What’s the best way to create this shape? Soft corners in 1 and 2 with a perfect circle shape in 3. It should also have a hole in the side and a slight thickness with sharp edges/rims.
I tried different ways but have a hard time getting all 3 in a nice way.
I would probably start with the flat cross section rather then with a cylinder and pulling up.
And then use subdivision, solidify and boolean for the hole?
I’ve tried that. Hard to get the round “cylinder” (3) even.
When using Modfiers, what’s the rule when it comes to order? One trial I got rims that looked kind of soft instead of sharp edges. Perhaps the order was wrong.
Here you go… for 2.8
thing.blend (179.4 KB)
Heres pretty much what i did… made a cylinder, chopped the ends off. solidified it applied the mod so im left with the crossection. split it in two and mirrored it. deleted the top face, extruded slightly, then extruded up to make the tab thing.
Bevelled the corner, then punched a hole through it with a boolean.
Oh, I missed that you wanted the object to have thickness. In the PDF in my previous post, add a solidify modifier between steps 8 and 9 and add a small bevel to the edges and you’ll be set.
Perfect. I’ve done something similar myself but good to see. Maybe a bit more curved in 2.
When I render this the hole doesn’t show. I guess I also have to add Subdivision to get the smoothness? Or am I missing something?
When adding Subdivision I find the difficult part begins, setting Crease and no Crease to the different lines. Maybe I have to complex shapes from start?
Great. Thank you!
Thank you guys. This has helped me a lot. 
One thing. What’s the difference between using Subsurf (I assume thats Subdivision in 2.8, alwasy a hassle when complex shapes) and Shader Smooth? And also Normals > Auto Smooth?
Smooth shade does not add geometry, it just blends the edges of the faces so they appear smoother. I think the normal smooth does a similar thing but not sure, never used it.
Wow! A great help. What is Normals > Auto Smooth? Can I use that instead of Modifier > Subdivision (2.8)?
I understand now that smoothing and soft surfaces is something I need to learn more. I’ll try to find some good tutorials on YouTube.
I can totlally recommend this one… id does use a custom config tho, but you can follow along without it. Youll get alot of tips in this video for modelling shapes similar to yours.
Auto smooth is a way to control the overall smoothing of a mesh. You are able to set a custom surface smoothing in this way.
As you can see there is a value used. Play with this value. You will see, the lower it is, the more sharp edges eppear. The reason: This value define at which degree the neighbored faces have to be smoothed or not. The sharper an edge the earlier it will be smoothed.
Auto smooth is active only if an object is set to “Smooth” in the tool tab on the left.
The Subdividion Modifier is something different and has nothing to do with the Auto smooth option.
At 2:00 you bevel the Vertex. I can’t do that (2.8). Any idea to why that is that comes to mind?
Works when I use the tool, and click/drag from the point, but not using Ctrl+B
Ctrl+Shift+B does vertex bevel
As @JohnMalcolm1970 says. Use CTRL+SHIFT+B to bevel vertices.
In 2.8 It’s the same like in v2.79.
I forgot to switch on the shortcut documentation in this video. But you can see the shortcut in the menu I’m using.
By the way: If you are interested, I’m publishing Blender quick tips and small tutorials. You find them on my YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/graphicgladiator or here in the forums: Blender Quick tip collection by Christoph Werner (growing constantly...)
