I have been having this problem on and off.  Sometimes it seems to work and other times it doesnt.  I am tracing an imported autocad drawing and trying to make a non-uniform curved wall.  I initially drew several arcs and attached them via edit spline.  I weld all vertices, then use the outline to give my wall thickness.  When i do that, some vertices offset and some dont.  i have attached images which show the line previous to outlining and then the awkward result.  I feel that i am missing some kind of interpolation or distance setting.  If anyone has run into this, please let me know

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Spline Outline has been - iffy - for a while, despite a hotfix (Max 2008). It does work if the outline is “outwards” rather than “inwards”, so maybe trace the “inner” spline instead of the “outer” one. No other fixes / workarounds that I know of I’m afraid.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

There was a hotfix that solved the problem for us (AFAIK) but before that my workaround was to close the spline before outlining, then remove the unwanted segments and clean up the ends.  A little more work, but it gives you what you need.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

the hotfix hasn’t solved it - I keep on getting this in MAX 2009 Creative Extension

NIR

does it or could it have anything to do with the reference coordinate or selection center? i ask because in a way it looks like the outline is skewing. just a thought.

thanks for the insights.  i have resorted to using the sweep modifier which actually eliminates one step and gives me the flexibility of offsetting the final product in any direction as well as adjusting the width and height more easily.