During my workflow I am often drawing guidelines a specific distance from an edge or from all the edges of a polygon. Typically I may need to draw guidelines 3/4" inset from the edges of a face of a rectangle. It involves clicking on each edge, moving the mouse in the direction I want the guide to move in, and entering .75 for each guideline. Not bad once in a while, but I need to do this hundreds of times a day and it seems like a simple task to automate.
I found the guide toys plugin, and the “Guides through lines or face edges” tool is nearly there, minus the ability to enter a desired offset.
It’s a relevant question, perhaps if you would explain what you use case is we could offer an appropriate solution. But if you only want it as a feature request I won’t try any more.
One example that might have been useful…
As has been said, it is not obvious why you need to do this.
An alternative might be to select the face and use the offset tool to create actual lines. It would be a lot faster, although you might have to delete them later depending on what you are trying to do. If you don’t want such lines to interact with the model, you could group the geometry, select the face, Ctrl-Copy it, come out of the group, Paste in Place, and then use that new face for the offset. Much more long-winded though.
Wow, thanks for all the quick responses. Here’s a video of the process I use now, and an image of a typical finished drawing. I haven’t tried curvisard yet, it looks like it would be helpful.
Simoncbevans, yes the actual lines are problematic because it leads to deleting lots of little bits that I don’t want in the drawing.
I already mentioned I’m not fan of guides, usually just double work.
Here is a version of your varied shelving using native tools and one cleanup plugin, you can’t see it in the vid the context menu takes it offscreen. Fix it 101, one of the simplest and most useful tools out there.
The thickness of the offset are half the board thickness, therefore making the outer one the same as the inners. All this can be as accurate as you want without even needing a guide.
