Rounded Rectangles and *Fixed Radius* Curvature

[jvila]

While the shape is stlll a QuickShape, using the QuickShape tool you can change the drop down to size and use the controls to change the size of the rectangle without screwing up the curvature.

I thought I saw Charles say something once about this that indicated that while using the QuickShape tool you can interactively size the shape, but I can't find it now (I was probably hallucinating) , and I don't have Xara handy at the moment to see if it works.

I made a rectangle with round corners and strech the rectangle and curvature changes, what am I doing wrong?, can you upload a mini tut, please?.
Best regards

[Odat]

Using this technique you can change the size of the rectangle and the curvature always remains properly curved without getting skewed.

Note that the curvature setting seems to be a percentage or ratio of the full dimensions of the object, so a 0.2 radius on a 100x100 object looks visibly smaller than the same 0.2 radius on a 500x500 object.

Thus, if you size an object bigger or smaller, the curvature remains properly round but may need to be adjusted depending on what you're using it for.

[JLX]

JLX I am not aware of any way to assign a preset curvature.

Thanks anyway (to everybody). I guess I wasn't missing something mind-numbingly obvious after all.

I hope this is something that get's addressed in a future patch. Cheers, -Jon.

[jvila]

Using this technique you can change the size of the rectangle and the curvature always remains properly curved without getting skewed.

Note that the curvature setting seems to be a percentage or ratio of the full dimensions of the object, so a 0.2 radius on a 100x100 object looks visibly smaller than the same 0.2 radius on a 500x500 object.

Thus, if you size an object bigger or smaller, the curvature remains properly round but may need to be adjusted depending on what you're using it for.

Ok, I can see, I was trying to reduce in height and there the effect is different.
Thank you very much

[gwpriester]

Resize the rectangle.

Clone the rectangle and turn off Curved Corners.

Draw a new rectangle to this size.

Apply Curved Corners and edit.

[Odat]

Yeah, I never really noticed before (I don't use curved rectangles very much apparently), but the curvature is a ratio and not a unit like pixels or whatnot. In fact Xara warns you about that if you try to type something like "12px" into the box. So when the scale of the object changes, so does the apparent curvature that's applied. On the other hand if you start off with shapes of those sizes and apply curvature, you end up with the same effect. On the bright side, at least this technique stops it from looking elliptical.

[covoxer]

One more funky solution.
Copy your rectangle to Web Designer, resize it there with selector tool, then copy back to Xtreme.
WD preserves corner radius (in pixels) when resized with selector tool, and preserves radius scale (in proportion to the object size) when resized with rectangle tool.
Just in case if you don't know.

[MarcT]

Using this technique you can change the size of the rectangle and the curvature always remains properly curved without getting skewed..

Thanks for the trick Odat, I hope to remember this when I need it!

Marc

[Xhris]

The selector tool is really a transformer tool. Just use the rectangle tool to resize rectangles and keep curvature unchanged. Or turn on "Show object edit handles" (Ctrl+Shift+2) in the selector tool and use those. Really there's no bug that needs patching. But there is a question over design that makes this problem keep cropping up. Xara have addressed this in WD (the changes may be in the next Xara version) as John says above where you can now use the selector tool to stretch rectangles and maintain curvature aspect ratio. You would then probably have to convert to an editable shape if you don't want to keep curvature though now, or maybe there's an alt modifier or something to disable the curvature lock which would be better.

[BONES]

I do this a lot with my UI design and I can't say it's ever annoyed me. Yes, converting to shapes is a workaround, strictly speaking, but it doesn't really require any extra work and it makes it much, much easier to be accurate [nudging vertices instead of pulling on a resize handle and trying to get a consistent value].