Thank you for taking the time to read this post and help me. I am using Inkscape for the the first time, and trying to create a simple drawing of a bunch of straight lines radiating out from a central point. It's several hundred lines, so I don't want to do them manually. I am trying to use the Tiled Clones dialog as described here: http://inkscape.org/doc/tips/tutorial-tips.html however I cannot seem to acheive the same results. Here is exactly what I am doing.

1. I create a new document with a page size of 36in x 36in, with a 1in grid.
2. I use the Bezier curves tool to draw horizontal line from the center of the page out to 1in from the edge. Then I adjust it to be exactly: X=18, Y=18, W=17, H=1px
3. I select the line and go to Edit->Clone->Create Tiled Clones.
4. Rows, columns is set to 1x179. Use saved size and position of the tile is checked (by default).
5. On the Symmetry tab I select P1: simple translation.
6. On the Shift tab I set Shift X: / Per column to -100% and Shift Y: / Per row to -100%

Now, at this point if I press Create I get exactly what I expect, 179 clones exactly on top of my original line. However, I want to splay them out radially and evenly in a circle so:

7. On the Rotation tab I set Angle: / Per column to 2.0 degrees.

Now when I press Create I get 179 clones, but they do not all have their origin at the same point in the center of the page. This is difficult for me to explain, but each line is slightly rotated as I would expect, however the center point of each line moves progressively around a large circle. What I'm trying to achieve is a starburst like effect, and what I'm actually getting is a very large circle effect created by drawing 180 tangent lines every two degrees around its circumference, if that makes sense.

From my research so far (and just from looking at the results), it seems like I would just need to move my center of rotation but I might be doing something wrong there because it has no effect. Well, what I'm doing has no effect, whether or not I'm actually moving the center of rotation is not clear. What I'm doing is selecting the line twice to get the rotation handles, zooming way in so that I can see/grab the + sign in the middle of the line. Dragging that + to the origin of the line in the center of the page. Whatever that does, it has no effect on what happens when I press create.

For that matter, checking or unchecking "Use saved size and position of the tile" has no noticible effect. Setting Alternate or Culmulate on either the rotation of the shift tabs causes different effects but not the one I want. I've also tried various combinations of those options to no effect. And now I've degenerated to a form of problem solving that I call "flailing", and it's about as effective at solving problems as it is at preventing drowning.

Thank you for any help.

I tried, and it was
Move the centre of rotation
and
Uncheck "Use saved position"
that worked for me. Before unchecking, they rotated about the object's centre, ignoring the move (oh, yes, the "+" is the centre of rotation, or should be).

Is it possible that some accidental grouping or similar means that you're not actually cloning quite the object you think you are?

wdc wrote:Now when I press Create I get 179 clones, but they do not all have their origin at the same point in the center of the page. This is difficult for me to explain, but each line is slightly rotated as I would expect, however the center point of each line moves progressively around a large circle.

Did you at some point change the page format/orientation before working with tiled clones? If so, add a new layer in the current document and create the tiled clones on that new layer. Alternatively, use a new (default) document to create thew tiled clones, and adjust the page size after the tiled clones have been done).

Known bug, repeatedly discussed here in the forum IIRC

Thank you for the suggestions. I was able to solve my problem by moving the point of rotation, generating the clones, selecting all and using the alignment tool to bring them all back to the same center point.