transformations panel

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Modeling - Editing

The Transformations panel

Scale, rotate, slant and flip a selection about a named point on its bounding box.

In depth: Transform tools, Selecting objects

The panel does four things to whatever is selected: scale, rotate, slant and flip. Each is typed as a number rather than dragged, and each happens about an origin you choose.

The nine origins

The origin is one of nine points on the selection's bounding box: the four corners, the middle of each of the four sides, and the center. Pick one and every transform in the panel measures from it.

Scaling about the top-left corner holds that corner still and grows the shape down and to the right. Scaling about the center grows it evenly in every direction. The same choice governs a rotation, a slant and a flip.

The box is held still between transforms

This is the behavior worth knowing, because it is the one people run into.

A transform usually changes the very box it was measured from. Rotate anything that is not symmetric about the turn and its bounding box is a different box afterward. So the panel holds the box for a run of transforms rather than reading it afresh each time.

Without that, the two halves of a pair would not line up:

• Rotate by 15 and then by -15 would turn about two different points, and the shape would not come back to where it started.
• A flip is worse. Mirroring about the left edge puts the shape to the left of that edge, so what was the left edge is now the right edge. Flipping again would walk the shape sideways instead of putting it back.

With the box held, a step and the step that undoes it return the shape exactly. The box is released when the selection changes.

What it acts on

It acts on the selection. Anchors picked within a spline are a selection like any other, so the panel scales a letter's terminal as readily as the whole letter. See Transform tools.

What it turns down

A spline whose anchors are driven by construction points refuses a transform rather than moving the free anchors and leaving the bound ones behind. A half-moved shape is worse than a refused one. Move the driving points instead, or unbind them.

Related

• Transform tools: Move, Scale, Rotate and Mirror as canvas gestures.
• Show Bounding Box: the handles that do this by dragging, on a selection of anchors.
• Align & distribute: lining several things up rather than transforming one.

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