They should just let you think you got some, even when it’s to soon. Placebos can be really helpful!
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This is how people who are NOT on drugs do things. Maybe not as much fun, but probably more reliable.
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Great feedback (and entertainment)…
One thought I had is how it’s easy to understand what many of you are saying, yet the average person wouldn’t understand half the words used in each post. We’re a “superior” bunch, I think… 
It’s even more interesting that the chemically-crafted post by g2n was crystal-clear to me. Perhaps I’m living in an altered state, which I wouldn’t doubt.
Anyway, I’d tried some of these methods and they do work but are slow - I just kept thinking there has to be a more efficient way. I think evansd2 idea might work, and when I finish prepping for a few morning meetings, I can’t wait to try it…
I can at least share a file showing what I’m trying to do for the benefit of the like-minded problem solvers here. See the inset notch on the right? I made that by aligning a box like the blue one on the diagonal with the right vertical side, then simply subtracting the box from the shape. Takes seconds. On the box with the diagonal, the subtract operation is equally simple, but the alignment is what I’m trying to figure out. I left the panel (green) and reference line (red) in place to help illustrate what I’m trying to do. The panel will close that diagonal side, so alignment of the notch and tab is important. I’m not building a space shuttle and the extra time to manipulate manually is not really a big deal, but when I stumble over something so seemingly simple, I have to wonder if there’s a method I’ve not discovered yet…
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There are lots of potential methods, I think the node trick will work well for you.
As for understanding, I was pretty loose on the details because of who I was talking to. You’re not a newbie 
If you were some new user I’d have had to explain how to enter node mode and where the add node button was and so on and so forth.
There are a hundred ways to get the result you want. If it were me I’d have started with a known angle (it looks like 15degrees-ish), which would make lots of stuff later much simpler. We’ve all got our methods, hopefully the node trick will work out for you.
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I can think of 2 ways to approach this:
Way 1:
Do you know the angle of the notch? If so, why not rotate the whole thing that angle, do your work with a vertical line,
Then, you can use the Align and Distribute tools to make the blue and purples lines aligned on the left.
Then I would draw 2 lines, starting from the corners. If you have snapping on, you should be able to snap right to the corner. The lines I drew are the black ones in the next picture.
Then select the 2 lines, and the blue box, and use the this button to center the blue box between the 2 black lines:
Then re-rotate the whole thing back to the original.
Way 2:
The other thing you can do, is use the “enable snapping”. In the top left of the toolbar.
Then move the green piece to the top right of the black piece. The corners will snap when you get close.
Then you can rotate the green piece at that corner.
Click on it twice, so you get this (with the little plus in the corner):
Then move the little plus to the top right corner. This is the rotation point.
Unfortunately, that one does not snap, so you have to zoom in to get it just right.
Then you can rotate the green piece to the right angle. Again, you have to eyeball this one.
Then you can do a substract of the two pieces to get your notch.
Hopefully that helps a bit.
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You can absolutely snap the rotation point. It’s on the right sidebar.
EDIT: in your case, you’ve moved it to the top. It’s right there in your menubar.
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Click me:
Snap me:
Snap me:
Guide me:
Rotate me:
… and here we see that your shapes don’t match, size wise.
This may be by design. If it is, I’d go back to my node plan.
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Copy the line, rotate it until it’s flat, out things where they need to be, rotate all of them back, use align x to realign position, delete copied line leaving other pieces to incorporate into design
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Also, these two tutorials are great for figuring out alignment tricks:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Align.html
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Snapping.html
I believe they’re from a slightly older version of Inkscape, but still 100% relevant.
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Oh, that DOES help - I didn’t know you could move the point of rotation!! Thank you!
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It is - because ultimately I want to have a short ledge above the front face. This first round, however, I’m using chipboard (target will be acrylic)…
Angles and dimensions are arbitrary - it’s a bird feeder. Wanting to go thru the entire process then start over using what I’ve learned.
That I can do, but it was taking longer than I thought it should, hence the question.
I mean, isn’t it kind of intuitive to be able to align parts along a plane, vs. only vertically or horizontally?
Yes… I was using the manual. In fact, I still have the browser tab open.
The reason I was a little cagey about what it is for is that I have started building a store and expect to be able to sell these. Yes there are similar items out there but I’m incorporating some features that make mine different (and better) than what’s out there. The better mouse trap…
One thing not mentioned is guides. You can pull a guide fro the top side or corner and use snap to guide to set everything horizontal vertical or forty five degrees to those . you can also make objects and turn them into guides so off you want something say 37 degrees you can make a line, rotate it and then turn it into a guide.
There is another very useful tool called transform that you can type specifics of move scale or rotate using specific numbers.
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Thank you. Transform I’m familiar with but not the concept of guides.
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… except that I mentioned them twice, and even provided a picture. That being said, deep understanding of guides would be handy here, albeit not necessary. You can do all this with relative geometry, which is often simpler and less clutter than using guides. Things get overly snappy to guides pretty quickly when you have a ton of them laying around. Get familiar with edit->delete all guides, it’ll dig you out of a guide jungle.
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I second @rbtdanforth. Guides are very helpful too. You can rotate them to any degree you need and use them as the snapping point.
Using nodes for snapping and align is more precise, but getting familiar with all those shortcut icons and understanding their effects takes a bit of practice.
Guides are dragged onto the artboard from a ruler and plopped down. Double clicked and you can edit position.
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Haven’t been able to get back to this, but looking forward to this weekend!
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