Is there an easy way to shear or skew a solid?

Like selecting a reference edge or two points (and maybe axis) to shear against?

Kind of like the move face but to "distort" the entire solid.

The twist tool and the stretch tool can deliver a huge variety of distortions, including the ones you want. You're not restricted to a single entity, either, so you can use sacrificial solids that make the transformation easier to reference, or include multiple objects to one influential action.

Thanks guys.. the Stretch and Twist are definitely functional tools to help create nice asymmetrical forms.

Normally when I want to skew a rectangular prism for example, I have to go through all the following steps:

step 1> convert prism to curves/lines
step 2> deep select points at one end
step 3> use gripper or translate tool to move selected points along an axis to a given distance
step 4> re-create surfaces from all sides
step 5> stitch surfaces together to form the new solid

Now unless there's a much easier way to do this, doing this I lose my original primitive!

This is why I want to have the selection tool to be much more efficient for example:

1) ability to select any vertices independently
2) ability to select any edges independently
3) ability to select any faces independently

The deep select SHOULD be able to ALWAYS do this, but fails to much of the time. It seems to have odd rules for selecting and transforming. Sometimes I use SILO which is obviously better for Sub-D modeling, but I enjoy the fact that I can select said entities easily and manipulate them with what would be it's version of the "Gripper".

This would be great for so many things including better freeform modeling but with exact measurements unlike in Silo. More+Better freeform modeling tools are always welcome!!!!