Scaling Proportionally with Units of Measure

This tip explains how to scale objects proportionally using unit measurements rather than with percentage values. It uses a unique formula that you enter into the Transform palette. I guarantee you'll like this one.

Version: 7 and above

This tip will definitely come in handy when you want to scale an object proportionally, both by width and by height using units of measure such as inches, points, etc. For this example I'll be using a variety of object shapes to show you how this works.

First I want to scale the rectangle proportionally with the height of the oval. I need to find the measurements of the oval so I select it and view the object's dimensions in the Inspector palette. Here we can see that it is 1.5 inches tall. This will be the new size for the rectangle. By doing the same for the rectangle, I see that it is 2.5 inches tall. This is the old size. Remember these measurements.

Next comes the fun part. There is a special formula to enter into the Transform palette to apply to your object. Here it is and what it means:

100*newsize/oldsize
100	This is the percentage value to use. Since you want it to be exact, leave it at 100.
newsize	You enter the new size that you want the object to be in units of measurement depending on how your document is setup. This can be in inches, points, etc. It can either be the new height or width of the object.
oldsize	You enter the old size of the object you're changing in units of measurement depending on how your document is setup. This can be in inches, points, etc. It can either be the old height or width of the object.

Now I enter the special formula using the measurements I remembered from above. I type 100*1.5/2.5 into the Scale % field in the Transform palette. 1.5 is the new height in inches and 2.5 is the old height. As you can see, it scaled the rectangle and you can check the new values in the Inspector palette. FreeHand reads this code and automatically figures out that your using the height values by reading the object's attributes. This works with the width values as well.

Now I want to scale the star shape proportionally with the height of the oval. First you must Group special shapes like these in order to see the dimensions in the Inspector palette. Once you do this, remember the height value, here it's 1.18878. This is the old size. You can actually select and copy the measurement within the palette so you don't need to remember measurements like this that are complicated.

Again, I enter the special formula using the measurements I remembered from above. I type 100*1.5/1.18878 into the Scale % field in the Transform palette. 1.5 is the new height in inches and 1.18878 is the old height. Since I copied the measurement from the height field from the Inspector palette, I can easily paste it into the Transform palette. As you can see, the Transform palette shows the new scale percentage value.

I then used the same steps in order to scale the width of the oval proportionally with the width of the star. For the oval I entered 100*1.577245/3 into the Transform palette. 1.577245 is the width of the star and 3 is the old width of the oval.

Well I hope all of that made sense. It is a great way to scale a single object or groups of objects proportional with each other. I suggest printing this out and saving it somewhere for future reference.