Skew command

[Paul King]

Fairly often I would like to be able to stretch things while translating the stretched end to one side, or just skew a selection of elements without changing dimensions (mostly in 2D)

This applies particularly when drawing details from sections cut at an angle through raking elements, that would appear orthogonal if cut at another angle

Modelling to get the skewed shapes directly involves too much unnecessary effort for a one off detail (eg through a specific manufacturer's aluminium window profile), and limits ability to directly abstract away unnecessary lines etc that do not " tell the story you want to tell" with the detail.

I would like also for 2D library parts to allow skewing.

[__archiben]

i've also often wanted to 'resize' in one direction. it strikes me that the x, y, z locks could be placed in the 'resize' dialogue and then letting us control it 'graphically' would allow us the freedom we need?

Paul wrote:
I would like also for 2D library parts to allow skewing.

there's also always the marquee tool

~/archiben

[Paul King]

Hi Ben - not sure if I quite get comment re marquee tool ?
I guess in a very simple sense you can use it to skew end of lines etc that occur within a marquee, but no way to make the skew of multiple elements proportional to the distance from point of rotation - i.e. so all selected elements distort consistently with respect to each other - including circles, library parts etc

But getting back to your comment re axes - I think that perhaps a "warp" command might be an elegant catch all description of desired functionality - where the distortion occurs according to nominated scale factor AND rotation for each axis
Even cooler, though less used, would be ability to have parametric distortions of axes - eg to define helical distortions, bulges etc for any element - all WITHOUT the need to drop the native properties of the individual objects involved or to create a new library part each time.

Might finally be able to knock Gehrey off his perch then! (I don't think)