GreenGirl

@PixelPest No, but that's a great effect too! I certainly want to know how to do that...but you've already answered my question. Thanks again.

As some of you may know I'm struggling making several (sheesh) circular slide rules (yes, I'm still on the first one). Using a trial of Sketch, Numbers, TextEdit and finally Designer, I now have 'some' of the correct 'tick' marks drawn at the correct angles. However, like any ruler, each tick mark needs to be of a specific length, some long, some short, some in-between. At the moment (in the diagram below) I'm manually selecting each one from the Layers panel, and changing the 'W' (it says width, but it's actually it's length for some strange reason I don't understand), by hand. There is 274 'ticks' around this one rule, and I have 5 rules for this singular Slide Ruler... of which I have 3 different types more to make... (can I change careers yet?) My simple question, is, is there a way I can change the 'W' or whatever so that they change lengths (like the first 9 on the middle rule on the diagram) without changing the skew or making the transform throw the accuracy out? When I select several and change the 'W' value, they twist and re-orientate to some other point and become unusable. If I have to do it by hand, I will, but it's a pain. Thanks again.

@PixelPest thank you! Your pie idea, then using the Pen tool to break apart at the points where it draw the lines returning to the origin was perfect! Exactly what I needed. Thank you again for your fast and brilliant help! Edit: @Alfred Sorry, I replied to PixelPest as you were posting! That's just how I did it. Thank you!

...hmmm...need to cut out the bits that return to the origin...

Good idea! Let me try...

So, I have an ellipse, that has no fill, and a stroke of 10. I need to 'cut out' a 10 degree section from it. Let's say it goes from 10 degrees right around and stops at 0/360. I still need to apply effects, resizing etc to it, so rasterising it won't work. I've tried to draw a curve and do 'subtract' but that didn't work... any other ideas? Thank you.

Sure, but now to make it 'readable' you'd have to go over it again... whereas the best approach would have just been make it readable from the start. That's something I can never seem to 'convince' most programmers of... I don't know where that kind of mindset comes from, but it really strikes me as odd... lol

Here's the code. kreisskala.c

Update: Okay, so after lots of testing, I can confirm that Designer's SVG support is broken. Both exporting AND importing. It doesn't abide by what's been written in the SVG and editing the import doesn't maintain the transformations. I've now tried: Sketch - imports the edited SVG perfectly, but when you try and change the text, the alignment of the text gets changed. Gravit Designer Pro - This exports completely unformatted SVG XML BUT the SVG is perfect and the resulting file can be imported correctly (no wonky translations) into EVERYTHING, including Designer. However, again, upon editing any of the rotated text, the centreline doesn't get adhered to. Adobe Illustrator CC 2019 - Same thing, imports the SVG that was created in Designer and edited with spreadsheet info perfectly, but again doesn't support correct text alignment when you change the text. So... after all that, it appears that I have to EITHER: a) Find some way to change the text in the SVG to the 'input numbers' from the spreadsheet so that the rotation will work correctly, but understand that text can't be edited, resized or anything when back in a Vector app... or b) write code to spit out perfect syntactical SVG (so I have to learn TWO things) and use that to generate the SVG that Designer can import and edit. ...unless anyone knows how to solve for 'a'...?

Sure, I got that it was a loop variable, but I didn't know what the loop was trying to do.

Ha! Okay then... cause I've worked a few bits out, but other bits... j for example... no idea. I'll see about coding my own then...

@v_kyr Also, and this is common to most programmers, even though you know what you're writing, other people don't; so especially if you're sharing code, you should always try and keep in mind that it's better to name your variables with what they are, virtually every IDE has code completion if typing more characters is the issue - but having single character variables, whilst it makes sense to you, means nothing to everyone else, unless they have to either work it out from first principles themselves, or they already knew how to do it. So, for me, when looking at r, w, p, etc... it's not much help. Whereas: if you typed radius instead of r and centre for c etc then it's obvious to everyone without having to read minds or waste time working it out from scratch. After all, code if for HUMANS to read, it all gets reduced to machine code by the compiler and interpreter... so why not just make it readable in the first place? Just £0.02, doesn't detract from the effort you've gone to or the skill you've demonstrated...

@v_kyr Wow! LOL, you totally wen't Medieval on it's a##! hehehehe That's one way to do it I suppose... Amazing work btw... huge contribution to the community. I may have to read up on my C to get my formulas in, but this obviously works. Kudos. Just wish there was a 'visual' way to have done this.

@v_kyr Firstly, WOW. Secondly, you appear to have done it. Thirdly, I don't know from what you've posted, HOW you've done it, and specifically what and where I was going wrong in comparison to how you did it. Lastly just how in the heck did you manage to get shorter ticks and longer ticks on the same circle? That was going to be the thing I looked at next, after getting all this stuff to work. I think, I'm just not following how you did this and how it's different.

