I am trying to create a glass & chrome coffee table but I’m struggling right from the get-go.
Glass_Table_01.blend (552 KB)
seriously 14 views and noone can explain how to make a quick table top? thats shameful. 
ok Pooky first, you are trying to over complicate your mesh. rather than starting with a plane and trying to force the corners in, start with the corners and fill the shape from there.
start, add a circle and set the vertices to 16 and then delete 3/4’s of the circle. that gives you one corner of your table. move the corner in position on the grid say 3 squares x and 2 squares -y add the mirror modifier and make sure both x and y are ticked and tick also clipping. extrude the vertices from each end of your quater circles in the respective x and y direction to give yourself the edges of your table now select everything and press e to extrude then press s to scale inwards, now your face will appear scale it in until you have a good inner edge. the extrude the two verts in the middle of your table edges ( the verts on the mirror line) into the center and with them both selected press alt m and merge them together.so you should have the outline of one quater of your table. now select all the interior vertices and press F this will flood the mesh with an Ngon, but thats ok as its just a flat plane. select everything and press e and z to extrude some thickness to your table now add a subsurf modifier to smooth out the rounded edges and press ctrl r to add a loopcut to the very edge of the model just to level out the table edge. open the shading tab and with everything selected press the smooth faces button. now your table top is done ready for a glass shader and the table leg which are just cylinders with subsurf and a loopcut on the top and bottom edge.Glass_Table_02.blend (434 KB)
Thanks for your reply (I too was surprised at the amount of views and lack of help).
I’ll read over how you’re explaining how to do it, then try to do it. It’s really quite overwhelming, the amount of different things you can do (all the different functions).
I’ve started from scratch and added a mesh grid, then added a mesh circle. Thats where I’m now stuck!
How do I size it?
Thx Small Troll, someone who cares for the newbies 
pooky 2483 I hope you won’t blame me, I ask my questions too ^^
I took the oppurtunity to do my table too following your instructions. I did it without much problem but some reflexions near the borders of the glass are annoying. At first I wanted to get slightly rounded edges so I used the subsurf for that. Then I put the mean crease to 1 to get sharp edges but I can’t get rid of those ‘bent’ reflexions which shouldn’t be here, with sharp edges (I believe).
I show you the .blend file, I would appreciate if you’d look into it to tell me what is wrong
Glass_Table.blend (610 KB)
Thx in advance.
Edit : I deleted the inner edges as I want to keep sharp edges, and it’s far better (also an edge was badly set to mean crease=1). But I keep a subsurf modifier to round the corners, and it keeps adding some distortions where I don’t want to. The surface of the table is a plane, so I thought it would’t affect the refractions, it appears it does just because of the subsurf ?
Sorry for these silly questions.
My take on it.
Sorry about the large size,here is one with and without the hdri background.
Also 14 views isn’t allot.I’ve sometimes gone with 300+ views in the help sections without replies/useful replies.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ot6krvf9kkmdn3/Table.blend?dl=0
Table2.blend (604 KB)
i wouldn’t bother with the mean crease, it can have some weird effects on shading either use the bevel tool (ctrl-B) or add some control loops with the loop cut and slide tool, (ctrl- R) those are better ways of getting the edges sharper and will maintain the smoothing of the subsurf so your rounded corners stay round problems with the refractions may also be caused by the Ngon in the center, you may bet better to simply make it into a quad mesh. also play around with the IOR in the glass shader.
Also your table isnt actually flat. select all the faces on the top before you do anything else and press S Z 0 to scale the faces on the Z axis so that they are all level. then do the same for the bottom faces. you should get better results from the refractions then 
i know, but still it is just a table top, you’d think someone would have said something! nice result by the way
@pooky2483 First of all, nice result so far…good job.
Now everybody has given you a different approach as to how to achieve the modeling side of the table and I must say that the image you have in #1 looks fine and convincing, for sure it looks like a glass coffee table. Now I’m guessing here that this is going to be part of a bigger scene as you progress and get better in Blender, so unless you are going for a realistic look and the table is a very important part of the comp then by all means work to get it right…but if it’s just going to be a supporting prop, then make it as believable as possible.
Also a little thing here, a prime example of how materials can make an object look right or not (mind you I’m NOT criticizing @asmoth) but in his renders the glass material is casting a very dark and dense shadow…real glass doesn’t behave like that. Now as a starting point I would use a Transparent node mixed with a Glossy one and factor in a Fresnel node (then again this is me, others will disagree) to get a translucent shadow and not a solid one.
@asmoth, I haven’t had a look at your .blend but what I think you are trying to get is a perfect 90 degree angle edge, this is very hard to get or achieve in real life so my suggestion (again I haven’t checked the .blend) is to bevel your edges ever so slightly to soften the harshness of the edge but not too much that it would destroy the thickness of the glass pane as @Small Troll says in #5…if I can I will post an image of what I mean soon.
