Awesome! I just found out a cool way to do insets :)

You have the original shape, and you do a project of the curve shape you want to be inset onto it.

Then you network it, and extrude it into a solid.

Then boolean subtract it out.

Easy :D

One thing I find about MoI - it has so many "hidden" features!
eg. Boolean Difference can also be used as a "slice" tool

I had sorta asked Michael for this when I had mentioned to him that I had wished for a traditional Bevel and Extrude command for some faces I was working on.


Hopefully we'll get something like this in MoI soon - it would make my panel work so much faster and easier for sure!


-Will

.

I had an idea that I just had to try:



Tends to work best with blocky shapes though, where offsetting does not have problems.

- Michael

That looks very cool Michael. What happens on trimmed curved surfaces?

Side note: I just noticed the "Set Flat Direction" option in the sweep flat command. This is cool too.

That was not yet possible with the offset shell function?

Hi Pilou,

> That was not yet possible with the offset shell function?

Shell is related but not the same - shell hollows out the entire object.

Like for example with this selection:



Shell hollows out the entire object and leaves those as openings, producing this result:



Shell produces a "thin wall" object.

An Inset on the other hand, does not go through the whole object and instead produces a result that is localized to those faces:



- Michael

Wow!
Great Michael.
eric

Hi Burr,

> That looks very cool Michael. What happens on trimmed curved surfaces?

It can depend on the shape, there can be difficulties in the offset calculations in a lot of cases. Also currently the pieces being inset must be bounded on all sides by sharp corners.

But there are a lot of trimmed curved surfaces that will work as well, like here is a sweep that has a hole booleaned out from it:








- Michael

Woah!

Offset-shell-moveface combined!

Is this a special limited offer? Where do I order?

Marc

Effectively that is slighly different than the classical Shell :)

Michael - that's awesome :D

Looks like you've managed to add the feature very quickly and very well!

Hi NightCabbage, I'm sure that you will run into some cases where it will be frustrating that it won't work... The offsetting mechanism is not really at the same level of dependability as the boolean functions for example. It will help a lot to have very clean geometry, no things like little slivery bits or excess faces like 2 coplanar faces next to one another where there could instead be one large single plane.

But I believe it will still help you out in quite a lot of cases though. It should work well for changing a simple part into a more complex looking one extremely rapidly. Here's an example shape like you were asking about originally:



- Michael

Hi Michael,

Brilliant!!
I think this will certainly be a great addition for those of us making jewellery related items.

regards Colin

Michael, really, thank you so much for this!

I'm not sure though, is this considered to be a "regular" bevel / extrude function?

I like how you can inset a surface, and it appears to let you also extrude in the opposite direction - I just want to be sure if you don't actually consider this an extrude or bevel function.


Either way, having this will make a snap of my panel work in a lot of cases! ;-)


-Will

PS - Okay, looking again at the GIFs, this is basically an inset/extrude since beveling lets you also change the width of the new face(s) - which is not what's happening here.

This is an awesome function though, can't wait to have this!

Hi Will,

> I'm not sure though, is this considered to be a
> "regular" bevel / extrude function?

Well, I'm not sure - what exactly would you expect for a "regular" bevel/extrude function to do?

If you would expect it to do this, then I guess this qualifies! :)

There will eventually be a different kind of extrude function called a "tapered extrude" which would make more like a conical type inward sloped extrusion from a flat outline. That one when starting from a circle curve would produce a cone shape. Is that the kind of thing that you're referring to?


Wait, I guess you're probably talking about something like this:



This new function will generate this:



But you're probably thinking of a polygon modeler type bevel which would be like this:




Maybe in the future that could become an option, like a "Tapered" checkbox to this same command - the pieces are kind of in place there you just need to have some Lofts put in between the correct edges. I don't think it will be very easy to incorporate that right now though.

- Michael

Hi Will,

> Okay, looking again at the GIFs, this is basically an inset/extrude
> since beveling lets you also change the width of the new face(s) -
> which is not what's happening here.

Well, this will let you control the "border thickness" for how much the face shrinks inwards from its trim boundaries.

Then I think there will be an option to set the "Height" separately from the thickness if you want.

Then there is an additional option for Direction: Inwards or Direction: Outwards.

- Michael

Hi Will, just as a note - normally in CAD a bevel like this:



Is produced by doing a chamfer that cuts it away from a larger piece, like so:



Here's showing the original box in wireframe to help illustrate:




Rather than starting with the small piece and having it pop outwards from it like you would do in a polygon modeling program.


But probably in the future the Inset command could allow for that kind of "outwards growing" bevel as an alternate way.


- Michael

I wish there was the ability to record your thoughts as you iterate through these things! Perhaps you should record yourself talking through it for your little guy and posterity!!!