Hi

I am trying to do a ball and stick diagram, where the sticks (or rods) need to be rotated in different directions and then extended or shortened lengthwise.

However, in Inkscape, resizing is always done according to the global horizontal and vertical axis (a dotted rectangle is superimposed on the object as you do the dragging). For this purpose though, I would prefer resizing to occur along the direction of the length of the rotated rod, and not along its width - but this does not appear possible. IT would seem that object resizing must always be done according to the global horizontal and vertical.

This means that resizing is best done before any rotation .. so it would mean lining up all my rods horizontally first and deciding their length before rotating them and putting them into place.

However, I have just started with Inkscape, so this limitation may be wrong. Anybody any comments, workarounds for this?

Cheers!

if the rods are just straight lines rather than groups or whatever, you can node edit it and then drag the nodes with Ctrl+alt to restrict the movement to the direction of the cure.

That does the job, yes. Many thanks Simarilius, good advice, appreciated.

I have another question. but the topic is different, so I'll create another thread.