Ovals round a circle?

Dear Geniuses (pardon my bad Latin),

Senility has set in, and I can no longer remember how to stick ovals around a circle. Need to do this for a client's site, for a gallery (patterns in the little ovals will show large in the middle), but think this is more a graphics question at the moment than a web question. This mock up was done in Illustrator by the client. I know Xara can do this easily, if I could only remember how. Have a feeling i have seen a tut illustrating this, but haven't been able to unearth it. All pointers greatfully appreciated. Thinking it might be a blend, but not sure. Can't persuade things to go round the circle, nor work out how to keep them equidistant. I am such a newb.

Thanks in advance.
Ali

that should be Genii or maybe geniae ... maybe :D

ok got a tutorial somewhere I'll dig it out, if no-one beats me to it first

Create a blend and then attach the blend to the circle.

Note: The blend steps will be centered on the diameter of the circle. But you can increase or decrease the diameter of the circle. The circle around which the ellipses are aligned needs to be a separate circle.

Once you've sorted the steps and size, select the blend path circle and set the outline and fill to none.

I knew I could rely on gary... and in case you get stuck - heres how I did it back in the day...

Hello All,

Just wanted to say thank you so much. That was so easy. Knew it was some kind of blend, but couldn't remember why! Really appreciate your taking the time to help me, including with illustrations.

All the best.

Ali

It could also be done as a custom brush stroke. Just make a single oval the brush, then adjust the spacing as needed.

If you use a brush, then you can use the Offset setting to move the ellipses off the circle.

Good morning. Sorry for the delay in responding, but in my defence, I was fast asleep!

Thank you for this, Gary. Am going to experiment now.

Ali

The method you might want to consider is using the constrain angle in the Page Options menu as it gives you a high degree of control. They are many tutorials which have used this method and here is one: http://www.xaraxone.com/tutorials/au...orial%201.html

Further on in the tutorial Gary goes into using the constrain angle in more depth and there are other tutorials using the same procedure.

Thanks, Albacore. Nice to have so many different methods available.

Happy Sunday.

Ali

I also thanks for the tutorials, tried to create and finally was succesful, but can I ask a short?

Why in the exported .png the petal borders are "not smooth"? On the Xara Designer screen it is beautiful smooth, but not in the exported file

Attachment 88060

Hm interesting, seeing now the uploaded file on the forum, it is not so bad.

Basically I opened the Xara exported .png in another program, it had black background and maybe that is why thought that the petal borders still needs some formatting.

possibly the other program not so good with the anti-aliasing

Yes thanks, it is the very old version of Paint Shop Pro concretely with version 5 so this is why.