Here is a Blender 2.81 tip I had to re-learn today.

I started a new mesh and created a string of vertices. After I bit of work, I realized that a curve would be much better. It is pretty straight forward to convert a mesh to a curve, but the curve is little more than then the mesh by another name. What I was looking for was the vector handles to smooth out the corners.

The trick is to convert the new curve spline type to a Bezier curve. The vector handles then appear.

Here are the steps:

1. While in the Object mode, click “Object” in the menu
2. Hover over Convert To, then click “Curve from Mesh/Text”
3. Hit tab to go into the Edit mode from the newly created curve.
4. Right click on the curve, hover over “Set Spline Type” and then click “Bezier”. The handles are now visible.
5. The curve nodes will be “Free”. Select the nodes you want to change to “Aligned”, type “V” on the keyboard and click “Aligned” from the pop-up menu.