Page 55 - Xara Designer Pro X17

Document handling 55

Backups on system shut down
If you shut down Windows without first closing the program, all open documents are
backed up to the backup folder even if ‘Backup open documents on program close’ is not
turned on. This allows system shutdown to proceed without Xara Designer Pro X
interrupting it by prompting you about unsaved or modified documents. On next program
startup you’ll be asked whether or not you want to restore the documents that were open
at the time of the system shut down.

Recovering backups
You can access your document backups using the "FILE" > "OPEN RECENT" > "BACKUPS"
menu option. This opens a file dialog onto your backup folder so that you can browse,
open, or delete any of your backup files. It’s a good idea to use this file dialog to clear out
any old unwanted backups periodically.

Note that when you load a backup document, it is not automatically associated with the
design file from which the backup was taken. It’s treated as an independent document in
its own right. Therefore if you decide to keep a backup document you should use "FILE" >
"SAVE AS" to save it elsewhere with a suitable name.

On-screen grid

To help you lay out your document, Designer Pro can display a grid on the screen (the
grid appears only on the screen; it is never exported or printed.) The grid helps you align
objects (similar to using graph paper as a drawing aid).
Right click and choose "SHOW GRID/GUIDES" > "SHOW GRID" to turn display of the grid
on/off or choose "SNAP TO" > "SNAP TO GRID". You can also choose "WINDOW" > "SNAP TO
GRID".

The grid points then act like magnets, and as you move objects, they snap to the nearest
grid point. By default web documents have "SNAP TO GRID" on, with a 1 pixel grid.

The type of grid (isometric/rectangular), the 0,0 point (the origin), and spacing of grid
points is controlled by the GRID & RULERS TAB (on page 630) of the options dialog box.
Any changes you make apply only to the selected document.
Magnetic object snapping is also enabled by default in web documents. Object snapping
is a very powerful way of accurately aligning lines, points and the edges of objects to any
other object so they exactly touch.

You can even use this to align the centers of objects, or align objects to the center of the
page, or align them horizontally and vertically anywhere in the middle of the page or
edge of the page.
To toggle object snapping, click the SNAP TO OBJECTS button or right click and
choose "SNAP TO" > "SNAP TO OBJECTS". You can also choose "WINDOW" > "SNAP
TO GRID".