Hi Ello,

> you select them all, select scale1d, set the initial values
> as it is now (origin and direction) and now when you scale,
> every stair step is scaled separately, not as a group like
> it is now..

The tricky part about that is that to "scale things separately" means to use a different scaling origin for each one.

It's basically the mechanism of picking a single overall origin point for the scale that makes things behave as a group.

It's difficult to have things all scale independently and also give good control over the scaling origin, because it would be awkward for example for the scale command to prompt you to click each different scale origin manually.

One possibility would be to cook up the scale origin automatically, like use the center of each object's bounding box or something like that. But for most purposes that would not really be that useful because after scaling the objects would probably not be lined up with one another anymore, they'd be either separated with some distance between each one, or possibly overlapping and punching through each other rather than maintaining the same relation to one another as they do when using a single origin.

- Michael