@John Rostron Thanks. It's this 'memory' of previous translations and scaling that actually drove me from Photoshop and Illustrator into Affinity Designer! I'm very sad that it's cropping up here too.

Please see the above thread for exact details, but basically, strange - and completely unwanted - transforms are being encoded into the SVG upon export, such that items are translated AND rotated upon reload. The thread above has files to view as examples.

@John Rostron Thanks for the sanity check, but even without the 'transform' line in the SVG, if you use the 'master outer' numbers, and then use the numbers subset of SVG line commands... the output from that, when re-imported into Designer is completely screwed up - it's off centre and has a strange rotation from nowhere... That's the problem I'm trying to fix now... were you able to replicate that one? Perhaps they have the transforms in because I cannot 'create' the text or the rect in the exact position I need. At some point I've created it and then moved it around in Designer until it's in the exact place I need it and then used that to export the initial .SVG. Is there any way to 'remove' the 'history' of the transforms from a layer before exporting as an SVG?

Thanks, but that is EXACTLY the same process I've been doing. Which was also why I was utterly confused as to why there was a 'transform' and an offset inside the first .svg we went through. It's why I'm so confused as to why it's not working.

@v_kyr So... what you're saying is that this can't be done? I either have to use another application that has better support for SVG or duplicate and rotate each of these 174 ticks manually?

You can see the 'real code' in the screenshots I made. Regardless, I've uploaded the original file and the data used to create the expanded SVG. The 'raw' SVG is just turning off all layers in the Designer file and only leaving on the one you need. i.e. Outer Ticks OR Outer Numbers.

@firstdefence This isn't about being protective of artwork - at the moment I don't have any artwork; that's kinda the whole problem! No one has asked for the file - at least no-one who has been contributing - but if you think that my file or how I've created 5 lines, and 5 pieces of text is the problem, here's the file: Slide Rule.afdesign If it is something that I've done wrong, in creating the original 5 rects and 5 text objects, then great, I'd love to learn how and more importantly why. but if I'm understanding this correctly, the problem is when, after computing a range of outputs from a formula and a finite range of inputs, you put those into an SVG, they come out twisted and skewed... but there doesn't seem (to me) any obvious reason for that, and certainly nothing pointing back to have 5 rects and 5 text blocks are made. And here's the formula with input numbers, for both the tick marks and the subset of numbers to go around the outside of the tick marks. Untitled 2.xlsx

@firstdefence I previously offered to upload my spreadsheet and was told it wasn't necessary. You think the virtually empty designer file will help? The problem is in the SVG creation no? You think I'm withholding anything? That's what I get from your brief message?

@v_kyr There is an 'Outer' for both 'Ticks' and 'Numbers', two different groups. The master tick and master numbers are in two groups, to be rotated (using same formula but the numbers only need rotating a subset of the full list of the rotations of the ticks). So, using your 'fix' for the tick rotations (the last and first seemed perfect, but I haven't checked all 174), I followed the same instructions but for the subset of the numbers, and the screenshots show the problem. There is nothing else in the file. It's a list of master 'ticks' and master 'numbers' for each of the 5 rulers. That's it, I turn all off except the one I'm using to generate the SVG and then export. Then load up the SVG in TextEdit, paste in the XML generated from a spreadsheet and reload into Designer, then CMD-A, CMD-C and then switch to the proper Designer file for the slide rule, and CMD-V to paste in, then boom, you see everything is orientated incorrectly and off axis. I can do a screencast to YouTube if you think it will help, but there's no obfuscation here. I'm doing everything as laid out in the screenshots.

@John Rostron @v_kyr Alas, it's still not working. Following are screenshots of what I've done / doing. You should see that everything is as you've all said and I'm doing all the right steps, but the resulting weird 'offsets' are throwing it all out. Unless, again, I'm missing something obvious. 1. Here is the 'master'. The 000 numbers are dead centre and perfectly aligned with the 'master' tick at 0 degrees: 2. So, I export as SVG and I edited the file, and remove the odd 'transform' group stuff: 3. Now I paste in the angles I need to rotate the 'master' number by: 4. Save this file, and reopen in Designer, then just for poops and giggles, I put it as a new layer via copy/paste over the 'master' layers, and voila, offset and rotated wrong: I'm so sorry, but what am I doing wrong?

@John Rostron Yeah, other than the rounding, that's what I've got and that's what I put into the .svg file. As @v_kyr pointed out, for some strange reason there was an offset in the .svg. Once I took that out, it seems to have fixed it. But I've created those .svg files about a dozen times, each time putting in my 174 lines of 'code'... but a) I've never noticed the offset and b) I swear that on the original image - of which I can upload, the initial 'tick' is centre around 1024 with 3 pixels either side... I'm going to give them all a go again, and double check if this weird offset creeps in... Fingers crossed, and thank you again for all your support. I hope you got something out of all this too!