offset paths

The offset paths option for shapes is very nice. I was just playing around with Astute Graphics AG offset plugin for Illustrator which came out a bit earlier. Something in the air apparently. The latter has quite a few more options but AE’s offset holds up well. Nice to see too how well it integrates with the other path operators also.

Had a few thoughts on offset copies on open paths .

-The connector which appears between copies of open paths should be optional imho. Would be much more in line with what's out there. 

-Would be nice to have an option to retain the original stroke. It’s easy to duplicate the path with original stroke, but it doesn’t play well with animating trim paths.  

-When copies go beyond the connected parts (when you push the amount//copy offset) paths will continue for a bit, flip and try to get back to the ehm …event horizon or eh ..terminator in a circular fashion. Hard to explain, easy to do :). There’s this cross hatch effect thats admittedly has a nice aesthetic about it but isn’t something I’d look for very often.

Was wondering as someone who’s used to cinema’s extensive cloning toolset and also having played with cavalry. I don’t see a path forward to having advanced cloning features with this way of cloning items. Maybe this isn’t the goal of extending the shape layer feature set, which is very welcome by the way. Just curious as how the plabt see this.