Let’s take an explicit example of this.  Suppose we have a cube with vertices at: (0,0,0) (10,0,0), (0,0,10)…..  Suppose we transform this by rotating it by 45 degrees about the y axis.  Then the transformation matrix is: [sq2 0 –sq2 0; 0 1 0 0].  Now suppose instead we had a rectanguloid with corners at (10, 0, 0) (11,0,0), (10, 0, 10) ….  We can transform this rectanguloid into the first cube by transforming it as: [10 0 0 -100; 0 1 0 0; 0 0 1 0; 0 0 0 1].  Then we can apply [sq2 0 –sq2 0; 0 1 0 0] to the resulting cube, to generate the same image.  Or, we could have combined these two transformations into one:
[sq2 0 –sq2 0; 0 1 0 0]* [10 0 0 -100; 0 1 0 0; 0 0 1 0; 0 0 0 1]
= [10sq2 0 –sq2 0; 0 1 0 0]