Analytic shapes
Shapes defined by an equation instead of a cage of triangles, sharp at any zoom, in 2D and 3D.
What "analytic" means
Most 3D apps describe a shape with a mesh, a fixed cage of triangles. Zoom in far enough and the curves go faceted, because there are only so many triangles to go around.
An analytic shape keeps the maths instead: a circle of radius 2, a rounded box, this profile swept along that curve. The exact position of the edge is computed fresh every frame. There is no triangle budget, so the edge holds whether you are looking at the whole scene or at a single corner.
On a collection this appears as the Analytic kind. Each row carries an @analytic attribute naming which shape it is, alongside the numbers that give that shape its dimensions. An Expression reads and writes both, so a shape's radius or corner is as reachable as a point's position.
Those numbers are the ones you authored, and they sit at the origin. Where the shape actually is, its position, rotation, scale and anchor, rides beside them as the row's own placement rather than being folded into the dimensions. That separation is what lets a non-uniform scale on an analytic sphere give you a genuine ellipsoid, and a rotation on an analytic cone genuinely tilt it, exactly matching the baked mesh you would get with the toggle off. It also means @dims0 reports the radius you typed, not the radius after scaling.
An edge that stays crisp however far you push the zoom is an analytic shape. An edge that shows flat facets up close is a baked mesh.
One idea, 2D through 3D
2D paths. Circles, rectangles, pen strokes and live text (Circle, Rectangle, Pen, Text) stay vector-crisp at any canvas zoom. For a triangle, pentagon or any regular polygon, drop the Circle node's Segments count: 3 for a triangle, 5 for a pentagon, 6 for a hexagon. The default of 32 reads as a smooth circle.
3D solids. Spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones and tori can be built as analytic forms instead of triangle meshes.
Swept forms. A 2D profile pushed into 3D with Sweep can stay analytic.
Because they are all described the same way, they mix freely. A 2D outline and a 3D solid sit in the same scene and take the same operators.
The Analytical toggle
Every primitive that can go either way offers the choice. The Analytical toggle appears on the 2D shape nodes (Circle, Rectangle, Line, Pen, Ray, Text), on the 3D primitives (Sphere, Cube, Cylinder, Cone, Torus), and on Sweep.
On: the shape stays equation-defined and resolution-independent.
Off: the shape is baked down to a regular triangle mesh you can subdivide and use in the 3D scene.
It is on by default on the 2D shape nodes and off on the 3D primitives and on Sweep.
Turn it on for flawless edges, smooth boolean blends, or when you plan to keep editing the shape's form. Turn it off when a downstream step needs triangles, as some mesh-only operations do, or to freeze the shape as standard geometry.
Connecting an analytic shape to a node that expects a mesh does not require baking first. The conversion is inserted automatically.
The Rectangle as a subdividable grid
Turn Analytical off on a sharp-cornered Rectangle and it becomes a flat, subdividable quad grid. Raise its Subdivisions to lay down a regular lattice of vertices, which is what cloth simulation and per-vertex displacement across a flat plane need. A rounded rectangle bakes as a solid fill instead, so the grid applies only when the corner radius is zero.
Sweep's Revolve mode always produces an analytic result regardless of the toggle, so the toggle reads as inactive there.
Combining and offsetting
Boolean unions, subtracts and intersects analytic shapes with no triangle seams. Its Smoothness setting above zero melts the join between two shapes into a soft fillet, the metaball-like blend that is difficult to get right on meshes. Set it to zero for a crisp, hard-edged cut.
Offset grows or shrinks a 2D path outward or inward, for outlines, insets and concentric ring patterns.
Nothing is locked to a fixed triangle count, so these results stay sharp under zoom as well.