Sun Rays

[Albacore]

I was doing sun rays for an ad in a newsletter and I had a thought of doing it in a different way! I now have two methods of doing them in Xara and I wondered if anyone has a different appproach to make it even quicker to do.

1. Page Options under General tab make the constrain to 12 at the most. Draw a rectangal with the long edge running vertical. Shift+Ctrl+S to make the shape editable, press F4 to select the Shape Editor and Select both bottom nodes, use the down key to get length that you want the rays to be. Still with the Shape Editor select single Node and move them in or out to achieve the ray shape that you want. Remember how many times you hit the Left or Right keys as the shape must be symetrical. Hold down Shift+Ctrl+R to bring up Rulers, Drag a ruler from the left hand side and with the Magnetic Snap to an Object on drag a Guide out to the Centre of your rectangle. From the top ruler drag a Guide and place where you want the Origin to be but below your shape. Click and the object again and drag the Centre of Rotation down to where your Guides cross, you may have to click on Show Rotation Handles to be able to do the last operation. With your shape still connected drag your shape to the right with one of the top Rotation Handles while holding down the Ctrl key, when it shows itself in the new position ckick on the Righthand Mouse Key. Repeat again holding down both Ctrl+Lefthand Mouse Key untill you have completed all around, You can stop at the position at 6 o'clock, Ctrl+Alt+G (soft group) and then duplicate Ctrl+K and hit the Flip Horizontally key but that can give you a thicker shape in one area. The all you have to do then is to hit Ctrl+A then give the shape a colour of your choosing and then maybe a Circular Transparency

2. Go to the Line Gallery and select the Dash directory and Click on the 2nd (top right), This will give you a circle with a broken line right around the circumference of the circle,Draw a Circle (L) while holding down Ctrl with no fill and a Line thickness of 8pt, make sure you don't have a larger dash at the 12 o'clock position. Convert Line to Shape (Alt+B). Use Ctrl+K to clone the circle and with the Padlock selected to Lock Aspect Ratio in the top menu bar put in a value of somewhere between 10% to 20%, Hit Ctrl+A to select all and then select the Blend Tool, Drag with your mouse from large circle in to your small circle (I do it from the 9 o'clock position as I can see when the line is straight). Edit the number of steps in the Blend Edit tool bar in the Top Menu Bar from 5 to around 70.
Give your rays a colour and maybe a Circular Transparency.

I thought the second method was easy and quicker to do but as I said before there must be other ways to do this and I would like to see them.