Macros or Custom tools?

[wfcentral]

Hi, I've been using Xara since version 1.0 and just thought of something that would be very helpful - it may be there and I've just never come across it...

I draw wiring diagrams all day using Xara. To speed up my drawing I use the drag and right click method to duplicate common items. Many times these items need to be rotated 90 degrees. Currently, I select the item and use the toolbar to input 90 for the rotate value. I don't want to doubleclick and free-hand rotate it because I want exactly 90 degrees. Is there a way to make a new button on the toolbar that rotates images 90 degrees?

Thanks,
Robert

[wfcentral]

Hi, I've been using Xara since version 1.0 and just thought of something that would be very helpful - it may be there and I've just never come across it...

I draw wiring diagrams all day using Xara. To speed up my drawing I use the drag and right click method to duplicate common items. Many times these items need to be rotated 90 degrees. Currently, I select the item and use the toolbar to input 90 for the rotate value. I don't want to doubleclick and free-hand rotate it because I want exactly 90 degrees. Is there a way to make a new button on the toolbar that rotates images 90 degrees?

Thanks,
Robert

[ivan louette]

No possibility to create a button, but you can use Utilities/Options/General/Angle constrain; there you type 90 degree and if you rotate your object holding down Ctrl key it will rotate exactly 90 degree.
You can move the center of rotation of your object in checking a little quadrangle in the "Set origin position" icon in the status bar.

Regards,

ivan

[Sean Sedwards]

...holding down the CTRL key so that the rotation is constrained to the angle set in Utilities > Options > General > Editing > Angle Constraint. The default is 45°, which works fine for me.

Regards - Sean

p.s. apologies for the duplication ;-)

[jclements]

If changing the default contraint angle is not practical (you may need to rotate at a lesser angle like 30 degrees), then what I do is select my symbols or "connecting" lines (I usually have a library of common elements for a project in a "master file"), clone them, and rotate all the clones at once by 90 degress, and drag them out of the immediate work area.

When I need a rotated version, I ctrl+drag one of the rotated clones back into the drawing area.

*************************

Would you mind posting a gif file of your work? I am curious as to their complexity. Also, do use use the snap to grid or just snap to guidelines and object? Got any tricks to speed up the alignment process of segment end-points?

[This message was edited by John Clements on February 14, 2001 at 12:18 PM.]

[Klaus Nordby]

I reset the silly 45 degree Angle Constraint default to 15 degrees, which gives me six neat, exact subdivisions in a right angle. That's enough for 95% of my rotation needs, without any annoying need to type numbers.


K

[wfcentral]

Funny how you can be using a program for so long and overlook the obvious. I use CTRL all the time when constraining boxes, circles or lines I'm drawing but I never thought about using it on my rotations. That will save me a lot of time.

As for posting a .gif of my work I'll have to check. The schematics I'm working on are for military and they aren't too keen on publishing them on the internet. It's not too precise for what I'm doing... I just draw it in Xara so I can bring it into Flash and make it interactive for instructors to use in training. They aren't worried about the wires being off by a pixel or two as long as it illustrates the system.

Thanks,
Robert

[jclements]

Robert. Sounds interesting. Perhaps you could do "phoney" diagram. I would also be interested in seeing how you would use it in Flash for interactivity.