Anywho, good job so far…BTW @pooky2483 welcome to BA and happy blending!
@ Tommy1441 - The picture in my first post is an ‘actual’ picture, not a rendering, I put it up to show the final result I wanted. I have not actually got anyewhere, if you go back to my first post, I have attached my attempt. Sorry for any confusion.
I’ve managed to figure out how to resize (Scale) the circle and set vert to 16 then delete 3/4. The next bit from your instructions;
Move the corner in position on the grid, say 3 squares x and 2 squares -y. (Why not 3x & 3y)
For some reason, the ‘table’ is not displaying in mesh format. What am I doing wrong?
Uh, Tommy1441. the OPs image is a reference photo XD
but yeah your advice on the glass material is good. its kind of hard to get good looking glass using the glass shader!
This is how far I’ve got so far.
How do I get the circle on the table in EDIT mode as I can’t figure out how to move it, I can in OBJECT mode (G:Grab).
I’m having a huge problem navigating properly to be able to place the circle onto the mesh.
Glass_Table_01_step_02.blend (487 KB)
:o LOL…had a very looong day and was really tired when I came across this post, my eyes where failing…ooops :o
Thx for your advices. I made sure the surface is perfectly plane and the deformations are still here, even more than before. I have no problem without the subsurf, this is causing the problem. But anyway it doesn’t matter.
I tried to bevel the angles but I don’t understand how this works. I usually don’t like it so I’ve never really used it. I changes the bevel values etc and nothing changes.
@tommy1441 Indeed my glass in pretty dark but this was intentional, I wanted to have some sort of smoked glass (is this the right word?) which is less transparent. But I could make it less opaque.
Getting on a bit better but still having little problems.
I have decided to procede without worrying about not seeing the quarter-circle and using the x/y/z readout.
I’ve got the quarter-circle in place in the corner but can’t figure out how to remove the sharp corner and do I join both meshes together?
I’ve started again (sigh!) and this time I’ve recorded what I’ve done, using Vokoscreen.
Then I delete the unwanted part of the circle, now I’m stuck.
Hey, I am really also disappointed with the fact that no one replied to this. I have a secondary suggestion that might help also and it will reduce your poly count and achieve the same goal that I think you’re looking for. Create a cube, size it along the “Z” axis to the thickness of the table top. Go into edit mode, loop cut to cut it in half, then again to quarter it. Delete three quarters and then mirror. to make the full top. Turn on clipping in the mirror modifier. In edit mode make sure that you’re in edge select mode. Select the corner edge of the cube and then hit “W” to bring up the viewport options menu. You’ll see bevel on the menu. Click it and it will create two edges. Select the two new edges and repeat the bevel option until it creates the curve on the corner. Smooth shade it and then add the edge split modifier.
@pooky2483, no ignore the mesh you made. start from scratch totally. go to file>new> reload startup file.
now you havea totally fresh workspace.
press x to delete the cube.
press shift A and choose mesh>circle. then press F6 to open the options menu and change the vertex count to 16. you now have a circle at the center of your scene with 16 vertices connected in a single edgeloop.
press TAB to enter edit mode you should now see the vertecies on each point of the circle.
if not it is likely that you are in edge select mode or face select mode ( your last file was in face select mode, thats why you couldn’t select or move any part of your circle- there were no faces!)
Hold ctrl and tab to bring up the selection menu and choose the vertex select modes.
hold shift and right click the vertices along one quarter of the circle until you have an orange line of four vertices highlighted.
press control i to swap the vertices that are selected. you should now have 3/4 circle selected.
press x to delete them.
now re select the remaining four vertices and move them to where you would want the corner of your table.
add the mirror modifier tick both x and y and clipping boxes.
you wont see anything just yet as the mirror only shows faces , and we still dont have any yet. richt click an end of the vertex loop and press E this extrudes an new vertex. drag it in the direction it is oriented. press X (or Y) depending on which vertex your moving, until it lock into place where the mirror meets. now repeat that for the other end of the edgeloop. this gives you the outline for the table. select everything and press E then press S and scale in the faces that you just creatednow you should see the entire outlinee of your table along the mirror axis as well. you should have an oblong with rounded corners. no all that remains is to fill the center which i described above previously.
@asmoth it seems that there is an interior edge right in the center of your mesh, delete that , then flatten your faces and it should neaten everyting up. i say should but i totally messed up somewhere and the glass sahder stopped working so i just ended up with a totally glossy surface… but at least it was smooth XD oh and 5 levels of subsurf is way beyond required. you only need 2 at he most
lol yah this is easier…
