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One very powerful modeling tool in Blender is the Loop Cut and Slide tool.

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To use it, simply go to the Quick Tools menu on the left while in Edit Mode and select it.

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Then, hover over your mesh with your cursor and you'll notice a yellow indicator that seems to loop around your mesh in various ways.

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If you left-click, you'll notice that the loop cut has created a new loop of edges around your mesh where the indicator was,

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inserting new vertices wherever necessary.

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This is very handy for manually increasing the number of polygons in certain parts of your mesh for modeling.

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So that's the loop cut part of the tool, but what about the slide part of the tool?

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Well, for that, all you have to do is left-click drag instead.

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You'll notice that instead of immediately creating the loop cut in the middle,

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it allows you to slide the loop along your mesh before letting go of left-click.

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The placement of your loop cut will then correspond to wherever you dragged it along the mesh.

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If you happen to start dragging the loop cut on accident and would prefer to cut your mesh along the middle after all,

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simply right-click before letting go of left-click to cancel the slide.

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If you notice in the bottom left-hand corner, after you've created a loop cut, an operator panel will appear that you can expand.

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This panel will include settings that will affect what your recently performed loop cut will do.

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For example, you can increase or decrease the number of cuts along your mesh, smooth your mesh based on a falloff,

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or slide to adjust your loop cut along your mesh with the factor value.

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For hotkey users, simply press Ctrl-R. However, I should mention that if you already have the loop cut tool selected,

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Ctrl-R will simply act as a left-click action, entering the tool into slide mode.

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So I recommend using the hotkey without the tool selected.

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Now, there are a few key differences between hotkey users and toolbar users for this particular tool.

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Assuming you do not have the loop cut tool selected and you press Ctrl-R,

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you will also be able to very easily change the number of cuts you make by using the scroll wheel.

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This bypasses the need to open the operator panel to change the number of cuts.

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When left-clicking with the Ctrl-R hotkey, you'll also notice that it automatically enters slide mode

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instead of creating a loop cut immediately like the toolbar tool does.

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Simply right-click to default the loop cut back to the middle of the section you cut,

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or left-click to confirm your slide position.

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Real quick, let's take a look at the practical application of the loop cut tool.

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For this, we're going to go ahead and make a chair.

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First thing I'll do is take my cube and scale it down so it's flatter.

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Then I can take the loop cut tool and cut my mesh in a few places that will give me more faces

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in particular areas of the mesh that I want to work with.

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For example, we're going to have to add the back of the chair as well as the legs of the chair.

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So let's make sure we have four faces we can choose from for the legs,

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as well as a row of faces for the back.

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From here, I can use the extrude tool, which will be covered in its own video,

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to add geometry to my mesh along my selection.

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I hope this demonstrates how useful the loop cut tool can be for modeling.