Make Your Own Bevels for 3D

If you really want to experiment with the Extrude & Bevel 3D effect, try this: Open the document called Bevels.ai that is located in the Illustrator CS2 application's Plug-ins folder. Draw a short, angled line with the Pen (P) or Line (\) tool and drag the path into the Symbols palette (Window>Symbols) to create a symbol. Save the document, close it, and restart Illustrator. Then, when you choose Effect>3D>Extrude & Bevel, your new bevel will appear in the dialog's Bevel pop-up menu. With a bit of experimentation (each time adding a symbol to Bevels.ai, saving the document, and restarting Illustrator), you can create some pretty interesting results.