Shanks

Contour Band

Contour Band builds the companion band for a ring that already exists. Instead of sweeping a profile along a plain circle, it reads the silhouette of the ring you point at — the mother is probed every degree around the finger — and seats the new band against it. Three fits cover what the trade asks for: a Flush band tucked straight under the head, a Straight band kept clear of the whole head, and a Shadow band whose face follows the silhouette of the engagement ring — flush at the top where the setting bulges, straight down the sides and around the bottom.

This is the wedding band of a bridal set — the trade calls it a contour band, a shadow band or a curved band — and the way to build any second ring that has to nest against a piece you have already finished. Until October 2026 the command was called Matching Shank (ArtisanMatchingShank); it is now ArtisanContourBand.

Run the command with the ring already selected, or press Enter at the prompt and pick it later from the panel. The panel opens on the library of saved Contour Band styles: click one to preview it, double-click it — or press Edit in the header — to go through to the parameters.

Selection

The Selection expander holds the mother — the ring, or the whole design, the new band has to match. It stays re-pickable while the panel is open, so you can swap the reference without restarting the command. The pick may span several objects; they are merged into one reference mesh, which is what lets you point at a finished design rather than hunting for the single brep of its shank.

The rail the band is built on is always the finger-size circle driven by the Size panel, so the band’s own diameter is set there and nowhere else.

Parameters

The parameters are split across two tabs.

Band

The section swept around the band, and how tightly it hugs the ring.

Fit: how the band meets the ring.
- Flush keeps the band straight and tucks it against the shank: only what lies within the band’s own radial range — from the finger up to its crest — can push it away, so a head that overhangs above the crest is ignored and the band sits flush under it. This is the fit for an engagement ring designed with room below the head.
- Straight keeps the band straight too, but clear of the whole silhouette, head included: the most protruding feature sets one gap all the way round, which is the honest answer for a large gallery head that leaves no room underneath.
- Shadow follows the silhouette: straight along the shank, bending around the head and straight again above it. This is the shadow band of the trade and the default.
Shoulder: for the Shadow fit only, how softly the band bends around the head, in degrees of ring arc. Zero follows the silhouette as closely as the band physically can; larger values widen and round the transition. Whatever the value, the band never gets closer to the ring than the silhouette plus the distances below, and it never bends tighter than its own half width allows — a 3 mm band cannot turn a 1 mm corner.
Profile: the section curve, picked from the RING_PROFILE library or edited in place with the curve editor.
Top Width / Top Height: the section at the top of the ring, in millimetres.
Bottom Width / Bottom Height: the section at the bottom. The two sections blend into each other up the sides, so a band can taper from a broad top to a narrow shoulder.
Sections: how many profile stations the band carries. They anchor the Top/Bottom blend, carry the per-section handles described below and are drawn as the purple profiles; they are no longer the resolution the ring is read at, which is a fixed one degree whatever the count. The value is always even and never below two — one lands on the top and one on the bottom — and typed odd numbers are rounded up.
Distance: the gap along the finger axis between the band and the ring it matches, on top of the 0.3 mm clearance the band always keeps.
Top Distance: extra gap applied at the top only, fading smoothly to nothing by 90°. This is what you open when a protruding oval or pear head pushes the band away at the centre but the sides should still sit tight.
Side: which face of the mother the band is built against — Side A, Side B, or Both Sides. Both Sides computes a mirrored pair, each one probed against its own face, because the ring it hugs need not be symmetric.
Interior: Solid leaves the inner face flat; Comfort domes it toward the finger and reveals the Comfort field for the depth of the dome, in millimetres.

While this tab is open the viewport carries handles for the same values: two on the top section and two on the bottom for width and height, and one handle per section along the band that adds a personal delta on top of the contact the command computed — drag one out to open a gap at that station, drag it in to press the band closer.

Gems

A toggle at the top of the tab turns the stone run on. Everything below it is grouped into pill sections.

Layout

Distribution: Full runs stones the whole way round as one closed line; Side runs them between two angles on each side; Top covers a single arc centred on the top of the band.
Size Start / Size End: stone diameter at each end of the run, in millimetres. Setting them apart graduates the stones along the band.
Vertical: raises or lowers the stones relative to the band surface.
Min Distance: the smallest gap allowed between neighbouring stones.
Top Inner Width / Bottom Inner Width: the width of the channel the stones sit in, at the top and at the bottom of the ring. The channel blends between the two the same way the profile does; leave the bottom value at zero to keep it the same as the top.
Top Inner Height / Bottom Inner Height: the depth of that channel at each end.
Inner Margin: the metal left below the stones, toward the inside of the band.
Bright Cut: the height of the bright-cut edge between the metal and the stones.
Start / End: the angles, in degrees from the top, where the run begins and ends. Shown for the Side distribution only.
Angle: the total arc covered, in degrees. Shown for the Top distribution only.
Row Offset: shifts the whole row sideways across the band, positive toward the ring being matched.
Gem Shape: Round or Square.

The start and end of the run also carry handles on the band in the viewport, so the extent can be dragged instead of typed.

Prong Settings

Four buttons choose how the stones are held: Flush (no channel is cut, and the stones sit on the band), Channel (a channel is cut and the stones sit in it, without prongs — the default, and what files saved before Flush existed open as), shared prongs, or a scalloped setting.

With shared prongs you get:

Top Diameter / Bottom Diameter: prong diameter at the top and bottom of the ring; zero on the bottom keeps it the same as the top.
Prong height: how far the prong stands above the stone.
Prong distance: how far the prong sits from the stone.
Single end prong / Double end prongs: how the run is closed off at each end. The choice is hidden on the Full distribution, which has no ends.
Remove Channel: leaves out the channel under the stones, so the prongs stand directly on the band. It is the same setting as the Remove Channels toggle of the scalloped setting.

The scalloped setting adds V-Cutters, Boolean and Remove Channels toggles (Remove Channels only ever applies to scalloped and shared prongs), plus two pill sections of their own:

Cutters — Start Height, Start Width, End Height, End Width, Length, Move in Z, Move Middle in Z, the cutter Shape (U, V, square, trapezoidal or French), a Mode that ties the start and end together or frees them, and a Shape Scale slider between round and square.
V-Cutters — Start | Width, Start | Height, End | Width, End | Height, Length, Move by Normal, and the same Mode.

Drill Settings

Two buttons switch the drilling off or on. With it on:

Allow Intersection and Show control whether the drill volumes may overlap and whether they are drawn in the viewport.
Height Top, Height Crown, Height Girdle, Height Pavilion and Height Drill set the vertical proportions of the hole, as percentages of the stone.
Size Top, Size Drill and Size Bottom set its widths, and Gem Inside how deep the stone sits into it, in millimetres.
Type: the section of the hole — following the gemstone shape, or round, square or hexagonal.

Working with the panel

Refresh in the header recomputes the preview. Nothing is computed until a mother ring has been picked — without one there is nothing to hug.
Save stores the current parameters in the Contour Band library so the style can be reused on the next set. Back returns to that library.
Save defaults stores the current values as the starting point for the next run; right-click the same button to clear them.
Accept bakes the band, its stones and its prongs, grouped together, and lists them in the Outliner.