The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room Page 2
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Select the two circles and the square by dragging a rectangle around them with the Selector Tool (the pointer tool). This is known as marquee selecting.

NOTE: If there are any Adobe Illustrator users out there—scoping out this hot product Xara X, unlike Illustrator, you have to marquee select the entire object, not just a portion of the object, to select it.

Open the Object Alignment menu (Arrange > Alignment).

The easiest way to center align any selected objects is to simply click the Selector Tool in the center of the preview window. The four shapes will automatically center indicating center horizontally and vertically. Press Apply then Close to exit the menu. You can also click in any of the four corners to select align top left, etc.

Select the Blend Tool. Click on the smaller circle's outline, then drag a line to the larger circle's outline. This creates a 5-step blend (seven circles in all). You can increase the steps by changing the Number of Steps in Blend setting on the Infobar. But for this tutorial the requisite 5 steps will be fine.

NOTE: If the shapes are filled, you can drag from the filled portion of the object.

Profile settings are new to Xara X and represent a powerful and easy way to alter many of Xara's effects.

Select the Blend with the Blend Tool then click the Position Profile arrow (shown here) on the Infobar to open the Position Profile dialog.

Select the downward facing curve (shown left). The settings apply automatically.

NOTE: The rectangular window (above the sliders), gives a preview of the Profile or settings effect.

Drag a guideline (from the screen rulers) through the vertical center of the circles. Add a guideline through the horizontal center, and add a guideline on top of the smallest and largest circles.

TIP: Click the red magnet icon on the Infobar to enable Snap to Objects. This will snap the guidelines to the ends and centers of the circles.

Select the Pen Tool and click in the top center of the small circle to add the first anchor point. Click again at the top center of the larger circle to complete the line. Change the line weight to 1.5 points.

Open the Page Options dialog again and in the General tabbed section, change the Angle Contraint: amount to 30 (degrees). Press OK to apply the change.

Click twice on the vertical line to switch to Roate/Skew mode.

Drag the rotation bulls eye to the intersection of the two guidelines that pass through the center of the circles.

Select the top right rotation handle (the curved arrows), and holding down the Ctrl key to constrain the rotation angle to increments of 30 degrees, drag clockwise until the line snaps at 30 degrees. Before you release the left mouse button, click the right mouse button to drop a duplicate.