Easy way for drawing perfectly vertical and horizontal lines?

[Dilaco]

Is there a way to draw a perfectly vertical or horizontal line in Xara (Designer Pro 6) without manually lining it up with the grid? Sometimes I just need an instant horizontal or vertical line and I find I have to turn on the grid, zoom right in and meticulously place the pen tool so that the line is a perfect vertical (90 degrees) or horizontal (180 degrees) without slant or lean. Surely there’s a quicker and more reliable method?

[gwpriester]

Click the Shape Editor Tool on the page, hold down the Ctrl key, and drag your line.

The Ctrl key constrains the angle of the line to the default angles you have set in the Page Options > General tabbed section. I have my default Angle Constraint set to 15 degrees so I can use the Ctrl key to constrain any line drawn this way to 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90 degrees, etc.

[Fred C]

Use the Shape Editor tool (F4) and place the starting point and then hold the Control key when placing the end point. You can adjust the constrain angle by using theUtilities Menu > Options -> General (Tab) > Angle Constraint

[Fred C]

Mornin' Gary, you're up early and ya' beat me to the answer.

Cheers,

[gwpriester]

Heh, heh. I always get up early. I am a morning person.

[Dilaco]

Thank you Gary and Fred.
The funny thing is that I have been drawing 180 and 90 degree lines the hard way for years, with the odd vain attempt at getting a drawing tool do it automatically. Not long after posting the question, and before reading your answers, I experimented some more and finally found a couple of ways to do it (besides the Shape Editor Tool way).
I got results from using the Straight Line Tool and dragging the line with Ctrl held down; I also got results by using the Free Hand & Brush Tool dragging whilst holding down Ctrl & Alt. I already knew that holding down Alt whilst dragging the freehand tool created a straight line, but I didn’t know that by also holding down Ctrl it sticks to 180, 90 or 45 degrees.

[Fred C]

Hi Dilaco,
Hmmm...your profile states that you have Xtreme Pro 5 which didn't have the Straight Line tool. That's why didn't mention it. Glad you found several solutions.

[Dilaco]

Sorry about the confusion, Fred. I have now updated my profile.

For some reason when the forum pages display on my computer the particular software that a forum poster uses is not displayed. I just get "Join Date", "Location" and "Posts". Either that or I am partially blind?

I did mention in brackets of original post that I use Designer Pro 6, but I hadn’t updated my profile back then which caused the confusion.

Thanks for your responses.

[Fred C]

Click on your screen name (upper left) for options. Sorry I missed the "...Pro 6" in the OP.