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

[handrawn]

If I add a rectangle

meaning what exactly?

did you do it the way I suggested by creating a base rectangular shape from a but cap line ?

if you just used the rectangle tool [which is a 'Quick Shape', not that xara seems to call them that anymore I notice] you are not doing anything different to what you did before so how could you expect it to work ?

you can just use one of the shapes at the bottom of my file and create all yours from that to save you the bother of creating your own....

[pauland]

..and in Affinity Designer I can create a paper size of 10 METRES and specify units in millimetres and show four decimal places... ..yet the Xara Saga plays on..

..oh and have my stroke outside, middle, or inside and specified in mm..

[handrawn]

programs are like people - they am's what they am's you cant' make 'em be what you want them to be... not even with spinach...

btw - my windows decimal place are 9 - i guess that might make a difference...

[pauland]

programs are like people - they am's what they am's you cant' make 'em be what you want them to be... not even with spinach...

btw - my windows decimal place are 9 - i guess that might make a difference...

My windows have catches and locks.

[shiphen]

meaning what exactly?

did you do it the way I suggested by creating a base rectangular shape from a but cap line ?

if you just used the rectangle tool [which is a 'Quick Shape', not that xara seems to call them that anymore I notice] you are not doing anything different to what you did before so how could you expect it to work ?

you can just use one of the shapes at the bottom of my file and create all yours from that to save you the bother of creating your own....

I have to hand it to you that yes, if I DRAW my shapes, that they suddenly behave perfectly!
They can be resized, either by typing them in OR by using the snap too.
Better yet you can cursor right as far as you like and it still keeps to the grid.

Btw, it turns out that if I convert a "Rectangle" (created from the Rectangle Tool in the menu) into a "Shape" ("Convert to Editable Shapes"), it will now behave correctly

But it's still somewhat less convenient. So is there some bug with the "Quick Shape" tool? Why in the world can't a Rectangle be stored in "mp" units correctly?

[handrawn]

a quick shape is not an editable shape, is why it does not behave like an editable shape, is the glib answer

glad you got convert rectangle to editable shape to work as well; it did not always for me, so personally I would stick with shapes that have no imput from quick shape, just in case....

[handrawn]

My windows have catches and locks.

I got leading too at front

[Acorn]

here's the test file, which should open ok in ver 18
Attachment 130123
on reflection the issue with the other file was more evidence of the unsuitabiity of quick shape creation for this task
whoops that should be whole millipoints not millipixels better fix that - done

handrawn, thank you many times over.

I have created a butt cap, bevel joined, straight line and converted to shape and made it 2mp square at set it to (0, 0).
I walked along the bottom nudging @ 100mp over 16,800 times and while the box was invisible but selectable it was exactly centred on every grid sub-division it landed on.
I checked that the X-coord never deviated for ending in nnnnnn00.
You need to hide the Grid, Zoom to 25601% and switch to Outline view to catch such a rarity.
At 8mp you can determine a box's colour; this is a 282 micron square - twice the diameter of a SARS-CoV-2 virus.

I also duplicated a 100mp box (same construction, but visible), a total of 1862 times (@ 1000mp) and each and every one was fully centred on the grid.

This is where it gets interesting.
When working with a box or converted line 2000x100mp, when you add a Line width of 50mp or 100mp, the Snap point is clearly to the shape dimension and not the bounding box.
I was only using sizes as multiples of 100mp.
It you use an inner contour, there is no jumping around when moving a shape.
50mp square is much more tractable than 25mp square.

Acorn

[handrawn]

hopefully we all learnt something which is what it's all about

[Acorn]

..and in Affinity Designer I can create a paper size of 10 METRES and specify units in millimetres and show four decimal places... ..yet the Xara Saga plays on..
..oh and have my stroke outside, middle, or inside and specified in mm..

Xara manages 19.595m x 19.595m, but I can't check as my printer has run out of 20m wide paper.

Yes, there is an issue with only seeing 1 d.p. for millimetres but other units will not quite go all the way up to 11 - putting 9 d.p. for mm and I'll be booking CERN time.

Strokes (Line widths) can be specified in millimetres and they are straddlers. That's why Contouring is useful.
You can also create a Scatter line and set Offset to 50% To right for an Outside stroke and To left for an inside one.
You can even go wild with 200% To right.

The question asked was:

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

I think the answer has been established.

Acorn