@Michael- Yes- that is a way of doing it for sure. It is definitely a fast way of doing it when you design for a single material. Many times with these kind of products the inset portion is shot/injection molded with a different softer material. This technique of sweeping a profile has the disadvantage when creating real world products- we need to create separate bodies- both for manufacturing and for outputting separate bodies for 3d printing with crisp color separations.

Its funny in a way I was thinking this would be what offset would do when you joined surfaces to create a solid. Inset is doing something very close and usable for my needs- but if there was a way to script this that would be awesome!
Once you do a few offsets here and there- the designer can create some very sophisticated shapes extremely quickly - that are all derived from the main volume with all of its surface relationships.