The direction of Offset in SW Mania 2008

Kevin Pymm wrote:

 

This should be an option in the offset command to have internal or external offset of multiple items.

 

 

Offsetting disconnected entities compared to connected entities (where the direction for all entities is automatically set to the same direction regardless of creation direction) is somewhat rare. And "internal" vs "external" offset of multiple items, especially more than 2, is a hard thing to define depending on how the entities are placed (or what if it is only 2 entities, but they are perpendicular). We could add a selection list and the ability to select each entity in the list and reverse the direction for each individual entity like we do for some features. But in those feature cases, there are benefits to having a single feature in the tree vs. multiple features. With offset, the geometric/constraint set result of doing the offset in one command vs. running the command multiple times is exactly the same.

So, instead of cluttering up the UI for offset to account for all these "edge cases" we've instead decided to just keep it very simple since the time to execute the command multiple times would be about the same amount of time as fiddling with the options to get what you want, and the resulting geometry created would be exactly the same.

Thanks,
Jim

Agreed, that is awesome. Never knew there was any logic to it. Does seem like one to many things to think about when constructing a sketch though. Sometimes you don't even know you'll want to offset the sketches later, some extended options would be good, or you just offset an entire chain then delete the unwanted segments.