How can I get Xara Designer Pro X10 to snap to a grid when stretching an object?

[shiphen]

Hello

If I select "snap to grid" , then when I create a NEW object it snaps to the grid. But how do I make Xara Designer Pro X10 snap to the grid when stretching (elongating) an existing object using the mouse?

Thanks

J

[shiphen]

P.S. Oh heck it has suddenly started snapping to the grid (when stretching an object) all by itself. Conclusion: It must have been a bug (??)

[shiphen]

OK I seriously do not understand this. Some of my shapes (rectangles created with the shape tool) snap to the grid when re-sizing and some of them don't. "Converting to editable shape" does not help. Cutting and pasting to a different layer does not help.

Oh for goodness sakes! If I create a new shape it WILL snap when I drag to resize it (by the little black squares), and if I paste the attributes of the new shape using Control/C on new shape and then Control/A on the troublesome shape then the troublesome shape suddenly starts becoming a snappable shape.

Is this a feature or a bug? (V irritating either way!)

EDIT:
Correction the above doesn't always work. It seems Xara sometimes gets into a bad mood for no apparent reason and stops snapping certain shapes. And then starts again. I can see no pattern.

[shiphen]

(Note: I am using Xara Designer Pro X10 (10.1.5.37495 CD x64 Mar 2015) running on Windows 8.1 x64 )


This is INSANE!! OK try this, everyone:

1. Open Xara
2. Create new file
3. Right-click ==> to show grid
4. Right-click ==> top snap to grid (and if necessary zoom in so that you can see you grid properly)
5. Click on Rectangle tool, click and drag to create a new rectangle. As you drag, Xara is snapping onto the grid.
6. Click on Selector Tool (V)

You now have your new rectangle selected - as indicated by the 8 black squares around it.


At this point if you change the size of the rectangle
a) by dragging the middle right square left or right ==> it jumps to the nearest grid point.
b) by dragging the top middle square up or down ==> it jumps to the nearest grid point.
BUT
c) by dragging the middle LEFT square left or right ==> it jumps ignores the grid
b) by dragging the BOTTOM middle square up or down ==> it jumps ignores the grid

WTF - Is this a BUG or a FEATURE ?

Now I do like being able to change mode easily but if you are changing mode then you need to tell the user that it has happened!

Trying to help

J


P.S.
It turns out that you can get Xara to change mode back to Grid snapping if you
1. holding down a left click on a black little square,
2. hold down shift
3. drag the little square a bit
4. Keeping the mouse left click still held down you now release the Shift key
==> You will now be in Grid snapping mode.

[Acorn]

I would say BUG.

Dragging the middle right selector left through zero with changes form snapping to continuous.

I imagine the developer didn't apply checks for all circumstances.

Acorn

P.S. I think you're the first to raise a Post and answer it three times in a row.

[Egg Bramhill]

I can't replicate this action in XDP11. Snaps to all guides whatever I do.

[shiphen]

I would say BUG.
P.S. I think you're the first to raise a Post and answer it three times in a row.

Apologies. I couldn't find a way to edit my post. Also in my defense, the 3rd was 3 days after the first!
That said I never did manage to fully answer my own problem.

Re XDP11 the upgrade costs for the top-of-the-range Xara products have recently become too frequent and too expensive.

Although I do broadly love Xara and have used it non-stop since Xara Studio about a million years ago, I don't really like the way Xara has been evolving. It is becoming more and more bloated and each upgrade costs yet another £85 or so.

Personally where I wish Xara would evolve is making the creation of diagrams (e.g. things like business process model / flow diagrams) easier. i.e. I would like to see connectors on shapes. And lines with arrow heads then finish where the line ends rather than "somewhere beyond the end of the line".

IMHO, Xara desperately need to start again with lots & lots of user trials with completely new/virgin users. And then entire interface needs to be rationalized and simplified so as to lower the learning curve.

I cannot begin to tell you how painful it is to watch new users - yes, even those who are highly "computer literate" and who might well know say Photoshop & MS Powerpoint pretty well - even those people struggle like crazy in the first half hour of Xara use!
Many of the things they try are perfectly sensible but for no good reason they don't do anything in Xara.

Another irritations is things like "lock scale widths" shouldn't be located on some fiddly button (which one a newbie user has accidentally unticked they will probably never find before giving up). Why cant we just use a corner selector and maybe hit control or shift to force the locking of scale widths?

And having "scale line widths" as the name of the option that makes lines snap to the center of lines rather then snapping to the edges of lines is unthinkably obscure! Absolutely bonkers. (Who on earth came up with that one?)

And having the "push tool" /Hand tool only available on a tool button or H is too painful too. Why cant we do something like Control/left-click drag (to move the screenful around), as happens in Photoshop.

And making it so hard to change the snap tool settings is equally irritating - particularly if your screen is full of shapes and you cant find any background area to right-click on.

I could go on...

It's all SUCH a shame because Xara is so brilliant in so many other ways. And the original Xara Studio was by far the simplest of interfaces to learn. Instead everything is become more complicated and harder to work out. And every time I demo it to a friend after a 10 minutes or so of use they all just give up saying "too complicated" / "not intuitive enough".