Hi Everyone,
I have been doing some testing on Creo 4.0 M010 this week, and really find that the Extrude to Surface, then Offset to be a very nice functionality that has been added (great job PTC). We design many extruded parts that are typically extruded to a common plane, then depending on the usage, can have material added past that plane, or have material removed from that datum plane, and this is EXACTLY what we needed to accomplish this without using end cuts or having to use a Blind dimension instead of using the datum plane reference. Again, for extruded parts, this is incredible.
That said, we have many of our products designed in SheetMetal, and at times, we replace extruded parts with formed SheetMetal parts, and design similarly. So after I had seen this functionality within Solid Part mode, I also wanted to see whether this worked in SheetMetal mode. The basic end extrude is the same setup as solid mode, and if you are extruding a surface, this acts the exact same way as solid mode. Now, once you toggle this over to be thickened (as you would expect to do in sheet metal parts), the offset option when extruding to surface is removed. See attached images and below screenshots.
Is there a reason that this would be removed from SheetMetal? Or is this simply a bug? Seems to me that it should be available, and we would really make great use of this functionality if it were also available in SheetMetal.
I also captured the attached video if it helps explain and demonstrate a little more clearly.