What is the best way to radius a corner where two lines meet?

[shiphen]

Appreciated.

> Xara Designer Pro is an illustration, photo editing, web designing application not a CAD or Engineering App.
Mind you with the new "Snap to shapes" tool, it's powers are starting to getting closer to the latter.

P.S. It's deeply frustrating - the point about illustration is that one has no idea what radius one will need until you see it.

Interestingly the "Freehand and Brush" tool has a thing called "freehand smoothing" (%age) that does something very similar to what I am talking about, but smoothing out any rapid changes of direction...

[Soquili]

I can appreciate that but with the many changes over the past 11 years it seems to actually be getting further away from being the latter.

[mwenz]

I am a little confused. Is it an exact radii needed at the example 45/90 join, or is it free-wheeling as one designs?

In either case, it is pretty easy to draw a circle during design to the radii needed and alter the curve handles to achieve the desired bend in the line join. Heck, if it is "simply" meeting design aesthetics, I make the curves to please the eye--which is how I have always free-wheeled during design.

For more precision, the circle works well. For yet more precision (like needing accuracy to 0.0001"), other tools are available. Both have their places.

Take care, Mike

[handrawn]

Steve is your question for me or John?

for john.. but it's been answered along the way

[handrawn]

mike - you have covered what I was going to suggest

[Soquili]

Yes Mike has provided the "best way" in my opinion.

[shiphen]

In either case, it is pretty easy to draw a circle during design to the radii needed and alter the curve handles to achieve the desired bend in the line join. Heck, if it is "simply" meeting design aesthetics, I make the curves to please the eye--which is how I have always free-wheeled during design.

Mike yes, fair enough - in principle... however the problem I was having is that when I came back to curves created using the curve handles, particularly if/when re-sized, they eye started noticing and questioning whether they were nice simple curver or some horrible weird (e.g. assymetric) compound/exponential curve!

One trick I have just discovered is to use the contour tool using 'Bevelled join' so as to get a true arc/radius (e.g. set steps to 1, and then ungroup the results, and break the resulting shape up using the Shape Tool and breaking points etc)... and then resize the whole thing until I get a curve I like and then move the ends of the line afterwards.

On the up-side it does generate a true arc of a circle, but on the downside it's still quite messy & time consuming... :^/

J

[mwenz]

I understand.

What I am unsure about is whether all this pondering is to solve a design issue or a technical illustration issue. I think both instances, while certainly overlapping, are different in nature. As well, if I were sending a drawing to CNC, I would certainly open the drawing (via PDF) into TurboCad.

The new screen shot is zoomed in to 400%. One the printed page, one would be hard pressed to see--and therefore care about--being a little off in this very, very quick example (while I was composing the message).

If this was for the mentioned CNC, it would certainly not be adequate. But, having done many CAD intended for CNC, I still begin in my drawing application and take it into TC for making it as absolute as needed.

Take care, Mike

[zaphodeist]

Another way ...

[rpc9943]

A good example would be: how did soquilis batman logo up there get to have perfectly round curves in xara?