@Max - Thanks a lot for this. These are exceptionally useful tools - I purchased a license straight-away. Precisely the functionality I was after.

@Egor - The big distinction here is that AG Offset isn't really a tool in the classic sense - it's a live effect, which means you have to expand it after each interaction to work with the resulting paths. That makes it sluggish for simple uses compared to a focused tool, like the ToolShed/Moi ones.

I do love AG Offset, I use it every day, but I would also like to have a barebones tool that can quickly create a new offset path with no frills, no need for non-destructive editing, no need for complex results with easing and fill/stroke modulation, and no need for reproducibility as a style. Just activate, click, drag, done. This ToolShed one fits the bill, but again, it's another thing I now have to monitor for version compatibility and licensing.

I feel it's better to compare vs. Illustrator's native Edit>Object>Path>Offset Path command...
Or, more pertinently, to the lack of a native interactive offset tool.

To get a sense of what the Moi offset tool does you can look at the ToolShed one, there's a gif of it here:
https://rj-graffix.com/images/plugins/toolshed/offsetOpenPathDemo.gif

This is even more featured than what my request is asking for, but the UX is fairly transparent so the extra functionality is non-intrusive.

Thanks all!
Hope this makes sense.

This is also a paid option, but it could be useful...maybe.
https://rj-graffix.com/product/toolshed/
Anyway, I think something similar should be a native tool in Illustrator.

This is also a paid option, but it could be useful.
https://rj-graffix.com/product/toolshed/

Anyway, I believe something similar should be a native tool in Illustrator.

I can’t say using AG Offset is harder than in Plasticity and Moi 3D... but I don’t use these professionally, and I don’t recall exactly how they do it now — but it’s easy to have only one offset AG’s tool — select and drag. If you had other values set previously, hitting a dedicated key while dragging should reset them, giving you that one offset...
But yeah, it is paid, I know.
Can you make a short GIF or a video to demo how Moi 3D handles it today, please? I doubt the Ai team uses Moi 3D.

Another way of making this, other than with a complex routine I described below, is to use a third-party plugin, AG Offset by Astute Graphics. It makes adding live offsets to objects a rather simple operation.

Hi @Egor, indeed, and I do use AG Offset, but besides being a separate paid product it's a different beast altogether imo, best suited for more complex effects. A native tool where you can simply click-drag a single offset path would be an incredibly useful addition due to its speed. Moi 3Ds offset tool is a great example of how this could function.

Meanwhile you can use AG Offset tool that has all of this and more, from AstuteGraphics plugin pack. Super handy to use.

This would be great, specificaly for the automation of die cut bleed when the background can't be applied to the stroke, like a gradient. That way, the shape mesures in the transform palette would be the size of the die cut line, and the background limits would always be at the specified distance of it, +9pts, for example. That would remove the need of making the die line as a separate shape, and would speed up the process of resizing the die and keeping the same bleed size.

Can you mockup a picture describing how it could look without breaking current paradigm? I seem to fail to imagine this.

I have since, indeed, found this out. A smarter stroke would still be welcome, though.

Well, it's quite possible to do now.
Here's a little tutorial how to do it:
https://imgur.com/a/rrOo5

You create your strokes with different widths, group them, apply 'Outline stroke', make another group (see note below), then apply new fill to a second group and then applying Offset path to this fill.

Note: the only problem is that you can't make second group with only a group selected, but you can trick AI to do it, adding temp object, grouping it with a group and then deleting it.

Because I make maps using Illustrator, I tend to work with loads of strokes for hundreds of streets. So far I've managed without outlining these strokes, or outlining by copying these strokes, converting them to shapes and then applying a stroke to that shape. However it is tedious, hard to edit and basically creates twice a set of roads - which is never fantastic.

It would be great if the Offset Path effect or function could have a dynamic nature: Reading its parent stroke's width to widen or narrow accordingly. I've attached three images:

One: with a work-around-ish 'hack' using Drop Shadow and Outer Glow in the Appearance panel. this creates jagged edges and is ugly - probably problematic.

Two: An example of how Offset Paths works currently and how it is too stringent. It would be great if it could work on a Layer Group's strokes within.

Three: an image with a simple outer glow effect and a desired result.

Thank you.