Donut graphic with 14 evenly sized segments...

Is there an easy way to create a doughnut chart and have it consist of 14 segments? I can't seem to make the Guide markers angular and it only allows me to use them horizontally or vertically. So is there a way to create a doughnut chart (ring shape graphic with hollow center) and have 14 evenly sized segments in the ring?

I'm sure there has to be an easy way but my brain is dead today...

thanks,

td

I attached an image to show more clearly what I'm after (created in Powerpoint)

I'm using Xara Designer Pro X v8

Honestly, I don't think there's an easy way to do this. There are several work arounds I do for something like this. But 14 pie segments is quite an "odd" number to work with. You have the best cheat though, I'd import that Powerpoint created image and essentially trace it by hand with the pen tool. Or make it solid black segments and attempt an autotrace. I cannot think of an easier way with 14 segments.

I gave a quick try - see if it makes any sense.

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Originally Posted by glenngosack

I gave a quick try - see if it makes any sense.

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That seems to be the most logical way. Honestly I don't see why Xara doesn't allow the guides to be rotated various degrees.
But I will try your process and see how that works for me....


thanks

td

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Originally Posted by TDolce

Is there an easy way to create a doughnut chart and have it consist of 14 segments? I can't seem to make the Guide markers angular and it only allows me to use them horizontally or vertically. So is there a way to create a doughnut chart (ring shape graphic with hollow center) and have 14 evenly sized segments in the ring?

I'm sure there has to be an easy way but my brain is dead today...

thanks,

td

I attached an image to show more clearly what I'm after (created in Powerpoint)

I'm using Xara Designer Pro X v8

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Set your options for the rotate to 26 degrees...unless you want an exact number. But this is close visually.
Draw one line. Leave it selected.
Show the rotate handles by the toolbar icon or click a second time on the line.
Hold your right mouse button down over one of the rotate handles, click using the right mouse button and hold the CTRL key down. This should rotate a second copy of the line.
Do this 6 times. Select all the lines.
Set the line weight to the thickness you desire for the gap between segments of the pie chart.
Convert Line to Shape.
CTRL + 1 to add the shapes to a single shape.
Draw your Pie. Two circles that with both selected, (and after centering them), press CTRL+2 (if I recall what I did properly...).
Move the Pie shape below the lines shape.
Select both shapes, hit CTRL + 2.
Break Shapes to color individual Pie pieces...


Mike

Create the doughnut by using a smaller circle to punch out the hole in a larger circle. Then use the Quickshape tool to make a star with 14 points, the same size as the doughnut. Also create a tiny circle. Align the doughnut, star and tiny circle; the tiny circle indicates the center of the star. Now draw lines from each of the star points to the tiny center circle, 14 lines. Delete the star, group the lines. Convert the lines to shapes: shift ctrl S. Select everything and hit ctrl @. That cuts the circle into your fourteen segments. Now break the shapes apart (Align menu > Break shapes). This gives you 14 independent segments. Of course, the width of the 14 lines determines the separation of the segments.

Edit: Yeah, what mwenz said!

You can place any line or object on the Guide layer. They are then guides.

Agreed. My calculator says that 360 / 14 = 25.71428571428571, which is not easy to work with (though you could round to 25.71). So trace a segment, clone it, and rotate 25.71 degrees. You'll have a bit of a gap when you get back around (0.06 degrees, which will likely not be noticeable).

-- Ben

There actually is a way to create a guide object that you can save as a template for creating a graphic such as this. I'm in a rush right now but if you can bear with me I'll put a tutorial together this evening.

man,...what great ideas! I will have a lot to try out now....
Thanks all!!!

Concept of a reference point would be very useful for Xara as it makes some clever things possible.

Making separate sectors would be as easy as taking a line and then copying it around the object centre. Would also be possible just to trace single sector and then move the reference point of that object to centre of an imaginary circle and then copy it around the reference point as many times needed. Very easy and precise.

Here's how I'd go about it.

Watch in HD

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Originally Posted by angelize

There actually is a way to create a guide object that you can save as a template for creating a graphic such as this. I'm in a rush right now but if you can bear with me I'll put a tutorial together this evening.

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I would be interested to see that myself Frances.

Egg,

Thanks for the reminder about the selection of all objects of a certain color. I would not have thought of this way of doing the arrangement and further selection of a the whole lot of objects. As you were going through the process, I thought "wow, now there's a ton of objects to have to select and get rid of", but as soon as you said "blah blah blah name gallery blah blah", I knew what was next.

So, even if this isn't necessarily how I might have done this, it gives a great tip that can be used for a number of other things, I'm sure.

Cheers slavelle. As always there's more than one way of doing things in Xara.

Nice video but I think it is still lot of extra work when things could be much simpler and faster.

Here is how I would do it with help of wProCAD+.

I would just draw parallel line, then 2 circles and convert parallel lines to group to make them invidual lines. Then I would use multiple copy to duplicate that group 14 times around the other end of line and use 2 of those lines to cut sector out of those circles. After that just join lines to get the sector shape, move the reference point into centre of the circles, select multiple copy tool again, put quantity to 14 and hit ok button.

