Hey,

I recently installed Inkscape and first of all, I love it. I have worked through the build in tutorials and watched a few online tutorials to get familiar with the user interface. There is one thing, I can't figure out on my own. Is it possible, to align the handles of different nodes in a bezier curve vertical or horizontal? For example the two handles marked with the red circles in my attachment. I would like to get a symmetrical arrow. Therefore I want to align the two handles. I would like to excuse my bad language and hope, you understand my problem and that someone can help me



Martin

Hi.

Yes this is possible!
Here is how:

Pull a guide from the horizontal ruler to the top right node, pull a vertical guide to where you want the snap to happen.
Enable snapping of nodes (I enable all the snapping options and just turns off the one's "getting in the way" when I work).
The node handles will now snap to the guide lines.

Thank you, this is a solution. But what do I do, if I have more than two handles to align? Or is there a possibility to move more then one Handle simultaniously? In this new figure I want to move all the handles on the guideline a few steps to the left side. With your solution, I have to set the guidelines to the left, then select all the handles one by one and snap them to the guideline.



I think this problem appears often times in many projects, so I think that there should be some tricks to achieve this goal and I haven't found them yet.

No, unfortunately you can't move multiple handles all at the same time. Although I would love to see such a feature!

One thing I do, in this kind of situation, is use a grid, instead of guides. With a pixel grid, and assuming I have the object aligned properly, I can move any handle by the same amount (3 over, 5 down, etc.). And even tenths of a pixel, if you zoom in far enough! With snapping, it can go pretty fast and easy.

Also, there are some key shortcuts for moving node handles. You'll have to look up in Help manu > Key/Mouse Ref. I can never remember which is which, and I don't use them very often. But you might find them useful.

Edit
I saw something the other day about being able to move the node handles with keys.... Something I think someone is working on (a developer). But I can't remember where I saw it now.