Request - A tube tool with on surface offset.

 From:  PaQ
2187.1 
Hi Michael, an other happy moiers :)

Here's a little request, not sure if this specific tool will be valid inside the "MoI" philosophy, but it might be quite helpfull not only for me (I guess).
The tool would be a combo of



and will help to build nice tube/wire on surface.

Actually when I'm trying to create this kind of geometry, I have to use this workflow :

Here's the background


I'm using the freeform curve/ctrl points with only 'on surface' snapping


and finally I create the tube (Sweep)


Using that method, I always have half of the tube melted inside the 'collision' geomtry, it might be sometime usefull sometime, but I would
really love to have a more accurate way of doing it.


So, in my wonderland, the tube tool combo will allow :

1) Draw the tube in 'realtime' when drawing the curve, very handy (for me :P), but maybe to heavy to process.
2) The most important, having an Surface Offset snapping option, with a distance = the circle radius of the tube, to avoild the 'melting' effect.

Not I can imagine it's not that easy to do, and probably not a real priority off course, but in the meantime if it possbile to create a script that will allow me
to draw curve on surface with this famous offset option, that will save my day (and probably my week in fact :))



(btw I'm not asking to have any accurate offset a along the curve off course, only at the control points it's more than enough)

Thanks for reading !

EDITED: 3 Dec 2015 by PAQ