Gumball scale

So, if I drag a Gumball arrow or type a value it represents distance.

If I drag the little square on the opposite side it scales by factor, correct?
I wish it could be possible for Gumbal to scale the same like bounding box, not by factor but by distance.

Does it make any sense?

Perhaps @mikko can take a look at this.

Hi Yianni- do you mean the scale handle would move that distance?

-Pascal

Align the gumball to one edge, shift- drag the square handle to the other end. Now start dragging. Then enter a number. The distance between gumball and the widget will be locked to the entered distance… That means, whatever you enclosed, will scale to the entered value.

@pascal , Yes I think this is what I mean.
I want the ability to enter distance numbers in scale widget, not scale factors.

@HaLo I tried what you suggest, but find it impractical.

Lets say I have a sphere of random diameter and I want to transform it to an ellipsoid of 6 by 4 by 3 units.
BoxEdit is my friend, but I want Gumball to be my friend too.
With the current gumball functionality, (assuming it is aligned to object center)
I have to drag manually until I reach half of the numerical value I m after to get.
Hope I made some sense.

Hi Yianni,

While not obvious, this is already possible. Right click Gumball on status bar, and select “Snappy Dragging”. It means the gumball origin will be used as the reference point for moving and scaling.
Then, start dragging a scale handle, and while dragging type a distance and press Enter or right click. The scale handle will be constrained to that distance from the gumball origin.

Hi Mikko,

Thank you, I think you are suggesting the same like @HaLo.
Although perfectly doable, not practical in my opinion.