I am attempting to extrude many primitives directly up in global Y, so I have distance set to 0.

The docs seem to say I'd want to set ‘Transform Extruded Front’, set the xform there to 0, 1, 0, then under local control check to use zscale to scale this transform per primitive.

See “Local Frames”
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/sop/polyextrude [sidefx.com]

Also, this tutorial shows a Houdini 15 UI which has zscale:
https://vimeo.com/149640497 [vimeo.com]

My polyextrude node only offers X Direction, Y Direction, and Center, which appear to have no effect even when I set primitive attributes with the correct name.

Please advise!

at the moment you cant extrude in global or local space with zscale. it only works extruding without transform extruded front.

I am not sure why the documentation mentions the zscale in Local frames because it does not exist. Maybe it was planed to add but got forgotten. ?

It would be cool to have this option.

You should send a mail to support so it can be logged.

You can still make it work in a similar way.
Take a look at this

Did you forget the attachment?

I guess so = )

This totally does the trick. It's a little ridiculous, though .

What would you guys recommend for how to clarify to the folks in charge that there should be a way to do this in the polyExtrude node?

I'm all for the changes to move towards @attribute syntax, but polyExtrude seems to need a bit more thought since the 15 changes.

let see what H16 brings just one more day.
You can also send a RFE.

Seems to me it's the same in 16.