I'm almost a complete novice as I've forgotten most of he little I learned about a year ago.

I've opened a new file as an A4 landscape page and drawn a rectangle 145 x 85 mm.

But how do I now make what I know must be a very simple next step: draw a circle centered at 15 mm from the rectangle's left and 10 mm from its top?

Background: I will be making 10 circles altogether, for drilling holes in a box lid.

Screenshot

Sorted! After a little more study it proved as easy as I'd suspected. First position the rectangle itself at (0,0), then set the individual circles by measuring from that point. At least, I hope that's the simplest method?

Except that I see Inkspace defines the position of a circle not as its centre, but as the bottom left corner of an imaginary square enclosing it.

Maybe type in the expressions:

Thanks Tyler. Not entirely sure what your video is doing but I suspect it's similar to what I did?

If for example one of my circles was orignally specified (based on its centre) as (x, y) with a diameter of d, Inkspace placed it too far to the right and too far above by d/2. So I selected it and changed its position  toi (x-d/2, y-d/2).For example (15, 55) became (15-2.5, 55-2.5) = (12.5, 52.5).

I'm wondering if there's a faster way of changing nine of my 12 (not 10) circles. They all have diameters of 5 mm and are arranged in 3 rows of 3, equally spaced. Could I perhaps use the alignment tools?

BTW, I was also trying to do it visually with the guide lines. Is there a way of setting their positions manually, as there is with other objects?

The animation illustrates entering expressions in the numeric fields for changing location relative to current location.

Double-clicking on a guide opens a dialog for precise positioning.

Thanks, understood.