My Illustrator adventures, how I wish Xara had this!

[eobet]

Hello!

A while ago I made a thread after having a bad day, claiming that I didn't believe that Xara X was a commercial/professional grade software and that I would switch to Illustrator instead.

Well, as usual, the community responded with various work arounds, but also an unusually high number were in agreement (compared to when I began posting about inaccuracies and other things several years ago).

I actually wasn't expecting to be any happier with Illustrator. I tried to create icons with it before and found the need to switch between three different tools in order to draw and manipulate curves to be a huge pain (pen tool, convert curve tool and direct selection tool).

But my main gripe with Xara wasn't icon creation, but rather when I was creating originals for vinyl laser cutting and now with interface design.

And here's the suprise: When you go beyond simple shapes and onto managing a document with hundreds of grouped objects, Illustrator rules supreme. Just take a look at the screenshot below!

What you see in action can be achieved with a simple and quick double click. It's called "isolation mode" and enables exclusive editing capabilities to any selected group or compound path (translated to Xara, that's essentially includes both clipviews and add/subtraction operations, which aren't necessarily permanent in Illustrator).

This is further simplified by the layers panel (highlighted), which provides immediate and quick access to all objects in the group, in a hierarchial presentation, and also with their names and a thumbnail preview (which can be resized).

Two innovations which makes Illustrator speedier than Xara: Double click for exclusive editing of a group and an easy, visually structured and informative preview of your document elements (with full drag and drop support, also for adding/removing thing from a group or changing internal z-order inside a layer).

When I construct different UI layout examples, this is invaluable, and I can't see how I could possibly work as fast with Xara in a similar manner.

But yes, I do still use Xara for small icons.

PS. Sorry for the censorship, but the project is under NDA for now.

[pauland]

That's an impressive drawing of hat-wearing robots standing in line.. ;-)

Yes, Xaras layer handling and object hierarchies is basic to non-existant.

Paul

[Xhris]

Yes, people have wanted nested layers in Xara for a long time. But the last I heard was that it was not a trivial task to implement. This isolation mode seems to be an extension to managing nested layers.

[raynerj1]

Even tho Xara layer capability isn't the best, it is still a much much better program for complex drawings... Case in point... The attached screenshot is of a map consisting of 4324 objects on 33 layers. Without the bitmap the file size is 189K...

At work I have a newer vesion with over 10K worth of objects and 60+ layers and still opens 10 times faster as a .xar in xara than as a ai in illustrator. The file size is also 10 times larger as an illustator file.

what more do you want from a professional program?

[Albacore]

I have to use, like yourself, Illy during the day but a night in my freelance work I use Xara. I tend to agree with your comments that it would be nice to have nested layers in Xara but I really have to agree here with John with is comments. In January I had a housing report to publish for the local authority and they wanted a copy of the published PDF's and include in the doc. were many maps just like Johns and I was tied of having to wait for Illy to redraw every time I tried to move something. I got so frustrated with the time that is was taking that I saved it as a Legacy file and imported each layer in, one at a time and then positioned them correctly. Half way through the job I received Xpro through the post and I could directly import the OS maps into the doc and then do my illustration work to show the local authority land and houses saving me loads of time.

There are many things that I really like about Illy one being their brushes and the other is the way it handles colour. I also like the colour palettes in Illy and the way that I can select line and fill.

[jamesmc]

Unsure about the point you are trying to make. That Illustrator has things Xara Xtreme can't do? Yes, of course.

If you name all your objects, you can still group them and maintain the individual identity or function of each object in the group. Control Click if the object is visible, otherwise select name in the name gallery.

One can even perform boolean operations while the object is totally covered up (not visible) by other objects. Can also hide layers to make this easier. Before and after in boolean operation with green sphere completely hidden. The Top Green Sphere was named and part of the 4 object Green Sphere Group. Before image showing it was hidden and after image showing it with the Blue Sphere Layer invisible to see the results.

Glad you are finding your work easier with Illustrator.

[eobet]

Case in point...

what more do you want from a professional program?

Well, your example is a map where each name refers to a unique place, so an UI with n number of duplicated panels and buttons which have to be moved, resized and relabeled is a bit different, imo. But honestly, these photo realistic airplane and car pictures people post in the gallery... I don't understand how they manage those objects in Xara... but I guess when you trace stuff you don't have to change much.

I'd put it like this, if I had to choose to either walk (ie. Illustrator's slow performance) or hop on one leg (Xara's horrible layer gallery) for a marathon, I'd walk. I do believe I'll get to the goal just as fast, but without breaking a sweat and hey, I have time to look at the scenery!

But note, when it comes to icon creation, it is Illustrator which ties the hand around my back!

[markJ]

I like xara for its intuitive freehand drawing feeling, and ability to quickly
drag in photos as textures from the bitmap gallery.

but I really like in Illustrator the knife tool how you can slice up
through multiple objects and take them apart immediately,
it makes drawing easy because you carve your way through shapes
creating your own.

In Xara you select two objects, draw a line through them,
then select the line and the object underneath and press CTRL4
to slice the underlying object, sometimes you have to adjust the
line you drew for slicing as it doesnt slice properly the way you wanted
it to, and doesnt slice through multiple objects underneath, just one..

With the illustrator gradient tool the other thing I like is the fact you can
adjust the gradation of the colours between the colour points you placed
on the gradient with the sliders, you can only move the colour points
on the xara gradient line but not adjust the rate of gradation between
those two points when you have a multi-coloured gradient,
you can only do it when you have a two coloured gradient line in Xara
at this time.

but I still love Xara, great work of art it is...will only get better..
now it just needs to be able to work in vista 64BIT then I can start
using it again..
after 5 minutes it exhibits a lot of strange behaviour
like fills and bitmaps not working, only drawing in outline mode
and other glitches...but I`m patient for a good thing..

Mark.

[stratocast]

... but I guess when you trace stuff you don't have to change much.

Is that little dig? Tut, tut! You naughty boy.

[raynerj1]

Ummm... eobet,

The map I posted was the older simpler map. Each of the separate smaller maps where grouped and inported as 1 layer. The present map Has all 15 layers for each map. The position of each individual town on the map was shuffled several times before final print. Your UI can not come close to the complexity of that map. You only have the screen dimensions to worry about. No harder than a well thought out website. Try playing musical chairs with 15 layers worth of data that has to be positioned within 1000th of an inch... I would still rather do it in Xara.

So, for me, It is the professionals choice.