Statick

Disclaimer, I am a novice/hobbyist. Only use blender for 3D printing purposes.

TLDR; Add-ons Mesh Tools -> Offset Edges and Curve Tools -> Recursive Offset can achieve offsetting similar to a CAD program like Fusion 360. Watch this video (not mine) for a more comprehensive guide on Curve Tools https://youtu.be/HSUpmhGdgGQ?t=191

Full Explanation

I ran into an issue recently where I needed to offset an edge, similar to what a program like Fusion 360 can do with a sketch. After some searching, I found that there is an add-on built in that can be enabled called "Mesh Tools" that can do this pretty easily.

Mesh Tools approach (Didn't work for my specific issue)

On Blender 5.0...

• Edit -> Preferences -> Get Extensions
• Search "Mesh Tools"
• Click "Install"

Then, in edit mode:

• Select edge you want to offset
• Right-click -> Mesh Tools -> Offset Edge

There are a few different options and this works fairly well. I used the Extrude option

My issue was I had a sharp edge and it was causing intersecting edges/faces

I made a post on Reddit asking what the best way to solve it was and never got a reply, and then I realized I never checked if there was a Blender community on lemmy.

Curve Tools approach

Anyway, I found a solution to my specific problem, "Curve Tools" in this video: https://youtu.be/HSUpmhGdgGQ?t=191

Caveats before starting:

• The object/edge needs to be planar and on the XY plane.
• This will ruin the topology and I'm not the guy to tell you how to fix it.

On Blender 5.0...

• Edit -> Preferences -> Get Extensions
• Search "Curve Tools"
• Click "Install"

Then, in edit mode:

• Select the edge you want to offset
• E to Extrude
• Esc to leave it in place
• P to separate by selected
• Go back to object mode, and select the object you just separated
• Object -> Convert -> Curve
• Go back into edit mode, select everything
• Make the curve 2D and set Fill Mode to Both. (Under the Data tab in the Properties section)

• Press N to show the context menu if it's not already displayed on the right side.
• Edit -> Recursive Offset
• Set the offset to the desired amount

After this you can convert that object back into a Mesh object and use it how you want.

I have no idea if this is the best solution, maybe there is a plugin that does this without converting to a Curve, but I wanted to share what I found here.

Looks like all of the alternate theme subdomains are down. I'm assuming this is due to the maintenance but wanted to point it out just in case.

https://t.programming.dev/

https://p.programming.dev/

https://a.programming.dev/

https://old.programming.dev/

https://v.programming.dev/