Yeah, I've often thought about this, too.

About half the time I do an extrude, I have to do a union after, so perhaps it would be nice if it was a tick box option? Seems intuitive to me?

Having the option for that would be very handy.

Hi eric - yeah I do want to have an easier way to extend pieces. I'm not quite sure if it should be something in the Extrude command or if you should just be able to select a face and drag it or use the Transform > Move command to move it, or both...

The whole process of extending a section of a model is actually fairly complex though, since it won't work just by pulling surfaces themselves, the trimming boundaries around each surface also need to be edited too.

The company that makes the geometry library that MoI uses has been doing some work recently on some improvements to the extension and offsetting mechanism so hopefully if that turns out well it could help me to implement an easier way to do those kinds of edits.

- Michael

Sounds good Michael ...

A select and drag a surface sounds good, if that can be possible. It would be very handy at times ... so would a select and push.

cheers,
eric

Solidworks implemented something like this a couple of versions ago. When you select the Extrude feature, an interactive widget pops up as an alternative to typing in a value. The widget has a sort of 3D ruler incorporated to allow exact distances.