A quick demo on the difference between building a simple model in both box vs smooth mode.
Please note: The names of these modes are up for debate and may possibly change but in the future, for simplicity sake I’m presenting here as box/smooth.
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I must admit I’m a traditionalist who don’t really get SubD (yet), but I must say, if I have to design a bevel in box mode and flip back and forth to see the result, instead of seeing it in realtime, and make realtime adjustments, then SubD is completely dead to me…
Box mode looks great for cleanup and fixing mistakes, but for designing? No way. That feels like a step back instead of being the future.
Just my 2 cents from someone who isn’t convinced yet.
have you tried it yet?
Check out and try the SubD challenges I put up then make up your mind. SubD modeling seems weird when you start I’ll admit, but it has a ton of advantages when used in the correct circumstances.
Box mode/smooth mode (or whatever we end up calling it) IS the workflow for making SubD models. (much like curve/surface/polysurface IS NURBS modeling…
It fast, efficient and once you get the concept, pretty easy.
I’ve used SubD in Blender, so I know what it is.
But my comment was focusing on the end of the video where you put a bevel/fillet on an edge, and say that you should do this in box mode since it didn’t work in Rhino, which to me seems completely backwards:
But I hope I misunderstood the video and this is only a temporary shortcoming of the current WIP?
indeed- this has already been fixed and bevel works nicely in smooth mode now.
Hah! Sorry for my reaction then, English is not my first language, but since you emphasized that “box mode” was a temporary name, yet it felt as if you said that you shouldn’t use bevel in smooth mode, it felt very final to me. 
v7 is a work in progress until it ships. Even then it’ll continues to develop with service releases. The only constant is change- 
why smooth mode toggle all objects ! it supposed to toggle the selected object only
toggle smooth is global for now.
Hi Kyle,
Is there any way to convert the subD model so that the surfaces are not smooth, but flat? I understand subD by definition will only produce smooth surfaces, but I am wondering if there is a way to convert it somehow to keep the flat, boxy geometry we see in the Flat mode, or Box mode, as it is called here.
ExtractControlPolygon, then use MeshToNURB command to convert the mesh to planar nurbs surfaces.
you can combine planar surfaces with MergeAllCoplanarFaces
Thank you so much! Another issue is … is it possible to reduce the number of subdivisions of a subd surface – other than merging faces?
try command QuadRemesh.
simply delete edges