Selection area is bigger than the object

[charliescoffee]

I’m having a peculiar problem. I’m doing a logo that includes a series of softballs which I created in Xara and which use some live effects. They’re coming out of the remainder of the deisgn. I started with the largest, copied it, reduced it, copied the largest again, reduced it smaller than the second and so on. Then I put them in order overlapping so that the smallest was farthest back. Next, I want to make them progressively more transparent. Up to this point, everything seems to be working well. Then, I select the second smallest, clone it, shift>select the smallest then ctrl/2 to subtract out the overlapping part of the shape, because when they go transparent, the underlying part will show through. After I subtract the shapes, if I select the smallest, the area of the pasteboard selected becomes very large, even though there doesn’t seem to be anything there. I carefully examined the group in the Object Gallery, clicking on each object (I’m beginning to like the new Object Gallery) and found something that was selecting a very large area, deleted it, but the group still selects this large area and there doesn’t seem to be any objects left that would cause the selection to be so large I did this on the balls that I copied and moved away from the rest of the shape to make it easier to see what’s going on.. This is a problem because when I try to select the entire logo, I can’t include the progressively smaller balls because the area I drag around the group isn’t large enough. Also, I’m worried that there’s something there that I can’t see that will cause problems later. Does anyone know what’s happening?

[haakoo]

Hi,

You say you use live effects?
If so,sometimes it creates an area bigger then the actual object and this might explain the larger surrounding size.
If you want to get rid of this,simply create a bitmap-copy and then have a
object slice out the shape you want to preserve.

Or have a 99,5% transparent object overlaying the shape and have this set as the hit area

Hans

[charliescoffee]

Yes, this is what I had to do. Interestingly, sometimes the bitmap copy would be even bigger than the original, although most often somewhat smaller. Well, I learn new things all the time.

[handrawn]

The live effects that do this by and large are producing bitmap texture, and the boundary area is the actual size of that bitmap [visible object + alpha]

Basically the bitmap size is determined by the maximum needed by the effect to produce the final result, so it will depend on what process takes place whilst the effect is working

[Ron Duke]

Not sure if you noticed this or not, but you have an object located way off the page.

[jeffb]

Can't see any trouble here can select anything I want group etc. and it only uses the drawing, nothing outside.
It does not do anything that you don't expect, have tried but only the object is selected nothing bigger.

[steve.ledger]

Well spotted Ron...
I've been caught by stray objects left on the pasteboard before

[handrawn]

yes nice one Ron

[charliescoffee]

Yes, thanks, I also caught this later when I was cleaning up the item. Who knows how these things get all the way out there, but I've also had it happen before.