Hello,

I have version 0.48 of Inkscape. I looked on the forum for free rotation of an object but could not find any posts for it. The only rotation seems to be 90 degrees. Is there a way to rotate an object freely? Thanks for any help.

Welcome aboard!

If you click on objects twice with the selector tool (F1), free rotate handles appear in the corners of the object's bounding box.
You can set the origin to any position, as it is placed with a handle in the centre of the objects by default.
By holding down Ctrl, the rotation snaps to numbers of 15°.
That value can be set in inkscape's preferences panel (Shift+Ctrl+P) to other angles, at the steps option.
Also, there is a transformation panel you can use for rotations (Shift+Ctrl+M).

Note that Lazur said to click on the object twice. That's not the same as double-clicking. Basically you need to click once to select it, then pause for a fraction of a second, then click a second time to toggle to the rotate and skew handles.

You might find my tutorials in Full Circle Magazine useful (the magazine is a free download). I think this question is covered in the first or second part.

With an object selected you can also type shift-S to switch to rotation and shear mode.

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. I was surprised that there was no free-rotation tool or command in a drop down menu. Hopefully in a future update, there will be one.