Help to offset Polygon in Maya?

[rgdesign]

Hello Everyone,

Help would be most appreciated. Can any Maya Expert Help me, i am new to the software

In Past i have used many parametric software, software like Catia or UG.

Is there a tool in Maya which can help offset polygons, by a given value ?

I observed that in Maya , there is an offset tool but its for surface( nurbs) , is there a way to do the same but using polygons

i tried scaling it, but i cant achieve the result which i want as it quit difficult to achieve 10mm offset.

I am sure i am using the wrong tool to get the result what i want.

Help would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[dbazelon]

I'm curious as there should be a better answer, but the 2 mesh tools that I know of are doing the math followed by an extrude.

First, if you want to scale by an exact number you can do the math. Do Windows/Settings\Preferences/Preferences and in 'Settings' change your working units to millimeter. Select your object and hit ctrl-t. This will show you its dimensions including the height. The new scale you want then is (height-delta)/height.

Separately, the extrude tool offsets relative to distance rather than scaling to the manipulator. Select your object and in the Modeling menu set, do Edit Mesh/Extrude. Moving this manipulator along the z axis will move all vertices in and out at an equal distance. Following this operation, you'd have to delete the original faces.

If you did the height scaling first to see along a single dimension how much to scale followed by an extrude, you could visually match the 2 objects.

[sinbadass]

Try selecting some faces, and then Shift+Right Click > Tansform Component.
You can type exact values into the Local Translate Z that appears in the polyMoveFace node in the channel box
I think the Transform Component tool can also be found under the Edit Mesh Menu > Components > Transform