hi all,
I am sure the answer will be obvious but I’m a little stack.
how can you scale an object (non uniformly) to a specific size?
(the native scaling tool is a percentage of the initial size, I want to be able to define a specific measure e.g. make a sphere be 4m tall, 2m wide, and 1m thin)
Use Scale NU to scale the sphere. Measure the existing sphere’s dimensions (potentially you could measure its bounding box). Then for X, Y, Z do Desired Length / Current Length. That will be your scale factor for each direction.
Hi Michael!
This is the best solution??? I was sure there would be a faster way! (I mean more automated)
EDIT:
You are saying that this is currently the simplest way to scale to size?
certainly not!
(I mean not computationally, but it takes setting up)
I was expecting something like this:
(where relative interprets inputs as factors and absolute interprets them as units)
…something for Pufferfish 3.0 !!! 
still not simple enough! I want a single component!!!
(hahaha, now I’m just nagging, I know, but simple operations add up to huge canvases. I’m of the philosophy that you must automate simple tasks as much as possible.
You know, in sketchup they have a nice trick:
when you scale, you type the factor. but if you press ‘m’ for meters in the end, it interprets it as absolute units and scales the object to that size. It’s a very smart trick to achieve different outputs with the same tool.
(that’s why I would suggest a scaling component that gives you the ability to change it from ‘relative’ to ‘absolute’
The absolute option there isn’t as straight forward to be an option on scale NU I think. Relative is easy because you just increase / decrease by percent. Absolute or unit based requires you first to measure something then do the math, then scale to the units. The thing is what and where you measure from could be subjective (even though in this case we do the bbox of a sphere).
still not simple enough! I want a single component!!!
(hahaha, now I’m just nagging, I know, but simple operations add up to huge canvases. I’m of the philosophy that you must automate simple tasks as much as possible.
Cluster it 
already ‘bricked’ it.
but now I start understanding what you say: if the center is outside the object, you could scale it to a specific size but wouldn’t know where to put it…
I see the complications now…
(although, you could just scale it relative to the bounding box’s closest point to the scaling center and leave it there)