DraftSight: Don’t Fret, Offset!

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Continuing the theme of highlighting operations that increase efficiency and accuracy in your DraftSight drawings, the Offset feature generates perfect parallel lines and shapes surrounding your entities.

I find myself using Offset most often when drawing the boundaries of a wall or intricate details in my designs, because it effortlessly positions parallel duplicates of any entity at my specified distance apart.

The offset icon is located under the Home tab in the Modify section of the ribbon. After selecting the icon, DraftSight first prompts you to specify the distance you want your parallel entities to have in between them, and then asks you to select which entity you want to copy. If you want parallel lines on both sides of your entity, select the both option, and press enter – repeat these steps as needed.

Keep in mind that if you’re offsetting a line segment, rather than a polyline, the parallel duplicate will be an exact copy of the original.

This means that the new entities of your offsetted shape may not come to perfect corners – but this can be easily fixed with the help of DraftSight’s Trim and Extend features (or the Fillet command, which operates as a combination of the two).

That being said, if you Offset a polyline or any other continuous shape, the new parallel entity will be scaled to maintain its continuous nature.

I hope this post encourages you to draw parallel lines and shapes with Offset!

Check out the video below to see this feature in action!

(0:00 Offsetting a line, 0:35 Offsetting a polyline)

 

Learn more at DraftSight.com!

 

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