On 3/13/07, Mazin <mazin@...1692...> wrote:
I've been working an a drawing that involves a lot of little objects that have to be placed in the right spots, and I've found that it's cumbersome using the regular transform tools.
I have a new idea (please tell me if it's been done before) for a tool that will make this much easier.
That's an interesting idea. But we certainly do not need to change the Selector tool for that. This sounds like it's best done by the Pencil or Pen tool that create paths with applied pattern, the pattern being that butterfly or whatever else you need. This will be just like you describe - draw a line, have the object scaled/rotated to fit it.
Even now you can already do something similar. Draw a few straight lines and combine them into one path. Select the butterfly, then select the combined path. Effects > Generate from path > Pattern along path, select "Single Stretched". This is almost what you need except for two things:
- It's not interactive - but it can and hopefully will be made interactive with path effects
- It scales the butterfly only along the path but not perpendicularly, thus distorting its shape. But I think it's fixable and worth a RFE to add a "Scale proportionally" checkbox to the extension.