Multi-Stage Blend Confusion

[jpavel]

Hello,

I've been trying to extract the logic behind Xara's handling of multi-stage blends, but am having trouble.

Here's an example. I have these objects:



and create a blend between the left two



now, to continue with a multi-stage blend, I connect the bottom control point of the second object with the bottom control point of the third



All well and good. However, if I had tried to connect the top point of the second object with the top point of the third, like this (screenshot taken just before I release the mouse button)



Xara decides to blend from the first object to the third.



Eventually, by trial and error, I can get my multi-stage blends working, but it's inscrutable why it works logically sometimes, and why not.

Thanks for any insight into this,
Jesse

(.xar file attached too)

[Acorn]

Jesse, I created my own shapes and found that dragging the link from the third to the blended first and second will consistently provide the same effect dependent on whether you drop the drag at the top or the bottom of the blend.

• At the top, I get the your second effect.
• At the bottom, I get your desired effect.

If you go to Xara's Help for "Using the Blend Tool", there is one telling phrase: "Blending between different control handles gives different blend patterns."

I hope this helps.

Acorn

[Fred C]

Hi Jesse,

The path on two lines (yellow and pink) needed to be reversed; Shape tool (F4), Reverse paths
The attached .xar file has sequential blends from each pair starting with the yellow, clockwise to the lavender.

[jpavel]

Thanks, Fred C and Acorn, for trying out the blend yourselves.

As you said, in that file, I can get the blends to work by going right to left, or reversing paths - but why this is true for certain groups of objects and not others is not apparent. Getting what you want is possible, but is sometimes tedious.

"Draw Blend, Undo, Draw Blend a different way; next object blend, undo, try a different way, etc."

For instance, regarding the reversed path, here's another .xar file, Blend Test 2. The lines have arrowheads on them, so you can see that they're all in the same orientation. Yet, here, it is the green line that needs reversing, rather than any other. Oddities!

Thanks,
Jesse

[Fred C]

Jesse,
It works fine here; just be careful to select the 'arrowhead' point on each line to make the respective blend.

[wizard509]

Worked fine here too. In fact it worked easier than the previous one, at least for me.