Finally just import to Xara and mission accomplished

"Weird discovery I made"

Following this discussion and seeing that there are some things still unsolved I tried to let Xara do what it does best, calculate and take thing out of our hands. To make a segmented thingy one could use the blend tool. To let them rotate you could use a circle as the path to follow. Then you have a construction that one can use to divide and let Xara do the math to calculate the angles.

The result turned out rather interesting. First of all, Xara doesn't let the lines attach to the line like I'd like to. Instead it chooses the center point of the line. When you select one of the nodes of the line you can drag it around and the blend will work like a spirograph.

Anyway, here's a construction one can use to divide a circle into segments without the need to revert to the mathbook and make inperfect calulations. As a side effect we have a construction that could possibly lead to new forms and uses.

Attachment 103399Attachment 103400

I put together a video to show my method of doing this.

I did a tutorial video on something very similar a few months ago. Perhaps you can modify what the tutorial shows to your needsl. I haven't looked at anyone else's methods here yet but mine has the advantage of getting perfectly sized slices without having to do any math. And as was mentioned above, there is always more than one way to skin a cat with Xara's Designer products.



I hope that helps,
Eric

All the solutions seem to rely on Break Shapes, which is not available to Web Designer owners.

I have used similar to Eric's approach in the past, but to get round the lack of Break Shapes I created a Shape (Tool F4) to go over the pie pieces then gave it a Bleach transparency.
When you alter the Fill colour of the bleached shape you can change the appearance of the pie piece.
The overlay shape doesn't have to an exact copy; just mind the gap.

You can use the same shape to slice out one or more of the pie segments.
You are then left with free floating segments that can be coloured separately and move out for emphasis.

Same end result but another approach.
Apologies if I have duplicated anyone else's solution without passing on the credit.

Acorn

Thank you for the fine video tutorials Frances and Eric. Much appreciated, learned a lot.

Hi Acorn,

The OP mentioned using Designer Pro 8. However if you are using web designer, I suppose that you could use a modification of my method. You could use the shapes that I drew and then instead of subtracting them, send the shapes to the guides layer and then use the guides to draw the donut pieces using the shape editor tool.

Eric: Thanks for sharing your video with us.
Acorn: I hadn't thought about Web Designer's lack of Break shapes, but as Eric suggested once you get to the final break shapes stage in any of the methods the shape could be placed on the guides layer and traced.
Larry: You are very welcome, it's always a good feeling to know I've helped someone learn.

Hi Peeps,

A couple of interesting points raised here.

@ Angelise, cheers for the video. Just one point I'd raise is that because you forgot to hold down Ctrl when you created the polygon you then adjusted the polygons dimensions to equal sizes. No issue with an equal number of sides on a polygon, it's not the same for odd sized polygons. These odd sided polygons will not have equal dimensions. Nit picking I know but I just mention that not all polygons are equal in width/height.

@ Eric, I can't really understand why you consider it fine to rotate lines in whole numbers but when it becomes a decimal point rotation it requires a completely different approach. Xara will rotate lines/objects to any given value entered into the rotation box, I don't know to how many decimal places, but at least 3 decimal places. The rotation box may only show to one decimal place, and this can be changed to show more (tho it messes up the UI), but it rotates to the angle entered, and doesn't round up or down.

Just my observations ;)

Can you use the Shape Editor tool in Web Designer to delete points? If so you could delete all points apart from one arc shape, clone & rotate it around a centre point.

You are more than welcome, Larry and Frances.

@ Egg:
It isn't that I have a problem with decimal points, it was that the number of places went beyond what my calculator would show and I wasn't sure how many decimal places Designer Pro will accept before it rounds them up. If you want to get the sections mathematically perfect, then using a star is better than rounding decimal places. To be fair, I also wasn't thinking in terms of copy and paste but rather entering in those numbers manually for each new clone. The copy paste method does make things easier but the mathematically correct argument still stands. Though, again to be fair, you probably can't tell the difference between the two.

Yes - another good tip to remember that the point around which the object will rotate can be moved, including outside of the original object. So even with Web Designer, once you have the outlines where you want them, you can just draw one of them, move its "transformation center" position to the center of the whole object (the circle), and then right click/rotate/copy around that point to align your copies over the ones that are not separate objects.

Hi again Eric,

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I wasn't sure how many decimal places Designer Pro will accept before it rounds them up.

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I wasn't trying to make any serious issues/points here just pointing out something of interest. I've experimented and found that Xara quite happily rotates a line/object quite accurately up to 10 decimal places (after this I got bored) Just stating there's no rounding up.

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Though, again to be fair, you probably can't tell the difference between the two.

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Quite agree.

@Egg: you are quite correct :)

Here is yet another Xara solution (YAXS), using the Pie Chart Widget: Attachment 103442.

The fun part is you can click on the bottom legend controls and turn it into a Pie Chart with 14 down to no segments.
If you click on a Segment itself you get hover text and the Segment extending out; toggling returns it back into the pie.

I hid the centre with a white circle and you could do similar for the legend.

Acorn