Extrude & Bevel vs. Extrude & Bevel Classic - expanding and ungrouping

[Jotamatrix]

Hi!

I'm taking an online course in illustrator and in one lesson the teacher (using CC) guided us through the process of working with text in 3d.

He wrote a word, then made a compound shape of it and expanded it.

Later, he applied the Extrude & Bevel effect, and then expanded the appearance.

Finally, he ungrouped the word.

The result was the word was now in 3d, and every side of each letter was independent and could be edited individually. 

I went through the whole process step by step, with Illustrator 2022. However, I did not get the same result with the new Extrude & Bevel effect. After applying the effect, I expanded the appearance and everything became one object, and ungrouping it did nothing. Looking around in the forums here, I realized there was the "Classic" Extrude & Bevel option, so I tried that instead, and it provided the desired result. 

My questions are: why doesn't it work with the new 2022 effect?

And, is there a way to get that result using the 2022 effect?

Thanks!!!!

[Doug A Roberts]

The new 3D effects produce raster results (even with 'render as vector' turned on) and thus can't be expanded to vector shapes - except for a not-very-useful wireframe.

[Jotamatrix]

Thanks for the reply Doug!
So, if there is no alternative way to do this, then the Classic functionality should remain an option in future iterations of the software, right?

[Ton Frederiks]

Absolutely (and they should improve Classic).

[David30125243i5sb]

BROOO SAME. I have something kind of similar happen right now where im making a mockup of a belt with holes inside but no matter what I do to make those holes inside the "rectangle" which is my belt (wether its making circles and using the shape builder tool to remove them or the pathfinder or even recreating the shape entirely) EXTRUDE AND BEVEL (2022 version) IGNORES THEM AND ESSENTIALLY JUST GIVES ME A RECTANGLE AS IF THOSE HOLES WERE NEVER THERE. like I already updated illustrator, restarted it, expanded the shape, tried to see if it ignores other random shapes with holes (which magically it doesnt it only has an issue with this belt), etc. (side note: whats even crazier is the other day i was making this belt w the same holes just a little larger and it worked fine but now it just decided to ignore it its so unreliable)

[Monika Gause]

Please share the AI file.