"In place" editing of more than one object - how complex is simple !!?

[mnahit]

As my question is hard to explain, I would like to give an example.

Suppose you have 5 rectangles on the screen. Select all of them and apply eg. a rotation of 10 degrees. Now the computer treats all 5 rectangles as a group and rotates THIS WHOLE GROUP OF 5 rectangles TOGETHER around their common center of rotation.
What i also wouuld like to achieve is i sould also be able to rotate each of the rectangles AT THEIR OWN PLACE, not around the collective center.

Got it? Simple, but tricky!!! You face the same dilemma on several other occasions, you know.
If anyone knows how to do it, please advice!!!

[GerryI]

With the 5 rectangles selected, go into the Rectangle tool, change the drop down on the InfoBar to Rotation and enter an angle in the editable field. Note, this only works if all the rectangles are at the same angle. If they aren't then the angle field will say Many, and changing the value will set an explicit angle for each one rather than adjusting each one's current angle.

Gerry

[handrawn]

EDIT - thanks Gerry, that's something I will need to look at myself

[mnahit]

So, simple but complex right .
I can start many questions now beginning with "what if..."
Are the other drawing tools have the same drawback!

[handrawn]

interesting - those quick shape options are something I rarely use

[amoore]

Hmm, mnahit. Sounds like you might be expecting Xara to be a mind reader. Suppose the function worked the other way around, but what you wanted to do was rotate as a group without actually grouping the rectangles...

Welcome to the forum, BTW.

[mnahit]

Hmm, mnahit. Sounds like you might be expecting Xara to be a mind reader. Suppose the function worked the other way around, but what you wanted to do was rotate as a group without actually grouping the rectangles...

Welcome to the forum, BTW.

I just multi-select individual objects. Why xara behave like they are grouped? Please try to skew (shear) 3 distinct text objects at once. Xara gives the result as if i've groped them just before skewing! This is nonesense!

"Hoş bulduk" BTW.

[GerryI]

I have to disagree with this and think that you calling it nonsense, even if English is not your native language, will not endear you to many people on these forums. You are applying the transformation to the whole of the selection as the 8 selection blobs around the whole of the selection indicate so the behaviour makes perfect sense. Allowing transformations to apply to the individual objects in the selection separately would require considerable changes and would have various difficulties for the UI: each object in the selection would need its own 8 selection blobs; rotation would either need a separate rotation origin for each object or to disable the changing of the rotation origin etc. If there were a large number of objects selected then the selection blobs would be very confusing and even with a small number of objects these blobs could end up on top of each other.

Gerry

[handrawn]

Are the other drawing tools have the same drawback!

sorry not sure what you mean by this

[MarcT]

Hi, another method would be to use live copies; Ctrl+click one instance, rotate it and the rest will follow from their respective center.

Marc