Move objects via centre.

[Fred C]

You can also Right Click on a layer in the Page & Layer Gallery and select Guides tab. Here you can add multiple horizontal/vertical guides; a similar dialog box like Bill showed is used. Regarding accuracy, check out "millipoints" in the Help file.

[Grafix Smelter]

Wow, I never knew that.

Xara has so many hidden gems, I really should find more time to play with it, rather than just use it for work.

Thanks Bill & Fred C.

[Su Lawrence]

I'm not sure if I've completely understood the original question. But you can shift an object by it's center, by typing in numbers (or clicking the little infobar arrow icons) if it is a quickshape. The center xy position is one of the values you can amend in the drop down list (in the infobar) for rectangles, ellipses and quickshapes etc. Just click on the center of a quickshape with the quickshape tool and the relevant infobar box comes up. Unfortunately it doesn't work for freehand shapes.

Regards

Su

PS: the set origin position is also useful for resizing if you are using numbers entry or infobar controls (rather than mouse drag) and want an object to resize to say the left side only etc rather than from the middle, or for flipping and so on.

[Grafix Smelter]

@ Su Lawrence

Thanks for your insight. I hadn't appreciated that selecting the quickshape tool displayed the centre point of a regular object. I had only been selecting an object (group) with the selector tool which sets the origin to the BLH corner for the xy coordinates. Most of my objects are groups (for which the quickshape tool does not display the origin ) but having played with various combinations, I have found that un-grouping and then selecting the individual objects and selecting the quickshape tool presents me with a small X as the origin in the middle of the selection.

So I now have a working solution. I can set gridlines with a right click\properties and if I ungroup objects then individually re-select them, the quickshape tool will displayed the centre point of the selection, and on the info bar give me the X,Y coordinates of the centre, to numerically change to the destination I want.

Thanks again to all who have replied. It has proved to be a good exercise in getting back to basics with Xara.

[Petar_MK]

BTW, "Set Origin Position" is an unsuitably name, for now. It should be named "Set Rotation Position".

PS: the set origin position is also useful for resizing if you are using numbers entry or infobar controls (rather than mouse drag) and want an object to resize to say the left side only etc rather than from the middle, or for flipping and so on.

SOP doesn't anything in common with resizing, only with setting rotation position.

[Su Lawrence]

SOP doesn't anything in common with resizing, only with setting rotation position.

Yes it does (at least in my version of Xara and hopefully this functionality has not been removed in later versions). If you Set Origin Position on the left side of say a rectangle and use either number entry or arrow resize (selector tool infobar), then the shape will resize FROM the left side (rather than from the middle outwards as is the default). In other words the left side will remain at the same x coordinate whilst increasing/decreasing size in this way. Same thing with flip eg: if you set origin position to the bottom the image will flip horizontally from that y axis rather than from the center.

Regards

Su

[glenngosack]

that does work in DPX also - (actually didn't know that )