On Sketchup Pro 2024, I have just installed and tried in short succession:
- Smart Offset by TIG
- Multi Face Offset by Remus
- Multiple Offsets by Sam D. Mitch
- 3Dshouse free version (They have their own website)
All four of these (unless I misunderstood something in the documentation) are supposed to allow me to offset multiple faces by a specified distance inside or outside the face. The actual behavior is that they say “Operation complete” or the equivalent message, and… nothing at all happens. No “glitches”, not the wrong distance or wrong units, not deleting faces, just… no new lines drawn at all. They aren’t working to offset anything, whether a face, line, multiple faces, etc.
All of the extensions tried are old-ish and don’t seem to be updated for the current version of Sketchup Pro. Is this something to do with Pro 2024 and the new version of Ruby that came along with it? Or some other background change?
I see “S4U Offset” as a paid option (updated in 2023), and I thought there was a similar tool in one of the Fredo6 extensions but I couldn’t find it. The Sam D. Mitch extension has pretty much exactly the features and interface I want and it’s free on Sketchucation, so I’d love to get that one working.
USE-CASE:
For context, I often make quick and dirty cabinets as simple solids running along the wall. This method is possible with ALL native tools, so it’s doable on iPad and Web as well, but when I’m at my computer I’d like to speed things up.
1 - Rectangle, then push-pull the cabinet box to the correct width, depth, and height.
2 - Push-pull to create the toe-kick space
3 - Split out the individual cabinet boxes with lines, and then add more lines within each cabinet to show the size and position of doors and drawers.
4 - Use the offset tool to give a 1/16 or 1/8 inch gap on each door and drawer front rectangle (Leaving 1/8 or 1/4 spacing). If using native tools I have to double-click each and every face to repeat this.
5 - Add another offset to make the frame of the “shaker” door, (maybe 2") (Again double clicking every door and drawer to repeat)
6 - Push-pull each door frame out 3/4" for the door thickness
7 - Push-pull the door centers 1/2" out to reduce the panel recess.
On average I can roughly lay out a kitchen in 30-45 minutes or so, but 10-15 of this is just the offsets and push pulls. The push-pulls can be done all at once with Fredo’s JointPushPull, but if I can do all the 1/8" and 2" offsets in one go, that would be a game changer.
And before anyone asks, I’ve tried all the cabinet-making/cabinet layout extensions I could find, but I’ve never found one to beat the speed and flexibility of this method for just generating simple cabinets accurately. If you know one I’d love to know it. I used to use Gary Kernans Cab Door Maker which worked like a dream for more complex doors, but I would have to rebuy at this point and this basic workflow is so SO close, I just need the last piece.
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