Scale along rotation of object

[spline]

When you rotate an object I often want to be able to scale it along the rotation of the object so that it does not get skewed.

Right now I have to select nodes and eyeball the scaling.


You can see what I mean by drawing a box here and rotate it.
http://antimatter15.com/ajaxanimator/build/

The old way of scaling should still be default.

[steve.ledger]

Is this what you mean?



Also remember that in the first mode, holding SHIFT while scaling will keep the object centered.

► More Xara Demos here

[Odat]

I think he's referring to being able to scale a rotated object as if it's not rotated.

For example:

• Draw a rectangle 300x80 pix
• Rotate the rectangle 45 degrees
• Scale the right side of the rectangle so that the dimensions are 400x80

In Xtreme doing this will skew your shape unless you rotate it back to it's original orientation before you scale then, and then rotate it back afterwards.

[spline]

Yes that is what I mean.

In other word be able to rotate the scale gizmo so that it scales in the same direction as the object without skewing it.

[PhilM]

To change size of a rotated rectangle without skewing it:

Go back to the rectangle tool and drag the corner handles. If you want to retain either the width or height of the rectangle hold down the Ctrl key while dragging. (Ctrl means "Constrain".)

Or, in the rectangle tool, type in exact width and height in the infobar.

Phil

[spline]

Thanks, though the rectangle was mostly to illustrate.

In the realworld example I had made a pencil, that I rotated. Then later I wanted to change the lenght of the pencil.

[steve.ledger]

Basic demo of how to change length of an object (pencil shape) after rotating it.

[jvila]

I'm completely agree with spline, in every draw I've made it was a head ache, it would very very welcome xara incorporates this capability.
Every solution is a work around, when I have to scale a rotated object I select all the drawing and rotate it to get the piece in a position I can resize it and then again rotate everything to previous position.
Best regards

[angelize]

Steve your solution works well for a basic shape but wouldn't work for a drawing that was made up of several objects and shading objects. In that case for me at least there is no other option but to rotate it back to either vertical or horizontal and then resize it as none of the other resizing methods mentioned here seem to work.

I have attached a .xar file that shows a pencil made up of a few grouped objects and what happens when I try to rotate it using the different methods. I agree with jvilla and spline this is something that Xara should change.

[wizard509]

I fail to understand. With the aspect ratio locked the pencil scales perfectly even after any random rotation. Am I missing something here?