Rectangles & Circles show as dotted lines

[Phill]

Where I have a file consisting of multiple layers, on drawing a rectangle instead of showing as a solid perimeter line it appears as dotted lines with the same appearance and colour as the regular guide lines. The line thickness slider has no effect on the width either. I have made sure that I am working on the selected layer but it makes no difference. What am I doing wrong?

[bcire68]

Hi Phill,

The like thickness comment pretty much sums it up. You are still drawing on the guides layer.

If you weren't and just happened to be drawing things with dotted lines, then changing the line thickness would work.

In the Page and Layer gallery, make sure that the Selected icon (arrow pointing up and to the left) is not on the guides layer but on the layer that you want to draw on.

I hope that helps,
Eric

[angelize]

It can be very easy to accidentally wind up working on the wrong layer when you have multiple layers, I keep the page and layer gallery open as default and if I need one of the other galleries I try to switch back to the page and layer gallery as soon as I am done, so I can always check what layer I am working on. Another thing you can do is keep the guides layer locked and only unlock it when you need to add or remove guides, then promptly re lock it. This way Xara will give you a warning that you are adding something to a locked layer.

[handrawn]

when your rectangle is selected it will tell you on the status bar [bottom left] which layer it is on
eg:
1 rectangle on Layer 1
1 rectangle on layer Guides

it is possible to rename a guide layer but its name in the gallery [and a drawn rectangle on that layer] shoud remain red AFAIK

BTW - there are no 'line thickness sliders' in xara that I know of - only drop down menus on standard bar at top, and on line gallery....