Feature Request: 3D Body Offset / Clearance Tool for 3D Printing Tolerances

[davidsillou]

Hi!

When designing 3D printed parts that need to fit together (press-fit joints, enclosures, etc.), creating an accurate clearance gap (typically 0.1mm to 0.3mm) is key.

Currently, using Scale as a workaround doesn't really work for functional parts because scaling from the center origin shifts feature centers, distorts hole spacing, and deforms asymmetric geometry.

Would it be possible to consider a 3D Body Offset / Expand tool, or support for negative values in the existing Hollow tool? The idea would be to offset all exterior faces of a selected solid/hole along their normals by a user-defined value (e.g., +0.2mm). Applied to a duplicated part turned into a Hole, it would generate an accurate 3D clearance tool for boolean cuts in seconds.

(Right now, I'm bypassing this by running an external OpenCASCADE/build123d script to perform offset_3d, but having this natively in Layerling would be a huge quality-of-life improvement!)

[henmedia]

@davidsillou Thanks for the idea, it was a good one. There is now an Offset tool next to Hollow. It moves every face of an exact body by the same distance, out or in (0.01 to 10 mm, with rounded or sharp outer corners). Tick "Keep the original and add the offset body as a hole" and your part stays as it is, while the grown copy is added as a hole, ready to group with the mating part. That is the clearance for a press fit. It is also an MCP tool, layerling_offset_object. Bodies that are only a triangle mesh often cannot be offset, STEP imports can. It is built and comes with the next update.

layerling stays free thanks to people who chip in. If you'd like to support the project, a small donation is very welcome. 🙂

[henmedia]

@davidsillou the Offset tool is out in 1.113.0. Tick "Keep the original and add the offset body as a hole" for the clearance of a press fit.