I'm obviously new to inkscape and similar programs...

I've created an ellipse shape and now want to place small stars evenly spaced around it.... kinda like 'text to path' where as the stars would be the text.

Anyone?

Hey! I know the answer for this!

- Draw the ellipse and the star.
- Copy the star to clipboard.
- Go to Path > Path Effect Editor.
- With the ellipse selected, find the "Pattern along path" on the combo box of the dialog box that appeared. Then click Add.
- Now, in "Pattern Source" choose "Paste path" (the little clipboard icon).
- Select "Repeated" in the "Pattern copies" combo box.

That's it. You can delete the original star if you want.

If you want to adjust the shape of the star, then open the dialog and click in "Edit on-canvas" (the small "nodes" icon).

One thing to investigate is how to make this effect to NOT distort the star... But that is as far as my knowledge goes.

Hope it helps.

Good stuff... thanks ukt!

That got me pretty close to my desired results and will certainly work for what I need.

However, like you observed, the distortion is something I'd like to fix.

You can use stroke markers to get them without distortion, or scatter extension.

Markers are put on nodes, so convert the ellipse to a path, select Node tool, select all nodes, press Insert to insert new nodes in between the old ones, convert your object to a marker, then select the ellipse and set that marker on Stroke style tab.