Polygon extrusion problem

[Anonymous]

Last week I reported a bug with the spline extrusions. This time it's with the polygon extrusion. As you can see on the attached image, if you take a geometry similar to the one I made, select all the polys and extrude with the default settings, you will get a distorted result. If you use the thickness option it's ok though. Maybe I don't understand the tool correctly but shouldn't it always behave like if using the thickness option?

Now, if you only select the top edges and do the extrusion, you will get that distortion no matter what, by offsetting in Z or using thickness. So there's definitively something wring here.

[mspeer]

Hi !

The attribute "Thickness" uses a different algorithm than "Local Translate Z". Although the result of "Thickness" is what most people might expect, the other one isn't false by default. The edges between 2 faces are influenced by 2 different translate directions when doing an extrusion, so you can add those 2 values (vectors) or take an average, both methods are valid.

Because of this one result ("Local Translate Z", using the average method) shows only half of the extrusion length on the inner edges and only at the 2 outer edges the full value will be applied (the outer 2 are not influenced by any other translate direction).

But you are right. The extrusion of edges when using thickness should behave the same way like with faces.

Also there could be a far better documentation of these 2 extrusion options and the difference between them.

[Anonymous]

OK... then can you give me one example where the z local translate could be used because in 20 years of modelling, I never had single case where this method would be useful. Using translate is not an option as I can't combine it with the snaps. I assume that 99.9 of the users would prefer that extrude behaves like translate. If you want the z local, then it would be an option somewhere. 

Then again, maybe I'm the only one and everybody loves the z local translate behaviour. Please feel free to prove me wrong. 🙂

[mspeer]

Hi!

The Thickness feature delivers what most people would expect from an extrusion.

Local Translate Z is not an extrusion like Thickness, it's a movement of the newly created faces.

You can also use Local Translate X and Local  Translate Y and i think most people never used that ever before, but it's just a local movement of the resulting faces like in Edit Mesh -> Transform, or better it's the Transform tool inside the Extrude tool.

The Local Translate options may be used rarely but are designed as "simple" translation that should also work when used in 3 axis at the same time.

The missing option for snapping when using Thickness is of course annoying. Is this already posted as new idea in the appropriate section?

I would welcome this feature too.

Just 2 simple forms you can do very fast only using 1 Extrude Tool with Local translate on a cube (The blade for a fan is done in just a few seconds).

[Anonymous]

Then maybe it should be two separate tools because I badly need an extrude thickness with snaps, considering that the spline extrude is broken, actually had been broken for 19 years.

[Anonymous]

Anyone from Autodesk would like to jump in? I'd like to know if you could make the use of the manipulator work as thickness and maybe make the local translate as an option. I think it would be more useful this way. 🙂