Hollow out meshes for 3D printing - contributing add-on

[And-Woo]

I have already reported it, and he explained:

@usfreitas

My reason for having the normals as they are is that I wanted the offset surface to function as a normal solid in the case the tool generates only this surface. Think of this as a slightly reduced (or increased) copy of the target object.

Activating the Hollow Duplicate option, on the other hand, will generate normals consistent with a hollow body, i.e. the offset surface´s normals will point to the inside of the cavity for an inside offset.

[usfreitas]

I’m glad you find it useful

As And-Woo already commented, my intention with the tool was that, if the user asked just for an offset surface, I assumed this surface was to be used separately, and thus its normals would be as if it were an independent solid object. I use the tool a lot this way. If the user wanted to create a hollow object, they would activate Hollow Duplicate. In that case, the tool will create an actual hollow object, correctly dealing with the normals (hopefully).

Maybe the documentation is not clear enough? Would you have any suggestion on how to change it so it would become more clear?

Another point. This tool got integrated into the 3D print toolbox. I’ve updated the original post mentioning this and pointing to the new extension. You should be using that extension and not the github addon unless you need an older Blender version (pre 4.2).