I watched an old tutorial about making selections on primitives for materials and later wondered if it would work with the bevel deformer. Seems to work quite well but i wonder about its usefulness as it all goes pear shaped as soon as you change the subdivision, tho you can change the size, but would have to redo selections whenever you change the sub div.
This may be a common thing but Ive not seen it before so thought I would post a file here.
The basic jist is to make a copy of your primitive, make editable, make and save a selection and then put in the selection field of your bevel deformer and lo n behold it works on your primitive, I can use the 3 different types of poly line and point but it doesn't seem to like more than one of each.
I thought there was another to make selects on a primitive with one of the deformers ?
Deck
Selections on primitives 01.c4d