Creating 3D shapes
 

Any tips on creating shapes that appear to have 3D properties, like bevelled edges as in the attached example (a standard shape from Powerpoint...)

Thanks!

There aren't really any automatic ways of doing that to the best of my knowledge.... but there a bunch of tricks out there. YOu could download one of the stencils from Graffletopia like:

[url]http://graffletopia.com/stencils/411[/url]

Disassemble some of the shapes and see what that person has done.