How to "Chamfer" or Bevel Outer Edges of a Plane like in 3DS Max?

Question

I've been following Grant Warwick's hardsurface modeling essentials video on Vimeo, using Blender 2.80. Following the tutorial, I've made a basic hill-type shape by extruding a plane multiple times in edit mode.

Warwick, using 3ds max, was able to select the outer edges of the mesh and "chamfer"/bevel it. I used the knife tool to show what he did:

When I try doing the same in Blender 2.8, however, I can't seem to bevel the outer edge of a plane/mesh. So, I try adding a loop cut instead. But the edge flow doesn't go all the way around the mesh; I can only add one loop cut vertically, or one cut horizontally:

Is there a way to bevel an outer edge of a plane/mesh in Blender? How can I do what I did with the knife tool, to get an even edge without too many manual steps? Is that possible in Blender?

Answer 1

On an edge selection,CtrlShiftR, Offset Edge Slide, will get you most of the way there. It will slide a copy of selected edges along existing ones, and can be set to give an even offset. However, it doesn't create rail edges (in your case, at the corners) where they did not previously exist .. you would have to go round and J connect the vertices at the corners.

If you had to do so many of those it would be tedious, you could:

• Extrude your selected edges any old where, so they are no longer on a boundary
• Select the top faces I and inset the whole region with 'Boundary' unchecked
• Alt-select the extruded face ring, and delete it.

Or, you could go round with K cutting across existing edges, making a rough inset, and create the corner-rails, with no concern for accuracy, and then use GG to slide it, hitting E to make the edges parallel to the boundary. (F flips which side of the slide to be parallel to.)