---
title: Changelog
order: 14
---

What changed in Chisel 5.0.

## 5.0.0

Chisel 5.0 adds shapes built from points. Tube, Lathe, Outline and the new Rail keep their points on the shape itself, and the Chisel tool has an Edit mode to select, move and remove them. Most modifiers now have handles in the viewport, and every cutter shows its outline.

### New

- **[Tube](primitives/paths/tube.md)**: a tube through points. Drag a point's dot to move it and its ring to make the tube thicker or thinner there.
- **[Lathe](primitives/paths/lathe.md)**: a profile of points turned round an axis, solid or hollow, with a dial for the angle.
- **[Outline](primitives/paths/outline.md)**: a closed outline of points, extruded by Depth.
- **[Rail](primitives/paths/rail.md)**: a section swept along a path of points: Star, Polygon, Gear, Flower, Ratchet, or one you draw. Each point has a scale, and the Rail twists evenly from its first point to its last.
- **[Text](primitives/text.md)**: use a Blender text object as a Chisel shape, with live depth and rounding.
- **[Point kinds](primitives/paths/points.md#point-kinds)**: a path point is Smooth, Corner or Free. A Free point has two handles, like a point of a Blender curve; a Corner rounds with the five profiles an Ngon's corner has.
- **[From Curve](primitives/paths/from-curve.md)**: make a Tube, an Outline or a Lathe from the selected Blender curves, point for point.
- **[Edit on the Chisel tool](interface/edit-mode.md)**: the **Edit** button (`Tab` on a Chisel shape) puts the tool on the points: click, `Shift`-click or box-select them, and drag the selected ones together.
- **Edit works on every selected shape**: one selection and one drag act on the points of all of them.
- **[Move Selected Points](interface/edit-mode.md#move-selected-points-g)**: `G` moves every selected point, of every shape and modifier, with the mouse. `X`, `Y` or `Z` keeps the move to a world axis, `Shift` moves finely. `S` scales the radius of the selected points, as dragging one of their rings does.
- **[Remove Selected Points](interface/edit-mode.md#remove-selected-points-x-delete)**: `X` or `Delete` removes every selected point as one undo step.
- **[Block mode](interface/block-mode.md)**: draw a box or a Cylinder like a blockout, pull its height, and add bevel, rounding and blend as you go. The box is an Ngon of four corners, so Edit can move and round each one afterwards.
- **[Bisect gizmo, reworked](modifiers/bisect.md#gizmo)**: a blend dot, an arrow you click to flip the cut, rings that tilt the plane, and a dot on every point of a fence.
- **[Array gizmo](modifiers/array.md#gizmo)**: dots for the offset, the number of copies and the smoothing; a circle array adds a radius dot and axis dots.
- **[Bend gizmo](modifiers/twist-bend.md#bend-gizmo)**: drag the ends of the centre line to set the angle and the arrow to slide the bend. New options: Direction, Center and Limits.
- **[Twist gizmo](modifiers/twist-bend.md#twist-gizmo)**: a dial at each end, and a line on the shape that shows the twist.
- **[Solidify gizmo](modifiers/solidify.md#gizmo)**: a dot above the surface sets the wall thickness.
- **[Cutter outlines](interface/gizmos.md#cutter-outlines)**: a shape that cuts, joins or embosses another one shows an outline in the colour of its modifier dot (Emboss and Engrave share violet), so you can see where it is; click the shape there to select it. A Carve target, which still renders, has none. Two styles, Outline and Wire, under **Cutter Wires** in the gizmo drop-down.
- **[Right-click menu](interface/rmb-menu.md#shape-choices)**: a shape's own choices (Rail Shapes, Path, Body) head its drags, and in Edit the menu leads with the selected points' Point Kind and Corner Profiles.
- The green bevel line rounds every corner of an [Ngon](primitives/shapes/ngon.md) at once.
- **[Gizmo switches on the tool bar](interface/gizmos.md#tool-bar-switches)**: four icons show or hide the Tape tree, the cutter outlines and target dots, the modifier handles and the shapes' own handles; the drop-down beside them switches each gizmo on or off. [Render → Gizmos](render-engine/gizmo-settings.md) has the same switches in the same groups.
- [Drags show their value next to the cursor](interface/info-bar.md#values-next-to-the-cursor).
- **[Tape tree](interface/tape-tree.md)**: the whole scene's tape as a tree in the top left of the 3D view, under the Chisel tool: every rendered shape with its stack in the order it is applied. Click a row to select it, drag a name onto a row to move it, right-click a row for its blend, smoothing, bevel and rounding. **+ Add** adds a shape and **+ Mod** a modifier to the selected rows. Its icon is the first of the tool bar's gizmo icons.
- [Handles are easier to hit](interface/gizmos.md#using-handles): each one answers the cursor from at least 14 interface pixels at any zoom, and only near what it draws, so on millimetre parts a dot no longer takes clicks from across the view.
- **[A still viewport sharpens to full resolution](render-engine/performance.md#still-view-full-resolution)**: about 0.3 s after the view stops, the reduced-resolution picture is replaced by the same picture at full size. That takes under half a second on a light model and a few seconds on the heaviest scenes. Any orbit, edit or setting change goes straight back to the fast picture.
- On Blender 5.3 and newer, the grid and the other overlays meet the Chisel surface itself instead of its proxy mesh.
- **[Every modifier shows its handles](interface/gizmos.md#which-shapes-show-handles)**: a shape with two Arrays (or Bends, Twists, Solidifies, Sweeps, Lattices, Bisects) shows a set of handles for each. Select modifier rows in the Tape tree to see only their handles; select the shape to see them all again.
- **[Duplicate as Boolean](joins/boolean.md#duplicate-as-boolean)**: `Alt + D` on the Chisel tool copies the active shape into its own stack as a Union blended by `0.5`, and starts moving the copy.

