I guess that's been my problem. Yeah I've been using closest point. I liked the wrap of the letters better than the straight projection. I'll give straight projection a try later.
Thanks,
Nick

I've tried various methods to carve letters into a cylinder (ring), and Michael's method seems to be the most direct and reliable way.

It would be great to have an "Emboss" function that performed the intermediate steps behind the scenes and worked kinda like the projection function.

Create some closed shapes (letters or other shapes), position over the main solid (cylinder, sphere, block, ring, etc), hit "Emboss", enter the depth [ + or -] , press Done :)

Ed

Hi Ed, I'm hoping in the future I might be able to make that kind of "Emboss" function included with the Booleans, something like a "Limit depth" checkbox in Boolean difference that you could enable when doing a Boolean on a solid with closed planar curves as the cutting objects...

- Michael

"...something like a "Limit depth" checkbox in Boolean difference that you could enable when doing a Boolean on a solid with closed planar curves as the cutting objects..."
-M. Gibson

That's what I'm talkin about. :-)
I was actually thinking of how to create an extrude-cut script for limited depth cut-outs, but the above might be even better.