Helpful Grid Tool Calculator

[bwood]

I’ve found a little something that might be helpful for websites, and those using Xara for print. I’ve found it helpful when creating the smaller phone variants. You may as well.

http://gridcalculator.dk/

-Bill

[Acorn]

Bill, instead, try using Xara's built-in gizmo - the Text Area.

Say I have a 1440px wide page and I want 4 columns of the same width, 22px apart but with a left gutter of 57px and a right gutter of 46px.

1. Create a 57px box on the left edge.
2. Create a 46px box on the right edge.
3. Create Guides to the boxes vertical edges.
4. Set Snap to Guides.
5. Create a Text Area to fit between the boxes.
6. Set the Text Columns to 4.
7. Change the Gap Width to 22px.
8. You now will have four text areas of width 317.665px.
9. Add more Guides.

To set up 320px wide boxes:

• By trial and error, you set the Gap Width, here, to 18.887px.
• Adjust or add Guides.

Delete or keep the boxes and Text Areas.

In later XDA versions you could use the Smart Duplication for the second method.
But of course Xara has failed to Snap to Objects for us when adjusting the gap.

Your on-line tool fails to handle fractional pixels and cannot deal with differing gutters.
The Xara way avoids having to import a PNG for every minor change. The image has no snap inner points.
The AI Export add a Grid Layer with no shapes and is a massive file size.
The PS export is handled as text.

Acorn

[bwood]

Thanks @acorn. So many things that Xara can do that are relatively hidden.
-Bill

[Acorn]

Thanks @acorn. So many things that Xara can do that are relatively hidden.
-Bill

Bill, I always have a sharp stick ready for poking.

Acorn