I need help with a (seemingly) straightforward extrude

 From:  sneather
5454.1 
Hi:

I'm having a hard time resolving two related extrusion issues.

Please see the attached MOI project. I need to extrude all the text outlines. But I need to extrude them perpendicularly from the center lines of the included tube shape. I can't find a way to do something like this. In a 3D animation program, it would be a simple step of extruding along the "normals" or similar. How can I do something like that in MOI?

Secondly, even if I can extrude the text outlines, I don't get any caps. I assume that is because the outlines, themselves, are not flat and planer. But is there another way to get some caps???

Thanks so much!