Easy way for offset of a face

[niccah]

I'm wondering: In Sketchup, there is the button "offset"... so, choose a face, click on this button, and everything is fine

But, there is an "offset" function in ruby, just for single points. So, in princible, I know to calculate the "offseted" face... but my idea is a little bit more complicated and I have the feeling, that there should be a very easy way in ruby, to do that...

Do you know, how I can use the function, which is used, by clicking the "offset" button in Sketchup?

Thanks for your help!

[thomthom]

So you want to offset a set of 3d points representing a polygon - not actually a face itself?

[niccah]

@thomthom said:

So you want to offset a set of 3d points representing a polygon - not actually a face itself?

Yes you are right! Sorry for the inexact description!

[Chris Fullmer]

I think the answer is that no, there is no simple way to do it. Like you said though, you can offset points by a vector. So you have to start with that, or some other method of calculating the offset. RickW had written an offset.rb that allowed a devloper to simply call offset on a face and then offset it. BUT its a tiny bit buggy, and on top of that it modifies the SketchUp API so I can't recommend using it. But you could look at it and ask him if you could borrow some of his code if it helps.

And more recently TIG wrote a very impressive smart offset tool. You might take a look at that if you need some ideas how to write an offset function.

[niccah]

Thanks a lot Chris! Okay, no problem, then I start with my ideas! In my case, I have always faces with z = 0. So, I think, it should reduce the complexity of my project

I will public my solution for other people...