Hello,
I have been searching for a solution to not being able to obtain a circle shape from the ellipse/arc tool. Instead, all I get is a dotted rectangle with movable control squares and circles that can make the rectangle change shapes. I have it set for full circles, and the visibility button at the bottom set high. I have reinstalled (a few times), searched tutorials and instructions but they seem to get a circle to work with from the tool, not a dotted rectangle.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Hi.

The dotted rectangle is the object's bounding box, therefore it does work.
Change the rendering mode to outlines only (view/display mode/outline or Ctrl+5 on the numpad twice) to see a bit more.

By default the tool uses the last style attributes. Even if the fill is at 100% it may not seem to be there, as white over white, unset fill or fill with 0 alpha value.

Change the fill attributes/add stroke in the fill and stroke panel (Shift+Ctrl+F).

Also see Brynn's guide: http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/inde ... article=18