Quickest Keyboard Shortcut to Factor Scale
How to scale objects by a factor with only 2 button clicks without opening the scale tool! This lesson applies to VCarve, Aspire, and Cut2D.
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Video Transcript:
Hello everyone in this quick tip is gonna be a very short one, but a very useful one, and that is for easily scaling objects using a keyboard shortcut. So you could see this circle I have currently drawn on the screen, it is five inches in diameter. And let's say you wanted to make that 10 inches in diameter, the normal way you'd have to do that is go to your scale tool.
Make sure the right mode is selected, set your anchor point, make sure the X and Y is linked together. Then set your measurement 10 inches, then click apply, and then click close, and then you're back and you see that didn't take too long, but that is a lot of steps to go through just to make that doubled in size.
So if you wanna scale by a factor, there is a quick and easy keyboard shortcut to do that. So I'm gonna undo this and show you how that works. So just double click on the object. Grab one of these white dots to start scaling it. If you grab a corner, it will scale the length and the width at the same time. And then while clicking and holding, while you're dragging, you wanna type in your scale factor and then type the letter S.
So if you wanna scale it up by a factor of two, you're gonna type in two, and then the letter S. And there you go it just scaled to 10 inches. So as you could see, if you're doing it by a scale factor, that is much quicker than going to your scale tool and setting up all your settings.
And you could do any number you want, so if you wanted to make this three times bigger, you could start scaling it and type in three s, and now it is three times 10, so it should be 30 inches in diameter. And you can also see when you select it and look at the very bottom, that will tell you your width and height. Or you can go to your dimension tool or your measuring tool.
And just double check and measure it that way. And you'll see now it's 30 inches. And this doesn't apply just to circles. You can use this with any shapes. So let's try a rectangle and let's say we did it one by one inch rectangle. And we'll just put it right in there, click close. And if you were to double click on this, let's say you wanted to make it four inches wide, but want to keep it one inch tall.
You can grab just the side and type in four s and you'll see that will scale the width only by a factor of four. And then from there, if you wanted to scale the height and the width by a factor of two, you can grab a corner type in two s, and now it should be two inches by eight inches. And you can confirm that at the bottom of your screen when you select your object.
So I just thought that was a really cool keyboard shortcut I would share with you guys. And if ever wanna find more keyboard shortcuts, just like that one, you can go up to help and then click keyboard shortcuts. And that will open up Vectric's documentation on all the available keyboard shortcuts. Now, these can be very hard to memorize all of these.
I have quite a few of them memorized, but I've been using this for quite a few years. But I actually found a way that you could use all these keyboard shortcuts without memorizing them. So stay tuned to my YouTube channel because I will be releasing a video very soon on how to do that. But that's all for this video.
If you found it useful, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
Make sure the right mode is selected, set your anchor point, make sure the X and Y is linked together. Then set your measurement 10 inches, then click apply, and then click close, and then you're back and you see that didn't take too long, but that is a lot of steps to go through just to make that doubled in size.
So if you wanna scale by a factor, there is a quick and easy keyboard shortcut to do that. So I'm gonna undo this and show you how that works. So just double click on the object. Grab one of these white dots to start scaling it. If you grab a corner, it will scale the length and the width at the same time. And then while clicking and holding, while you're dragging, you wanna type in your scale factor and then type the letter S.
So if you wanna scale it up by a factor of two, you're gonna type in two, and then the letter S. And there you go it just scaled to 10 inches. So as you could see, if you're doing it by a scale factor, that is much quicker than going to your scale tool and setting up all your settings.
And you could do any number you want, so if you wanted to make this three times bigger, you could start scaling it and type in three s, and now it is three times 10, so it should be 30 inches in diameter. And you can also see when you select it and look at the very bottom, that will tell you your width and height. Or you can go to your dimension tool or your measuring tool.
And just double check and measure it that way. And you'll see now it's 30 inches. And this doesn't apply just to circles. You can use this with any shapes. So let's try a rectangle and let's say we did it one by one inch rectangle. And we'll just put it right in there, click close. And if you were to double click on this, let's say you wanted to make it four inches wide, but want to keep it one inch tall.
You can grab just the side and type in four s and you'll see that will scale the width only by a factor of four. And then from there, if you wanted to scale the height and the width by a factor of two, you can grab a corner type in two s, and now it should be two inches by eight inches. And you can confirm that at the bottom of your screen when you select your object.
So I just thought that was a really cool keyboard shortcut I would share with you guys. And if ever wanna find more keyboard shortcuts, just like that one, you can go up to help and then click keyboard shortcuts. And that will open up Vectric's documentation on all the available keyboard shortcuts. Now, these can be very hard to memorize all of these.
I have quite a few of them memorized, but I've been using this for quite a few years. But I actually found a way that you could use all these keyboard shortcuts without memorizing them. So stay tuned to my YouTube channel because I will be releasing a video very soon on how to do that. But that's all for this video.
If you found it useful, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