### Performance

- Lathes render about four times faster.
- Tubes update several times faster, and long wires many times faster.
- First start after an update or a driver change takes about 8 s instead of 90.
- Blender starts faster with Chisel enabled.
- Objects with many parts drag more than twice as fast.
- Most edits update only what changed.
- Orbiting is about 6–8% faster; scenes without Arrays or Lattices orbit and drag up to three times faster.
- Scenes with many objects take less time per frame.
- Chisel needs about 90 MB less graphics memory.
- [Convert to Mesh](operations.md#convert-to-mesh): Marching Cubes at resolution 512 needs about 80 MB instead of 1.1 GB, and Dual Contouring is up to seven times faster.
- [Baking](render-engine/baking.md) is about 40% faster per map with a Rendered viewport open.
- [F12](render-engine/f12-render.md) starts in under 0.1 s from a Solid viewport, and switching between the viewport and F12 no longer waits.
- Shapes made from a mesh are prepared several times faster.
- Opening a light file after a heavy one is fast again.
- Converting several objects or baking several maps no longer pauses between them.
- Blender no longer pauses briefly while Chisel updates proxy meshes or saves its start-up data.
- Gizmos stay smooth on large lattices and n-gons, and many selected Ngons no longer slow every mouse move.
- Outline, Ngon, Text and Lathe shapes draw about twice as fast; large models gain a few percent.
- Dragging part of a model redraws only the part of the view that changed: up to 15% faster.
- [Rendered shading of plain scenes](render-engine/performance.md#rendered-shading-of-plain-scenes): a scene made only of spheres, boxes, cylinders, capsules, tori and unrounded cones joined by booleans shades about a third faster, and hard edges lose a thin light line.

