Hi Andrei,

I see what you mean, however for grooves like around the door I would use Construct > Offset > Inset.

Hi Michael,

Having a look at Inset and when 'Use separate height' is checked is it possible to have a zero thickness, at the moment it's not accepted, in that way I think that would suit Andrei's request.

-

Agree with DannyT

It would be nice :)

DannyT, good idea!
for me it does not matter what it will be Extrude, Shell or Inset, the main thing is - it should work in this case:)! So waiting for Michael reply.

I think this is what I asked about here http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5508.8


Martin.

Hi Andrei,

> Michael, What do you think if it will automaticly "disable base surface" if you
> extrude frome surface, joined surface and edges?

Probably not for individual surface or edges since those can often be used for just regular simple extrudes where people are trying to generate a solid, but I think that it might work ok for the case of extruding a face that's a part of a joined surface.

- Michael

@Danny,

> Having a look at Inset and when 'Use separate height' is checked is it possible to have a
> zero thickness, at the moment it's not accepted, in that way I think that would suit
> Andrei's request.

I don't know... Inset is primarily focused on generating a border, with the border thickness as it's main input field at the top of the command.

So it seems kind of awkward to focus on disabling thickness inside of it. For example since the command is primarily focused on thickness when you pick 2 points with the mouse it sets the thickness, not the optional "separate height" height.

It seems like it might fit better as an option in Offset, maybe something like "build side walls"... The thing that makes me pause about that is that there is then some duplicate overlap functionality between offset and shell, since if you select an entire surface object Shell will thicken it with side walls constructed already. The main difference would be the behavior when there is a face selected instead of a whole object selected, shell uses that as the opening and thickens everything else.

- Michael

Michael, if it is so problem for you to incorporate this command into existing ones, could you pleas make just script without any UI icons, just script.
In wich you can shell/extrude without base surface.

Hi Andrei, re: script version without UI - unfortunately I think it would be difficult for a script to work only by a slight modification of the existing command, because I don't think the script will have a reliable way to figure out which particular face in the generated object should be deleted.

So a script version would probably have to work fairly differently from the regular command and instead build the pieces like side walls and top piece itself and join them together. That's not a small change to the existing script, it's a pretty different thing and would be somewhat time consuming to develop, so I'm sorry I probably won't be able to make that right now.

But why wouldn't the other method that I was describing previously work for you? That would be where the base surface would be deleted when extruding a face that's part of a joined surface, the extrusion would basically become another part of the joined surface structure.

- Michael

>But why wouldn't the other method that I was describing previously work for you?
Michael, I'm not sure I understand how this method works.

Hi Andrei,

> Michael, I'm not sure I understand how this method works.

I mean that if you have an object like this where the surfaces are joined together, here with a face sub-object selected:



Then when you extrude that (again, those surfaces are joined, not independent and it's one face sub-object of the full object selected), I could remove the base surface and automatically make a joined result like this:



So the main way to trigger this would be to join the pieces before doing the extrusion.

- Michael

Michael, looks good, i'll wat for this feature.

Why not script
B Extrude one cap
A boolean Intersect B = C
(A boolean Union B ) boolean Diff C

Hi Pilou, sorry I'm not really understanding what your A B and C are supposed to be there...

Keep in mind Booleans are focused on working with solid volumes, they try to cut a solid up and generate a solid as the result, not switch a solid into an open surface.

- Michael

More easy!
Improvement!
Like this! ;)



PS Same result if plane rectangle B is yet on the face of A !
So Extrude B, select All then Boolean Union!

Hi Pilou, yes that does work with boolean union, good idea! That may help for the time being.

- Michael

Pilou,
Good, idea but still can not see how deep goes extrusion or shell... Michael May be you can make hiden line visible wehn make extrusion or shell?

Yes because that is "before function" : you must to know before how you extrude the volume! ;)