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It seems that Blender randomly selects when to extrude on a locked axis or projected from the viewport. How do I extrude so that it locks on the axis the vertices are facing?

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  • $\begingroup$ by default when you extrude it will be in the Normal direction. And anyway, you can choose the orientation in the Transform Orientation dropdown menu. $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Commented Nov 1, 2018 at 21:10
  • $\begingroup$ My Blender doesn't extrude in the normal direction by default. And the the alt + spacebar orientation dropdown doesn't help either. $\endgroup$
    – Valentin
    Commented Nov 1, 2018 at 21:15
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    $\begingroup$ What are you extruding? Single face, collection of faces, edge/edges, vertex/vertices, etc? Faces are the most predictable, as per documentation: "Faces are extruded by default along their averaged normal. The extrusion can be limited to a single axis by specifying an axis." $\endgroup$
    – risingfall
    Commented Nov 1, 2018 at 23:41
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    $\begingroup$ First, select the face you want to extrude. Then press E to extrude and left-click. This will create 2 faces in the same place. Then select the appropriate transformation (local, global, normal etc.) as per your needs and move that face with the help of the manipulator. I don't know if this is what you're looking for. $\endgroup$
    – AshKB
    Commented Nov 1, 2018 at 23:56

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It's a real pity, but Blender is indeed broken like that. It does not do what it says. If you choose to Extrude and move on normals it works only if you have faces selected and with edges and vertices it does not work. This could be considered to be a bug, since the functionality does not work as intended or as it's label suggests at least. Luckily, it is not a huge inconvenience since it can be fixed very easily - you can just hit Enter without moving the vertices when extruded and then use Shrink/Flatten(alt+s) to move them in the direction of their normals:

enter image description here

You can also use the functionality of the transform operators to move them as you wish after they are extruded:

enter image description here

Edit: who could have thought?.. - it is broken here as well - you can see in my example gif that the vertex normals change when they are extruded with regular e. Well, if you use Extrude Only Vertices from the Space menu, it seems to work. This is a complete mess when you think about it... I am surprised they managed to leave it like that.

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  • $\begingroup$ I've spent some time trying to make sense of this before.. this question prompted me to try again.. I think you're right, it's completely broken. I've tried to think of every way that this direction might be calculated.. I wish I knew enough to find the relevant piece of code.. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Nov 2, 2018 at 10:31
  • $\begingroup$ I think we should just report this as bugs. Vertex normals should not change after extruding and the tools should do what their labels say, whatever that may be. Clearly this is a big issue if it says it is going to move something on the normal and then moves it in a plane parallel to the view. It is surprising how somebody managed to leave this functionality this way. $\endgroup$
    – Martynas Žiemys
    Commented Nov 2, 2018 at 13:30

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