'HELP' - Two shapes, into one..

[j-a-m-i-n]

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;

[David O'Neil]

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

[bcire68]

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

Eric

[bcire68]

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

I hope it helps...

Eric

[JimToal]

Would'nt the Blend Tool be simpler?


Jim Toal

[bcire68]

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