note that you can also create a zero angle sweep and convert that sweep to NURBS thereafter.

(12) Extending a NURBS curve – you can extend a NURBS curve to another NURBS curve or a 2D object using the Connect/Combine tool. Use the Single Object Connect Mode and select the curve to extend followed by the curve that you want to extend to. The first selected curve will be extended tangentially to the other curve.

Original Curves	Red curve extended to the green curve

(13) Creating a Quick Planar Section – You can create a planar section quickly by using the split tool. Simply use the split by line mode and delete the portion that you do not need. The results of splitting a solid by line are Section Solid objects that you can edit using Edit Group.

Original Solid	Split by Line	Solid split into Section Solid Objects
Delete one Section Solid	Edit Group and add color to section surface