Evenly contract and/or expand a line object?

[131080]

Hi all,

Is it possible to evenly contract and/or expand a line object? If so, how can it be achieved? See the example picture for what I mean, the black line being the original shape, the red line evenly contracted and the green line expanded.



Thanks!

Regards,
131080

[Victor01]

Of course you can.
Use the "scale" tool:

here you got an image of the symbol (taken from 3dsMax and not Gmax... but the tool is the same)

[Diggis]

Victor... what you are proposing would scale the whole thing evenly from the centre, not from the existing lines.  That would give a different result... I'm not able to demonstrate now, but the sides would be further out than the ends.

What 131080 is looking for is an offset (as it's called in AutoCAD) and the only way I can think to do it would be to use an edit spline and the numeric input to do it evenly.

[callagrafx]

In Max, if you select the line and click on the + icon in the modifier stack, you should see 3 sub-object types....vertex, segment and spline.  Select spline and scroll down to the geometry section of the rolldown and look for "outline".  This will create a new spline offset perfectly either positive or negative.  If you don't want the original spline as well, simply select and delete it.  It should be the same in Gmax if I remember correctly...

[131080]

Yep, that did the trick! Thanks for the tip callagrafx!

Cheers,
Pjotr