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THE XARA XONE | XARA.COM | THE XARA CONFERENCES | BUY XARA XTREME PRO |
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Before you start this tutorial As always, we will be using Pixels as our units of measure. Right click on the screen and select Page Options... from the pop up menu. In the Units tabbed section, select Pixels for the Units and 0-255 for the Color Units. In the Grid and Ruler tabbed section set the Major Spacing to 100pix (key it in exactly like this please) and the Number of Subdivisions to 10 . Press OK to close the dialog and apply the changes. To see a tutorial on Xara Basics visit Workbook 20. NOTE: You will notice from time to time I apply arbitrary colors to objects. I do this to make the objects easier to see. If I do not specify a fill for an object, you do not have to apply a fill or outline color. When I show an ellipse or rectangle that has just been created, that has no fill, it is because I have set the fill to none before I exported the illustration. By default, all ellipses, rectangles and Quick Shapes have a black outline and a black fill. There is nothing wrong with your copy of Xara. Naming Conventions. I use bold face to indicate the names of tools, galleries, keyboard shortcuts, and dialogs. Items such as unnamed icons and drop down lists, which have names when you let your cursor rest over them for a moment, are displayed in italics. The Infobar is the context sensitive menu at the top of the screen and changes to reflect the options for the selected tool. Some of the tool icons have changed in Xara X1, and this may cause some confusion for new users. If you are using an older version of Xara, click here to see my Rosetta Stone for translating the old buttons into the new. New Users? I have created some quick start mini-tutorials to get you though the basics. Workbook 20, Workbook 30, and Workbook 31 cover the main things you need to know to get started. While you should be able to create all the steps in previous versions of Xara, some of the tool icons have changed, and this may cause some confusion for new users. If you are using an older version of Xara, click here to see my Rosetta Stone for translating the old buttons into the new. |
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Using the Ellipse Tool (keyboard shortcut Shift F4), draw a series of circles to the sizes shown above. Click the Ellipse Tool on the page, hold down the Ctrl key (to constrain the ellipse to a circle), and drag. The size of the circle will appear on the Infobar at the top of the screen. TIP: You can draw any size circle, then enter the proper height and width in the Width and Height text entry boxes on the Infobar. Press Enter after you key in the second value to apply the change. Using the Selector Tool (F2—the arrow pointer) drag a selection rectangle around all of the circles (this is called marquee selection and is one of several ways to select more than one object). Unlike Adobe Illustrator where the marquee need only go through the objects, in Xara the marquee must include the entire object. With the circles selected, from the Arrange menu, select Convert to Editable Shapes.
Select one of the circles then switch to the Shape Editor Tool (F4). Click and drag on the control points to make the circles less round. The blue dashed outlines represent the starting circles. Repeat this step for the other 3 circles. Make duplicates of these shapes (Ctrl d to duplicate), and make these shapes different as shown above by scaling as well as editing. The exact shapes are not as important as just being non-round shapes in different sizes.
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