When i offset a curve e.g. a circle that's is not in the xy/xz/yz-planes it results in a complex curve that seems to be aequidistant to the original curve always measured in the xy-plane.

If i offset a curve that is in one of the system planes, depending on the viewport in which i have my cursor, the offset is either perpendicular to the curve's plane or coplanar with the original curve.

Is all this intended behaviour? What would i have to do to e.g. offset a circle that is outside of a system plane so that the offset curve is coplanar with the original?

> Is all this intended behaviour?

At the moment it is, but I had been thinking of changing this to use the plane of the object instead. I'll see if I can set this up for the next beta release.


> What would i have to do to e.g. offset a circle that is outside of a system plane
> so that the offset curve is coplanar with the original?

Let's see - right now I guess you have to rotate it back to a world plane, or draw a new version on a world plane first and then rotate it back into place.

Although here is a different method that is a bit convoluted but I think is actually easier than rotation - select your circle and extrude it by a little bit, it doesn't really matter how much. Unlike offset, extrude does use the plane of the object. Now you've got a cylinder - select the side face of the cylinder and offset that by your desired amount. Now select the bottom edge of the cylinder, do a Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard. Now undo the surface offset and undo the extrude, and paste the bottom edge in, which is the offset circle that you're looking for.

- Michael

This is now fixed for the next beta (offset of a circle not on one of the world axis planes).

In the next beta (which shouldn't be much longer, tomorrow or the next day) if you do an offset of a planar curve, it will offset within its own plane instead of only trying to offset relative to the plane of the view you are picking in like it does in the current beta.

Also another tune up for curve offsets is that in the new beta offset will automatically join together segments that are touching each other, you don't have to explicitly join them first. This makes it easier to work with surface edges. For example in the next beta you can pick the 4 edges of a box and then offset them and it will do an offset of the joined rectangle so the lines will trim or extend with each other. In the current beta in cases like this each line would offset individually and as such would not trim or extend, you would have to manually join first. Which is another annoyance with edges because you can't join edges with other edges to make a new curve, but I have also fixed this for the next beta as well.

- Michael