Wednesday August 5th, 2026
Plasticity Tips & Tricks
Last updated: August 5th, 2026
Plasticity is a modern, robust, and artist-friendly 3D NURBS-based CAD application designed for artists across multiple disciplines who need to create complex, high-quality surfaces efficiently without the overhead of traditional engineering software. It emphasizes speed and flexibility through a direct modeling approach, offering an intuitive user interface and a hotkey-driven workflow similar to Blender. This section includes a wide range of useful and sometimes underutilized features!
Recent Updates
August 5th, 2026
Modified tip #8: Change Circle Orientation with an image.
August 5th, 2026
Modified tip #7: Isoparam with an image and bullet points.
August 5th, 2026
Modified tip #5: Complete vs Partial Selections with an image and bullet points.
July 23rd, 2026
Added tip #1: Face Tapering
July 23rd, 2026
Added tip #2: Add to Favorites
July 23rd, 2026
Subject
Description
- Taper Face
Tapering Face From All Sides
In Plasticity, tapering isn't as simple as selecting a central face and scaling it! To do this, you'll need to:
- First, select a reference face (by pressing 3) and selecting (usually) a nearby adjacent perpendicular faces you wish to taper.
- Next, hold Shift+Alt and click select the connecting perpendicular faces.
- Finally, press F (to bring up the command palette) and search for Draft Face. Once executed, click and drag the white circle component of the gizmo and taper the perpendicular faces!
Tapering Face From Specific Side
If you only wish to taper a side of something more complex, you can simply:
- First, select a reference face (by pressing 3) and selecting (usually) a nearby adjacent perpendicular face you wish to taper.
- Next, hold Shift and click select the side perpendicular face you wish to taper.
- Finally, press F (to bring up the command palette) and search for Draft Face. Once executed, click and drag the white circle component of the gizmo and taper the perpendicular face!
- Add to Favorites
- When listing commands from the command palette (by pressing F) that you intend to use often, you can simply right click on the desired command and choose Add to Favorites.
- This will add that tool icon along the top of the command palette header bar for fast access to frequently used tools! Of course, in the right-click popup, there is also the option to bind keyboard shortcuts as well!
- Trimming Curves & Lines
You can trim curves/line segments by simply pressing T (for trim) and clicking on a curve (or line) segment to remove it!
- Through Object Selection
Did you know that you can simply hover the mouse cursor over a foreground object, left click but hold the button down and scroll the middle mouse wheel to select through objects behind it? You'll even have a mini popup list of objects and the current selected object highlighted! Once you find the object you wish to select, simply let go of the left mouse button and voila! That highlighted object from the list is now selected. You've in essence cycle selected through objects in the viewport without needing to select it via the outliner!
- Complete vs Partial Selections
When it comes to marquee selecting objects, the direction of the click-dragging action will determine whether they will be selected or not!
- If you left click and drag from left to right, the marquee region should appear tinted green (assuming default colours). This means that you must completely cover the object(s) you wish to select. If even a small portion of an object remains outside this marquee, it will not be selected!
- By contrast, if you left click and drag from right to left instead, the marquee colour will be tinted purple and any object that this touches will be automatically considered selected!
- Duplicate & Align
It's pretty easy to duplicate and object and align it to another one. Start by selecting the object you wish to duplicate and press Ctrl + D. At this point, Plasticity is expecting the user to click on a face of the selected object to be duplicated (as denoted by the blue gizmo
that shows up once the mouse cursor is close enough to the object in question). The pivot location of this object is important as Plasticity will use this as the point of contact with another surface. Also feel free to orientate this object for easy face access that will act as an "anchor"
of sorts!
Strategically click on the object's desired mentioned access face (usually center bottom or side face). Now this object will follow the mouse cursor. Hover over the surface of another object. If the orientation of the selected object is not correct, press F
to invert its orientation. Finally, left click where you want to place it! This operation is still ongoing, so you can continue to place copies of this object!
- Isoparam
Much like in Blender, you can add some line segments to a surface by first hovering over a face (regardless of which selection mode you are in).
- Press Ctrl + R. A segment line will appear at the mouse cursor.
- There is the option of toggling between vertical and horizontal lines by pressing Tab while the isoparam tool is live.
- You can also hold Shift and use the middle mouse button to scroll up or down to add or subtract extra segments respectively!
Finally, left click to finalise the placement of the segment(s).
- Change Circle Orientation
When drawing a circle in say front or side view, before left clicking to finalise this shape, press V to change its orientation 90 degrees. This is useful when drawing a circle based off of blueprints for instance. Given the image's line density, it might not be practical to try and get a circle properly sized from top view, but is manageable from the side! The only other shape that supports this feature seems to be the polygon tool.
- Construction Lines
When drawing out shapes with the line tool for instance, it is possible to align your next line segment (which requires to be aligned with a certain source point) by first hovering the cursor over said source point and tapping Shift. This will generate X and Y construction lines from both the latest point you added and the source point. This will allow precise segment point alignments!
- Equal Sized Radii
Say you have multiple difference boolean cylinders of varying radius sizes in a surface, and the goal is to make all the radii equal. First press 3 to enter face mode, and start by selecting the boolean wall of one of the cylinders where the size of its radius needs to change. Next, hold Shift and select any other cylindrical walls you want to change the radius of, and ensure that the final selection is the radius you wish the others to inherit! Finally, press = then Enter/Return. All the other cylindrical walls will automatically match the radius of the final selected one!
- Object to World Origin
Select an object, then press G then F then double right mouse button click! That object will return to the world origin!
- Copying Edge Fillets
You can copy an existing edge fillet radius by selecting another edge, press B (if the fillet tool isn't already used), start click dragging to create the fillet, then while the operation is still live, simply click over an existing desired fillet to replicate it! This doesn't seem to currently work on chamfers however!
- Partial Vertical Bevels
Did you know that after starting a bevel, while the operation is still live, you can press L, click on the bevelled edge in progress, and the bevel will stop at that point? Speaking of points, a new big blue point is created where you clicked. Clicking on this dot will toggle between an upper and lower bevel!
- Copy Bevels to Selections
If you have a series of edges you wish to uniformly bevel, start selecting an edge (or say edge loop for example), press B if need be and drag out the desired bevel. While the bevel operation is still live, simply hold Ctrl and continue to click other edges. Once the Ctrl key is released, all the additional selected edges will have the same bevel as the first edge(s). Right-click to finalize the bevel operation. Done.