What is a good easy way to make a 2x4 that has curved edges. I don’t like the way bevel does it. I was thinking of box modeling a tree house, without the tree. I wanted boards for floors and walls, what would you suggest.
Thanks,
Mycroft
The only way you can do is to create your own edge-loops for the curve along its edges. to get it symetrical, you could use the mirror modifer - left to right and also top to bottom. You can also use the Bevel modifier multiply times too with different settings. 
Start with a 12 vert circle. In edit mode move it away left (or right) and top of the orign. The verts that are at 12 and 9 o’clock positions (or 3 if you moved right), extrude them toward center and down respectively. Delete the verts of the circle that are inside this region and add 2 mirror modifiers - one to mirror x and one to mirror y. When you continue to move the verts at the ends of the straight lines towrads the mirror axis, it will form a box with an eased edge. Turn clipping on both mirrors to merge the verts on each face. You can extrude and scale along the various axis to form a board of any length, width or height.
Why not just use a subdivision surface modifier(also with x, y, and z mirror modifier) on a rectangular box and then add loops near the edges? I might not really know what you want considering I don’t know what bevel does.
You can use Blender internal rendering trick to give hard edge a softer look. Just create a cut by the edge where you want to soften it; loop cut and drag it close to edge. And just set Smooth Shading on the object. It gives that rounded look:
That is exactly what I was saying.
Thank You, This really help, and it was explained well. I am not new to blender, but do not know all the tricks and fancy language. Thanks, Mycroft
Thank You, this works.
Mycroft
Instead of a mirror modifier, why not just make 2 loop cuts and scale them along the axis?
Just a thought, Mycroft