probe location outside of model

[campbell8300]

I'm performing a mechanical simulation on an assembly. I'd like to determine the deflection in a particular direction (Y) along a surface. Manually placing a probe I found to be fraught with error. I did find the Probe > Edit Position which allowed me to accurately place my probe points using coordinates. However, I noticed that if I entered coordinates which are outside of the model, the deflection (or stress) was a signficant non-zero value. I found that to be a bit odd. How can I have deflection outside of the model? 

Something else curious I noticed was that if I greatly exaggerated the location outside of the model (way outside the model), the graphical probe point would visually remain inside the model but would move in some odd direction on another axis.