An ellipse is a shape that can represent not only an ellipse or a circle but also an arc (unclosed) or a segment (closed, an arc plus two radii going from the ends of the arc and meeting in the center):
To switch to the Ellipse tool, press 
or 
. Here are the ellipse drawing shortcuts:
Dragging on the canvas creates an ellipse inscribed into the (imaginary) rectangle that your drag creates.
With
pressed, that imaginary rectangle is first restrained to a square or an integer ratio (1:2, 2:1, and so on) and then the ellipse is inscribed into it.With
pressed, drawing starts from the center, so one quarter of an ellipse is inscribed into this rectangle instead of the whole ellipse. With both and pressed, you get a circle or integer-ratio ellipse starting from the center.When
is pressed, the behavior of the tool changes (see Figure 11-21). Now it draws an ellipse whose diagonal goes from the start to the end points of your mouse drag. In other words, you may start your drag in the 10:30 o’clock point on the ellipse and end at the 4:30 point, and the ellipse is squeezed as needed to fit this diagonal.With
, the tool always draws a perfect circle, with its diameter stretching from the drag start to drag end. This is convenient if you need a circle with the given diameter.Adding
to and works the same as without , but it will begin drawing from the center. You’ll just need to replace the word “diameter” by “radius” in the above descriptions.
One way to quickly create circles of a fixed size is by -click in the Pen tool in the Straight lines or Paraxial mode (14.1.4 Modes). The size of these circles can be set in the Inkscape Preferences pages for the Pen tool. Add to make them twice that size, or to make their size randomized.
Upon creation, an ellipse displays three handles: two square ones and a round one. Just like with rectangles, the square handles are the sizing handles, and the round handle is in fact two handles sitting on top of one another. In ellipses, however, the round handles are not for rounding but for turning an ellipse into an arc or segment, as we’ll see shortly.
As with rectangles, the sizing handles of an ellipse change the ellipse’s width and height in ellipse’s own coordinates instead of the document coordinates. No matter how you rotate or skew your ellipse, these handles remember the position of both axes of the ellipse and let you stretch or squeeze the ellipse with respect to these intrinsic axes, always preserving the position of the center:
Here are the shortcuts of the ellipse sizing handles:
Now let’s look at the arc/segment handles (the round ones). To make a segment (an arc plus two radii), drag one or both of these handles outside the ellipse; to make an arc, drag while remaining inside it. Of course the handle itself always remains neither inside or outside but exactly on the edge of an ellipse; the phrase “drag inside” refers to where your mouse goes while you have that handle grabbed. Note that the sizing handles remain functional and in the same positions as for a whole ellipse, which may be outside your arc or segment.
The controls bar of the Ellipse tool lets you specify the exact angles of an arc, turn it into a segment, and make the ellipse whole:
Note that unlike segments, arcs are unclosed shapes; in other words, the stroke only goes along the ellipse’s edge but does not connect the ends of the arc. You can make this obvious if you remove the fill, leaving only stroke.
Here are the arc/segment handle shortcuts:
With
pressed, snap the handle to angle increments (15 degrees by default, 6.3 The Selector: Rotating and Skewing) when dragging.- -click a handle to turn an arc or segment into a whole ellipse.
Remember that like all other shape parameters, start and end angles of an ellipse are remembered and reused for newly created shapes. It may sometimes be a surprise when you intend to draw an ellipse and get a narrow pie slice instead.