I sometimes miss the possiblity to type in my starting point / drawing point with x,y coordinates in 2D drawings. Is that possible? (I know the possiblity to use modify - position and size, just sometimes find it would be nice to alternatively type it in).
Is it possible to draw in real 3D?
It would be very nice and a big step and super enhancement to be able to type in the points using x,y,z coordinates as in eg. autocad. Is it realistic / possible?
There is no direct input of coordinates of a point in the UI. For classical shapes like polygons and Bezier curves, you can set a snap point. Then switch to point mode for the shape and drag the point of the shape to the snap point. Of cause you need to enable “Snap to line”. I have the toolbar “Options” open as default, so I have a short access to whether I want snap or not. In addition I set the snap range to 15 pixel in Tools > Options > Draw > Grid; that gives a noticeable jump to the snap point when dragging.
The points of the custom shapes (those which show only “shape selected” in the status bar) are not determined directly, but they are drawn using formulas. If you save the document in Flat XML format (file name extension .fodg) then you will see the calculation in the part “enhanced geometry”. For details on such calculations see Create a New Custom Shape in Source in File - Apache OpenOffice Wiki
The 3D situation is a little bit difficult. There is no way to set full (x|y|z) coordinates directly. But you can define an 2D-object and transform it using a transformation matrix. For example you can define a line in the x-y-plane and rotate it using a transformation matrix to turn it into a z-axis, see attached file CoordAxisRotiert_mit_cube.odg. (Resave it to Flat XML, extension fodg is not allowed for upload here.) Except cube and sphere all objects are defined by a svg:d path attribute. If you want to work directly with coordinates you need to work on the file itself or to use macros.
Using the UI it helps a lot, if you switch off “perspective” and work in parallel projection. Working in UI you have to be very careful to transform objects themselves and not to transform the scene or the 2D-picture of the scene.
Thank you for your very extencive answer.