Is there any way to get Xara (Designer Pro X18) to be more accurate?

[Acorn]

Doesn't that just change how decimals are displayed but make no difference whatsoever to actual calculations?

Yes, but do remember two things. Xara converts everything to millipoints and not seeing your entry rounded is helpful feedback.

As an engineer and mathematician, I work in a variety of units and significant figures all the time so I can tell what is accurate and what is poor programming.
Xara has got the accuracy spot on for most work. It can break at small scale and in the use of some SmartShapes. Frustrating as this can be, it is fairly rare.

Rather than pixel-perfect, you could say millipoint perfect.

Acorn

[shiphen]

Doesn't that just change how decimals are displayed but make no difference whatsoever to actual calculations?

Like I say I can't get "No of digits after decimal" to have any impact. Where are we supposed to see these 3 digits?
I would very much like to see my shape's sizes at 3 decimal places.

It seems like each hit of the arrow key is generating a small amount of inaccuracy due to some sort of internal rounding.
So if rather than holding down arrow right to execute it 100 times, I hit shift arrow key 10 times my shape will have moved the distance (10mm) but the error will be much less... About 1/10th the size?

Btw, Acorn re your Xara file, my earlier point stands. If you don't have "Scale Line Width" ticked,
then ALL of the left hand column (i.e. the starting positions for the shapes) will read 432mei...
and ALL of the right hand column (ending positions for shapes) valued will be 521mei



I know that I am pushing the limits of the software by operating at such small increments on such a large page... But if I hold down the Shift and Right Arrow for long enough - (e.g. c20 seconds to try to move my shape right across the page - but the time it arrives at the other side of the page, it is massively off the grid. I am broadly assuming that we all get this issue.


e.g. If I move that red rectangle all the way across the A1 page, using Shift + Arrow


When I zoom in I can see that it now quite a long way off the grid.


Yes, I should probably use some sort of scaling, but personally I do find it incredibly useful for doing a series of 'sketches' of my "a few mm in size" designs and have them all fit on the same monster-large sheet of paper.

[pauland]

Shiphen, it's beyond me why you are using Xara when you want this kind of precision. If it's anything but budgetary reasons then it's not a great decision.

Choose the right tools for the job if you can.

What specifically are you designing that requires high levels of precision?

https://librecad.org/
https://www.qcad.org/en/

..not that I have any specific experience of any of these..

[handrawn]

Like I say I can't get "No of digits after decimal" to have any impact. Where are we supposed to see these 3 digits?
I would very much like to see my shape's sizes at 3 decimal places.

open xara - make sure your units are centimetres and open this file:

3 dec places.xar

select the rectangle and you should see:



but note if you change units xara will still do rounding and so for example 5.397 cm will be shown as 54 mm - there is no way to avoid this that I know of unless you work in millipoints throughout

have you tried doing what you want in millipoint units? - if it works then you have the answer, even if it's not what you really want

banging your head against the wall too long only means you perpetuate the headache

[pauland]

If this is a one-off project, not too demanding, even a free trial of a CAD program trial should do the trick.

[handrawn]

I set up a quick millipoint test - it all looks fine to me

note you should use the X/Y coordinates on the infobar to determine precise position - monitor graphics themselves make approximations at different zooms due to those pesky pixels being asymmetric in shape, you cannot accurately judge this by eye at this level of precision

Start:

X 0mp
Y 0mp



Finish:

X 565000mp - that is 565 individual nudges of 1000mp
Y 0mp



the xara file does not appear to open correctly in versions before pro+ for some reason but I can post it if you want

this just leaves the pita of converting between millipoints and millimetres, millipoints not being metric friendly at about 2834.6456693 millipoints per millimetre by my calculation...so...

Xara says use millipoints for this kind of work, and they should know; I think Paul has a mega point in what he says [ok I'll shut the door on my way out... ]

[shiphen]

The reasons I like using Xara for what is really a CAD application are
1. I'm not a fast learner and Xara is what I already know
2. I like working in colour (not easy in trad. CAD)
3. I like to work in subtle ways using transparency - it helps me see what is going on
4. I am only doing quick sketches of ideas in Xara.
5. I like being able to fully control the graphics what I deliver to 3rd parties.
6. The CAD package I was using OnShape and then SolidWorks has expired and now costs multiple £1000s.
7. I find CAD very pedantic and slow when it comes to doing multiple quick sketches side by side - as if the were like quick doodles on a very large sheet of paper.
7. I now have a history of lots of sketches that are in Xara - which I want to use & refer to.

....But mostly I am just being lazy.


Either way, I don't see what harm there is in getting the most out of Xara.
It seems to me that much of the time Xara is not being fully accurate, but most people are using it at a scale that these inaccuracies aren't visible.

To recap
A) I do need to work in Millemetres (although I don't care what Xara calls the unis)
B) I like having a seriously large page.
C) It's important that I use the snapping onto the Grid.

I am no a bit short on time. I shall have a quick look at using millipoints. Are they the units that Xara actually does all its calculations?

[shiphen]

open xara - make sure your units are centimetres and open this file:

3 dec places.xar

select the rectangle and you should see:



but note if you change units xara will still do rounding and so for example 5.397 cm will be shown as 54 mm - there is no way to avoid this that I know of unless you work in millipoints throughout

have you tried doing what you want in millipoint units? - if it works then you have the answer, even if it's not what you really want

banging your head against the wall too long only means you perpetuate the headache

Ah OK, now I am betting 3 decimal places Centimetres, Metres, Miles, Picas but not in Pixels, Points... nor Millimetres.

Obviously I don't care what Xara actually calls my units - presumably I could would in "Kilometres" or "Miles" if I use Scaling correctly.

What is the largest page size that is possible to use in Xara? (i.e. Before you start getting odd things starting to happen such as Control/Shift/P no longer zooms to fit the whole page)

Millipoints
Btw, I just experimented with setting my page untis to Millipoints. Unfortuntely Xara won't let me enter exact numbers.
e.g if I type in "1000mp" for W and "2000mp" for H, when I hit enter ==> Xara immediately displays W "995" and H "1999".
Nightmare.

J

PS If we can get Xara to work correctly in Millipoints, maybe I could us Points (of which I presume that there are 1000 per Point, yes?) Would that avoid these small rounding errors when you do multiple cursor keys (e.g. Right arrow 200 times)...

[pauland]

Given "4. I am only doing quick sketches of ideas in Xara" I am a bit baffled by the accuracy requirement.

We all like familiar stuff, but sometimes it's just not the way to go.

Good luck. Over and out from me.

[shiphen]

Given "4. I am only doing quick sketches of ideas in Xara" I am a bit baffled by the accuracy requirement.

We all like familiar stuff, but sometimes it's just not the way to go.

Good luck. Over and out from me.

To get clear, I am doing quick experiments where I add and subtract shapes a lot. When I move a shape around the page a reasonable distance, the cursor-derived errors become significant.

For now the answer seems to be to make the lines invisible, and just work with shapes that have filled in colours (being semi-transparent helps me spot overlapping errors...) and the just keep re-seating all my shapes back on the grid, if I want better accuracy.

It works but it's irritatingly fiddly & slows me up.