Resizing or Reshaping Objects

You can resize objects to make them longer or shorter in only one direction or to make them proportionally larger or smaller. You can also stretch certain objects by moving an included endpoint, vertex, or control point.

Lengthening

You can change the included angle of arcs and the length of some objects. You can change the length of open lines, arcs, open polylines, elliptical arcs, and open splines. The results are similar to extending and trimming. You can alter length in several ways:

• Dragging an object endpoint (dynamically)
• Specifying a new length or angle as a percentage of the total length or angle
• Specifying an incremental length or angle measured from an endpoint
• Specifying the object's total absolute length or included angle

Stretching

To stretch an object, you specify a base point and then a point of displacement. Because stretching moves the endpoints that lie within the crossing selection window, you must select the object with a crossing selection. To stretch with greater accuracy, you can combine grip editing with object snaps, grip snaps, grid snaps, and relative coordinate entry.

Scaling

With scaling you can make an object larger or smaller, but you cannot alter its proportions. You can scale it by specifying a base point and a length, which is used as a scale factor based on the current drawing units, or by entering a scale factor. You can also specify the current length and a new length for the object.

Scaling changes the size of all dimensions of the selected object. A scale factor greater than 1 enlarges the object. A scale factor less than 1 shrinks the object.

You can also scale by reference. Scaling by reference uses an existing measurement as a basis for the new size. To scale by reference, specify the current measurement and then the new desired size. For example, if one side of an object is 4.8 units long and you want to expand it to 7.5 units, use 4.8 as the reference length.

You can use the Reference option to scale an entire drawing. For example, use this option when the original drawing units need to be changed. Select all objects in the drawing. Then use Reference to select two points and specify the intended distance. All the objects in the drawing are scaled accordingly.

You can also specify the reference length by selecting a base point and two reference points and dragging to specify the new scale.