Trimble Business Center

I've been offsetting lines quite a bit today and it struck me that having a check box for the "side to offset" instead of a drop down would be much quicker.  Any binary choices like this would make sense.  A drop down should be used for rarely changed items, multiple options, or items that completely change the menu.  For example, changing the linestring from straight to arc makes sense to have a drop down due to the many options.  Likewise, changing a linestring from coordinate to station offset changes the entire menu, so I can see why a drop down would be best - although it would be nice if it remembered your last choice and started new line strings that way.  

I don't know how difficult it would be to make this change, but I can't imagine it would be too difficult and it would be a significant upgrade in productivity.

I agree, if you know the direction of the line you are offsetting.  Most of the time I don't know which direction the line I am offsetting is going, so it would be a 50/50 guess when choosing left or right.  What I like about the way the dropdown works is that you don't have to pick left or right, you can just click in the plan view on the side of the line you want.