Donut graphic with 14 evenly sized segments...

[theinonen]

Concept of a reference point would be very useful for Xara as it makes some clever things possible.

Making separate sectors would be as easy as taking a line and then copying it around the object centre. Would also be possible just to trace single sector and then move the reference point of that object to centre of an imaginary circle and then copy it around the reference point as many times needed. Very easy and precise.

[Egg Bramhill]

Here's how I'd go about it.

Watch in HD

[wizard509]

There actually is a way to create a guide object that you can save as a template for creating a graphic such as this. I'm in a rush right now but if you can bear with me I'll put a tutorial together this evening.

I would be interested to see that myself Frances.

[slavelle]

Egg,

Thanks for the reminder about the selection of all objects of a certain color. I would not have thought of this way of doing the arrangement and further selection of a the whole lot of objects. As you were going through the process, I thought "wow, now there's a ton of objects to have to select and get rid of", but as soon as you said "blah blah blah name gallery blah blah", I knew what was next.

So, even if this isn't necessarily how I might have done this, it gives a great tip that can be used for a number of other things, I'm sure.

[Egg Bramhill]

Cheers slavelle. As always there's more than one way of doing things in Xara.

[theinonen]

Nice video but I think it is still lot of extra work when things could be much simpler and faster.

Here is how I would do it with help of wProCAD+.

I would just draw parallel line, then 2 circles and convert parallel lines to group to make them invidual lines. Then I would use multiple copy to duplicate that group 14 times around the other end of line and use 2 of those lines to cut sector out of those circles. After that just join lines to get the sector shape, move the reference point into centre of the circles, select multiple copy tool again, put quantity to 14 and hit ok button.

Finally just import to Xara and mission accomplished

[Michael]

"Weird discovery I made"

Following this discussion and seeing that there are some things still unsolved I tried to let Xara do what it does best, calculate and take thing out of our hands. To make a segmented thingy one could use the blend tool. To let them rotate you could use a circle as the path to follow. Then you have a construction that one can use to divide and let Xara do the math to calculate the angles.

The result turned out rather interesting. First of all, Xara doesn't let the lines attach to the line like I'd like to. Instead it chooses the center point of the line. When you select one of the nodes of the line you can drag it around and the blend will work like a spirograph.

Anyway, here's a construction one can use to divide a circle into segments without the need to revert to the mathbook and make inperfect calulations. As a side effect we have a construction that could possibly lead to new forms and uses.

segments.xar

[angelize]

I put together a video to show my method of doing this.

[bcire68]

I did a tutorial video on something very similar a few months ago. Perhaps you can modify what the tutorial shows to your needsl. I haven't looked at anyone else's methods here yet but mine has the advantage of getting perfectly sized slices without having to do any math. And as was mentioned above, there is always more than one way to skin a cat with Xara's Designer products.



I hope that helps,
Eric

[Acorn]

All the solutions seem to rely on Break Shapes, which is not available to Web Designer owners.

I have used similar to Eric's approach in the past, but to get round the lack of Break Shapes I created a Shape (Tool F4) to go over the pie pieces then gave it a Bleach transparency.
When you alter the Fill colour of the bleached shape you can change the appearance of the pie piece.
The overlay shape doesn't have to an exact copy; just mind the gap.

You can use the same shape to slice out one or more of the pie segments.
You are then left with free floating segments that can be coloured separately and move out for emphasis.

Same end result but another approach.
Apologies if I have duplicated anyone else's solution without passing on the credit.

Acorn