Pave Shank

Pave

Pave builds a band and lays the stones on it in the same operation. The band itself is a plain swept shank — a profile, a width, a height — and on top of it you define rows: lines of equal stones running along the ring at a lateral offset from the centre of the profile, each one with its own size, spacing and extent. Add a second row beside the first and you have a two-row pave; mirror a row and it appears on both sides of the band without becoming a second thing to edit.

Prongs are placed by pointing at where you want them on a stone rather than by choosing a preset arrangement, and cutters are generated from the stones so the seats are cut in the same pass.

The command opens straight on its parameters — there is no style gallery.

Size

The finger size drives the ring. Change it and the band, the rows and everything sitting on them are rebuilt around the new diameter.

Parameters

The parameters are split across four tabs.

Shank

The band the stones are set into.

• Profile: the section curve, picked from the ring profile library or redrawn in the curve editor.
• Width / Height: the section, in millimetres. Both also have a handle in the viewport — the red one across the band for width, the blue one at the top of the ring for height — so the section can be dragged instead of typed.
• Type: how the inside of the band is closed. Solid fills it, Comfort domes it toward the finger and reveals Comfort Height for the depth of the dome, Thickness hollows it to a wall and reveals Thickness for that wall.

Below the section, three buttons choose what happens at the bottom of the ring:

• Pinch narrows the band toward the bottom, and shows Opening, Base X, Base Y and Base Z — the width of the pinched region and the position of its base along each axis.
• Open cuts the band open at the bottom, and shows Cut length for the length of the cut edge and Cap bumping for the bump left outside the ring.
• None leaves the band closed all the way round, with no extra parameters.

Gems

This tab holds the Rows — one card per row, added with + Add row and removed with the ✕ on the card. A new row is cloned from the last one and pushed one stone further out, so adding rows in sequence walks them across the band.

Each card carries, in its header:

• A chevron that collapses the card, so a band with several rows stays readable.
• A colour swatch that opens the colour picker. That colour is what the row’s stones are drawn in while you work, which is how you tell one row from another in the viewport.
• Mirror, which also places the row’s stones at the opposite offset. This is a property of the one row, not a copy of it: edit the row and both sides follow.
• Duplicate, which adds a real second row shifted one stone outward, with a fresh colour.

And in its body:

• Stone size: the diameter of the row’s stones, in millimetres.
• Offset: where the row sits across the band, measured along the profile from its centre. Zero is the middle of the band.
• Spacing: the gap left between consecutive stones along the row.
• Start and End: the angles, in degrees around the ring, between which the row runs. A row left at 0 and 360 goes the whole way round. Both angles also have a handle on the row’s guide circle in the viewport, drawn in the row’s colour; while a row is still symmetric, dragging the start handle moves the end to match, and once you have set an asymmetric end it stops doing so.

Two buttons under the list control what the preview shows and change nothing in the result: one swaps the stones between plain circles and real gems, the other shows each stone’s diameter beside it.

Prongs

Global at the top holds a Diameter and a Height. New prongs start from these, and editing either one applies it to every prong already defined — the quick way to resize the whole setting at once.

Below it, Prongs is a list of prong definitions, added with + Add prong. Adding one immediately asks you to pick its position in the viewport; the pick is constrained to the plane of the first stone of the row, and that stone is highlighted in yellow so you can see what you are aiming at. Cancelling the pick leaves the prong at the stone centre.

Each card carries, in its header, the same chevron and colour swatch as the rows, plus:

• A visibility toggle. Hidden prongs are skipped by the computation entirely, not merely undrawn.
• Mirror, which also places the prong on the other side of the band.
• Delete.

And in its body:

• A row selector, choosing which row the prong belongs to.
• Pick, to place the prong again in the viewport.
• X and Y: the offset from the stone centre in the plane of the stone, in millimetres. Every visible prong also has a draggable handle in the viewport at that position, so it can be nudged without re-picking.
• Diameter and Height: the prong’s own size. A prong left at zero height stays a flat marker; give it a height and it becomes a solid prong that is built and baked with the ring.
• All gems: repeat the prong on every stone of the row. Turn it off and it is placed on the first stone only.

Prongs are tied to their row by position in the list, and deleting a row takes its prongs with it.

Cutters

One cutter is generated per placed stone, and on Accept they are subtracted from the band so the seats and the holes are already cut.

• Show Cutters turns them on. Touching any value below turns them on too.
• Height Top, Height Crown, Height Girdle, Height Pavilion and Height Drill set the vertical proportions of the cutter as percentages of the stone.
• Size Top, Size Drill and Size Bottom set its widths, also as percentages, and Gem Inside how far the stone sits into it, in millimetres.
• Type sets the section of the hole: following the gemstone shape, or round, square or hexagonal.

Presets underneath offers four ready-made combinations of sizes and heights; click one and adjust from there rather than starting from nothing.

Working with the panel

• Refresh in the header recomputes the preview. A change made while a computation is running is not lost — the panel re-runs with the latest values as soon as the current pass finishes.
• Save defaults stores the current band, rows, prongs and cutter values as the starting point for the next run; right-click the same button to clear them.
• Accept bakes the band, the stones as one group and the solid prongs as another. If cutters are enabled the subtraction is done first, off the main thread — on a heavy row count this takes a moment, and the header spinner keeps running while it does. If that boolean fails, the band is baked untouched and the command says so in the command line rather than losing your work.