Page 155 - Xara Designer Pro X17

Drawing Lines and Shapes 155

After you’ve drawn a freehand line you
can control how smooth the curve is (i.e.

how many control points) by adjusting the
Smoothing Re-fit Indicator smoothing control slider on the InfoBar.
Low values make the line follow your mouse movement more closely by creating more
control points, and higher values produce smoother curves with fewer control points.

Low values are less smooth Higher values produce a smoother curve

You can change the smoothing at any time until you make further edits to the line (the re-
fit indicator on the InfoBar tells you when you can still change the smoothing.)

Erasing while drawing
Before you release the mouse button you can erase part of the line by holding "Shift".

The pencil icon reverses so the eraser at
the end is downwards. You can now
erase back along the line. Release "Shift”
and you can continue drawing.

Drawing straight segments in the Freehand Tool
While drawing a freehand line hold down "Alt", move the pointer to a new position and
release "Alt" to draw a straight line. You can continue drawing a line or hold down "Alt"
again to draw another straight segment. Remember, you can use "Ctrl" to constrain the
angle of the line. If you only want to draw lots of single segment straight lines, use the
STRAIGHT LINE TOOL described below.

Extending a line
Make sure the line is selected (a single click on the shape or line in the FREEHAND &
BRUSH TOOL will do this). Now if you move over the end of the line, a small + sign next to
the pencil icon will indicate you can just draw to add a new freehand section to the line.
Joining two lines

Select both lines, ("Shift + click" on the second line to add it to the selection) and you can
now just draw from the end of one line to an end of the other. A small + sign next to the
pencil icon (appearing after a pause) indicates you are over the end.