New in Easel · October 2026

Textured Pockets

Give a pocket a finished, hand-worked surface instead of a flat floor. Pick a texture for any pocket, and Easel carves it with a ballnose bit in its own pass after the pocket is cleared: chip carving, dragon scales, basket weave, Japanese wave patterns, fluted reeding, and dozens more.

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Floor Textures are an Easel Pro feature. Anyone can add a texture and preview it; carving or downloading a textured design needs Easel Pro.

How to Use

  1. Select a shape and set its cut to Pocket in the Cut tab.
  2. Open the Pocket Texture menu under the cut path and pick a pattern. The pattern draws right on the shape in the design canvas.
  3. Click the gear beside the menu to fine-tune it.
  4. Carve as usual. The texture carves in its own Texture pass with your texture bit, after the pocket is cleared.

The Floor Texture menu in the Cut tab, showing pattern previews

40 Patterns

Textures come in a few families:

  • Lattices like Chip Carving, Honeycomb, Dragon Scales, Seigaiha, and Asanoha repeat a crisp geometric motif edge to edge.
  • Grooves like Flutes, Basket Weave, Herringbone, Bark, and Wood Grain run lines across the floor.
  • Hand-tool finishes like Hand Carved, Chouna, and Hatsuri lay down rows of overlapping gouge and adze scoops, each one a little different.
  • Reliefs like Reeded, Coves, Ribbed, Dunes, and Faceted sculpt the whole floor into one continuous surface.
  • Custom Shape repeats one of your own shapes across the floor.

Six textured pockets in the 3D preview: Chip Carving, Dragon Scales, Basket Weave, Hand Carved, Seigaiha, and Reeded

Tuning a Texture

The gear opens Texture Settings, with a live preview carved with your texture bit.

  • Size sets the depth, the size of each element (a chip, a scale, a brick), and the angle of the pattern.
  • Randomness adds hand-made irregularity. Variation loosens the pattern, Shallowest cut lets some strokes run shallower than others, and Shuffle rolls a new arrangement.
  • Edges tapers grooves in or out at their ends, and adds extra distance from the pocket walls.

Reset to defaults puts everything back.

The Texture Settings dialog for Dragon Scales

The Texture Bit

Textures are carved with a ballnose bit, picked under Texture Bit in the bit settings and defaulting to a 1/8" ballnose. A smaller ball picks up finer detail; a larger one carves faster. Your design shows the pattern as you build it, and the estimated carve time breaks out the texture pass on its own.

A textured sampler in the design canvas and 3D preview, with the texture pass in the carve estimate

Good to Know

  • Textures go on pockets. Outlines, group cutouts, and 3D carves don't take a texture.
  • Textures can be carved onto 0 depth pockets to add a texture to a flat surface.
  • The texture pass runs after the pocket is cleared, so swap to your ballnose when Easel asks. You can also carve or download the texture pass on its own.
  • Every shape keeps its own texture, so one design can mix as many patterns as you like.

Give it a try on your next sign, box lid, or coaster, and let us know what you make with it.

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