When working in AutoCAD 3D, one sees a lot of commands which on the surface seem to do the same thing but if you delve deeper you will notice that there is a little bit of additional functionality built into it which is not available in the other command.

Looking at the extrude vs offset face command you would think that they do the same thing to get a result but in fact there is a major difference which is on addition of material on a curved surface. Offset face allows for the addition of material on both straight and curved surfaces but extrude face does not.

In the below image you will see the part and it has a fillet between the 2 angled faces.

If I use the extrude face on the outer 3 faces I get the following result. As you can see the curved surface is not extended. Also notice the lip at the top and bottom.

If you use the offset face command, the following solid is produced. As you can see it looks exactly the same as the original except it has increased in size.

Very similar commands which seem to do the same thing but in this instance a very drastic result with additional work needing to be done to get the model to be the shape that you want.

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