### Fixed

- Tubes showed a ring at each point where the radius changed.
- Thin tubes and long wires broke up into beads.
- A tube split into balls with a hard seam where a fat point sat close to a thin one.
- A tube pinched into a hard line where it was fatter than its own bend or folded back onto itself.
- Solidify on a revolved profile showed a thin rod along the axis.
- Carve left lumps or shells inside the pocket.
- Circle arrays: raising Smooth creased the surface between the copies or filled the middle of the ring.
- Arrays cut off copies that overlap, lean across the array direction or reach over the centre of a circle.
- Two Arrays on one shape: one Array's copies were cut off where they reached towards the next copy, and only one of the two blended its copies.
- Convert to Mesh and proxies lost copies when a Mirror or a deform sat below an Array.
- Baking right after an edit gave a different result from baking a moment later.
- F12 ignored render-only visibility and excluded collections.
- F12 Render Region shifted the border.
- `Esc` did not cancel an F12 render while shaders compiled.
- F12 kept an extra copy of the image in memory after it finished.
- F12 renders depended on the frames before them: the first render of a session, or the first frame of an animation, differed from the next one. Every F12 frame is now the same exact image.
- Orthographic views and cameras shaded soft, with a blurred bevel round every hole and edge. They are now as sharp as perspective.
- Rendered shading did not fill very large frames.
- Large rotations left stale pixels around nearby shapes.
- Hiding a collection with its eye in the Outliner left its shapes in the viewport.
- A shape alone in its object with a thin wall or plate (a shelled belt, a 2–3 mm plate) broke into dashes or vanished a moment after each edit.
- A lone Ngon, Text, Tube, Lathe, Outline or Rail, or a lone shape with a modifier, showed dark arcs or missing slivers at a grazing angle.
- The 33rd and later shapes of an object drew light grey whatever their material, and a Mix Shader overlay was dropped on objects of more than 32 shapes.
- A Mix Shader overlay could vanish from every object after opening a file.
- A model built in millimetres (Unit Scale 0.001) got far finer detail than the same model in metres, and was about four times slower.
- A shape turned inside an unevenly scaled parent drew only in part or not at all.
- Opening or rendering a very heavy model could make Windows reset the graphics driver.
- Undo right after a proxy mesh was rebuilt could crash Blender.
- Dragging a cutter or a joined shape left the old proxy mesh in place for the whole drag.
- Opening a file or disabling Chisel rebuilt the proxy meshes for no reason.
- Editing one part right after rotating the whole object updated the whole object, slowly.
- Dragging Smooth on one shape updated the whole scene.
- Going back to an earlier position was slow after other edits.
- Dragging a value made the Properties editor flip between tabs.
- Recovery from graphics errors is more reliable.

### Changed

- **Curve, Curve Tube and Curve Revolve are gone**: Outline, Tube and Lathe replace them. Gone with them: shaping a path in Blender's curve Edit Mode, the live link to a Blender curve, and Convert Legacy Curve. [From Curve](primitives/paths/from-curve.md) takes their place.
- A shape's points are edited in Edit: an Ngon's dots no longer show in Object.
- Dragging an Ngon's vertex: `Ctrl` snaps, `Alt` slides it along an edge, `Shift` is precision.
- Sweep points: `Ctrl` slides a point along its segment, `X` / `Y` / `Z` lock the drag to the shape's own (local) axis, `Shift` is precision.
- Lathes have sharp rims; the thin bevel the old Curve Revolve put on them is gone.
- Outlines keep their corners where a curve runs into them.
- Tubes and Lathes blend at their true size, so a smooth join against one looks a little tighter.
- [Emboss and Engrave](joins/emboss-engrave.md#color-edge) colour only the raised top or the recessed floor. Tick **Color Edge** on the modifier to colour the step too.
- Array Smooth no longer swells where three or more copies meet.
- The dots on modifier targets are off by default, now that cutters show their outline.
- The Array buttons in the pie drag along their axis.
- [Resolution](render-engine/quality.md#settings) defaults to 40% (was 30%) and [Min Resolution](render-engine/performance.md#settings) to 30% (was 20%). A scene that never set them follows.
- [A view shows at most 100 point handles](interface/edit-mode.md#many-shapes-100-handles) of the selected shapes: the active shape's always, the others' a whole shape at a time. Click a shape to bring its points.
- [F12](render-engine/f12-render.md) always draws the exact surface, never the viewport's approximation. On a very heavy single object, renders after the first can take longer (one test engine block at 1080p: about 1 s → 4–6 s per frame).
- The *World Cell Size* tooltip says what the value is: the cell for an object one Blender unit across.

### Compatibility

- Blender 4.5.7 and newer, on Windows, Linux and macOS (Apple silicon).
- [Files from 4.x open in 5.0](primitives/paths/from-curve.md#curve-shapes-from-4x-files). Their Curve, Curve Tube and Curve Revolve shapes become Outline, Tube and Lathe when the file is opened, point for point, and a notice lists what was converted. Saving the file keeps the new shapes. Old shapes appended, linked or pasted into an open file convert a moment after they arrive.
- A curve that was animated keeps the form it had when the file was opened.
- A shape that cannot be converted (linked from another file or library-overridden, open in Edit Mode, an empty or too-small curve, more segments than its shape holds) keeps its data and is not shown; its panel says why.
- A Curve Revolve's Rounding is not carried over: a Lathe's Side Rounding rounds the edges of the cut faces on a partial turn.

## Other versions

Each documentation version carries the changelog for its own release. Earlier releases: [4.1.0](../v4-1/changelog.md) · [4.0.0](../v4/changelog.md) · [3.0.0](../v3/changelog.md) · [1.2.0](../v2/changelog.md) · [1.0.x](../v1/changelog.md)