Best practices for projects that may need to be resized or have a layout change

[k-drive]

I recently finished a large project with many layers. I was thinking that, in order to resize the project in Inkscape, it might be better to create a back-up copy of the finished file, put all the objects into one layer in that new file, group all the objects, and then resize the one object group. The back-up file with the original layers would allow you to make changes easily, if they are needed. And, of course, you just want to back up something that's important.

Working with one object would be better than multiple objects when the page size/dimensions need to be changed, or when the final piece needs to be moved on the page to add other objects because the layout changes.

Obviously the best thing to do is to think about how big the final product needs to be, or to finalize the layout of objects in a project in the first place. But, I'm betting that people who have a lot of experience with Inkscape have run into this resizing/layout change problem before.

[Moini]

I usually just select all objects, then use the resize handles or the selection tool's tool controls bar to resize.
To resize the page, there's (from 0.92 on) a menu item that allows you to do that quickly:
Edit -> Resize page to selection.
You could create a rectangle that defines the new page size and select it, for example, then after resizing, delete it.
Or you can use the document properties to set regular margins for your whole drawing when changing the page size.

I've never made a backup for this operation.

But, there's one caveat: If you're using 0.91, then resizing all the layers will have a weird effect with (tiled) clones, some extensions (and LPEs?), resulting in dislocation of items when applying them to your objects that are in a resized layer. This is fixed in 0.92, though.

[brynn]

Yes, backup file definitely recommended for large projects!  In fact, consider setting up Autosave globally (Inkscape Preferences > Input/Output > Autosave) for all projects.

If you did have to scale or move the entire drawing to a different place on the canvas, I agree that grouping could be helpful.  But since grouping automatically puts everything into one layer, it could also be problematic - especially if there are several or more layers.  To me, grouping would not be necessary.  I would just 'select all in all layers' and scale and/or move everything at once.

If the reason the entire drawing needs to be moved, is because you changed the page size, and you need to re-center it, there may be a better solution.  Have you found Document Properties > Page tab > Page Size > Resize page to content?  With that, you would just have to scale the drawing.  Then resize page to content changes the page size to match the drawing (or selection).  It also offers margins, if you don't want the page exactly the same size as the drawing.  So you don't need the extra step to re-center the drawing on the page.

I'm not clear what you mean about layout change.  Is this something like an infographic?  If you just want to move certain parts or sections, you might be able to use layers to help with selecting the right parts.

(Moini sneaks another message in while I'm typing  )