Scale

You can use the Scale tool to enlarge or reduce the size of objects in your drawings. There are two basic ways of scaling. The first is to use the interactors and the second is to define a length and thus modify the dimensions of your objects. There follows an explanation of both methods.

Using interactors to scale

Mark the object to be scaled and select the Scale item in the Tools group, Edit tab. The object will now have yellow dots at its corners. These are scaling interactors. Click on one of these interactors and move the mouse. As you can see, depending on mouse position, the scaling can be carried out in one or in two dimensions or with the proportions maintained. A further mouse click will conclude the scaling process. As an alternative to changing the size with the mouse, you can use the keyboard to set real values.

The screenshot on the left shows how to scale a rectangle using an axis of scaling. Axis snap makes it possible to enlarge the element in one dimension only. In the right-hand screenshot an axis of scaling is also used, but here the Axis Snap has enabled proportionate enlargement.

If you are hoping to scale entirely freely, it is advisable to deactivate Axis Snap either using the appropriate item from the context menu or by pressing G.

Scaling using a length

Scaling in this way is based on a preset length. The procedure is demonstrated in an example. There is a table in the design. The task is to use a certain length as reference and to increase that length by a certain amount so as to have enlarged the whole object. First the table is selected and the Scale tool started by clicking the appropriate button. For greater clarity, the scaling interactors are deactivated with the context menu.