Help needed in drawing subatomic particle spirals

[WildRice]

Particle accelerators like Cern, smash atoms which send of subatomic particles that leave traces on plasma. The charged particles spin away in tightening spirals. How would I use Xara PGD9 to duplicate these tightening and often imperfect spirals with Xara? I could do them free hand on my Intous tablet, but it would be hard to get just right. I was hoping Xara could add more precision but still allow the spirals to be assymetric and not look too perfect. Any ideas and examples?


Subatomic particle tracing from Cern

[angelize]

Xara doesn't have a spiral quickshape, It's been asked for often over the years but hasn't been included. There is however a free spiral generator that you can download from the Xara Xone shareware pages in the archives. SPX was created by a TG member Dmitry Malutin for use with Xara. you can drag and drop directly from SPX into Xara and you will get a vector line. To get the imperfectness you could then use the shape tool to edit it.

[Acorn]

I've tried using the Shape Tool with Curve and Smooth join set.
I set two initial point, then a third 90 degrees and half the length.
The fourth 90 degrees again and half the length of the third.
Repeat until bored.

You then have to adjust the curve slightly between the first and second points and the last two.

You can vary the ratio of adjacent lines.

You can throw in a Mould Envelope to get a perspective.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Here's my atempt. I used Inkscape to create the spirals, only two of them, cut & copied into Xara. The copy on the right is a 85% jpg, the one on the left a 40% jpg which gives it a rougher texture.
The spirals where to accurate & required pulling about a bit.

[WildRice]

Those look great, thanks everyone!