'HELP' - Two shapes, into one..

Hi all,

It's been a long time away from the forum for me - not that i was originally a regular anyhow. What i'm trying to say is; i require help, though i may not actually deserve it. I haven't really helped any of you guys (& ladies) out as i am 'that much' of a newbie. I would really appreciate it if someone could forgive me for my lack of knowledge and kindly help me find a solution to my problem.

The Problem;

I have a shape - well two actually as i want to create a virtual 3D drawing. I have therefore created a shape the bottom of the virtual 3D image and duplicated it above and in line with the original one to use as the top of the virtual 3D image. When it come to accurately - hopefully by slicing, deleting and or joining multiple nodes, to form the side of this virtual 3d object, i have a major problem. I cannot seem to join nodes together from two shapes that appear seperate but have been combined together as one using; combine shapes > add shapes.

I could reproduce it with dodgy slicing or drawing it from scratch and adjusting nodes but I was wondering for my own personal knowledge and this project, if any of you VERY kind people have an accurate systematic approach to this.

The image on the left illustrates the top and bottom images (of which are identical to each other) and the one on the right should hopefully give you an idea of what i hope to achieve.

Help in any form would be graciously appreciated.

This attached image will hopefully illustrate things better than any text i could write, can;

If you are looking for something like the following, perhaps the .xar file will help you out? If not, I don't understand your question.

Best wishes,
David

If it is something more like this that you are looking for, I can provide you with the method that I used.

Eric

I decided to just go ahead and post the tutorial...

I hope it helps...

Eric

Would'nt the Blend Tool be simpler?


Jim Toal

Jim,

The answer is it depends...

If you are using outlines or are constrained by file size, then perhaps not. In the example that I used, the original shape didn't contain any outlines, but if it did the outlines would show up in the blend. Also, if one is concerned about file size or render speed (something not usually a problem with Xara, I admit), my example leaves the user with 2 shapes instead of 50 (or more or less depending) shapes by using the blend tool.

So, while this is another example of multiple ways to accomplish the same effect in Xara, it might not always be the best way depending on what you are trying to create.

Eric

In your example, at step 2 instead of drawing a rectangle you could make a blend of some number of steps (say 20) between the top and bottom circles, then convert to editable shapes, ungroup and add all of the shapes together.

If you used enough blend steps, what you end up with is a single shape that's exactly what you want, and then you can put your cloned second ellipse on top and bob's your uncle, as they say.

The downside to this method is that depending on the shapes that you're using, you may end up having to use the shape editor to remove a lot of redundant nodes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Odat

In your example, at step 2 instead of drawing a rectangle you could make a blend of some number of steps (say 20) between the top and bottom circles, then convert to editable shapes, ungroup and add all of the shapes together.

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This is true. You could do that but it adds even more steps by converting to editable shapes and ungrouping the shapes. My method is faster and cleaner (for me).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Odat

If you used enough blend steps, what you end up with is a single shape that's exactly what you want, and then you can put your cloned second ellipse on top and bob's your uncle, as they say.

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I have to disagree with you here. What you actually get is several shapes in a single blend. If you don't believe me set your view quality to about 25% and you will see the several shapes in the blend. This brings up the possible file size and render speed issues that I mentioned in my last post, depending on the complexity of the drawing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Odat

The downside to this method is that depending on the shapes that you're using, you may end up having to use the shape editor to remove a lot of redundant nodes.

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In my example, I was able to do one drag select of all of the nodes that I wanted to delete and press the Delete Nodes button once. While this IS dependent on the shape, I don't think that I have ever had to do more than 4 selections/deletions. IMHO, 4 does not equate to a lot.

Having said all of that, I do give credit to the possibility of doing things other ways. Using a blend is probably an easier way, but not necessarily the best way IMO. I provided a tutorial for how I would do it. I learned this method by doing one of Gary's tutorials years ago and I have had a lot of success in using it. If other people have success in creating an effect in other ways, then I am happy for them. No one else, however, has taken the time to provide a tutorial on other methods for creating the same effect.

Eric

Eric has the right idea. NOTE, there are nodes (4) at the tangents (bulges) ... .you could break those node apart, delete the inner halves of each ellipse, the join the remaining halves together ... this eliminates trying to align the rectangle's edges prefectly to the bulges of the ellipses.

See:
http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest05/html/2.htm
http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest05/html/4.htm
http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest05/html/5.htm

The problem with a blend and then adding shapes is you wind up with a ton of unnecessary control points and a not smooth line unless you use a really high number of blend steps.

The rectangle as a bridge shape and then add shapes (IMHO) is the more elegant and efficient way to go.

Gary