GreenGirl

You are kidding me... /smh /facepalm... I'm SO sorry, I should have spotted that. What's strange is that the original file HAD the rect dead centre to the guideline... But yes, if I edit the .SVG in TextEdit and reload into Designer, I think it's worked. At least it's centred and the first 'tick' is correctly at 3.6xxxxxxxx Thank you @v_kyr I honestly don't know how that happened...

@v_kyr Thank you. Yes, removing that spurious 'transform' does allow me to produce the lines at the correct size. @John Rostron Should I upload the spreadsheet I'm using here, and in what format? The current 'ticks' I'm making are using this formula: (R/2)*[2 + log(sin(#))] Where R is 360 (as I'm making circular slide rules) and # is the input number range: 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 8 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 9 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 10 10.5 11 11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5 18 18.5 19 19.5 20 20.5 21 21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25 25.5 26 26.5 27 27.5 28 28.5 29 29.5 30 30.5 31 31.5 32 32.5 33 33.5 34 34.5 35 35.5 36 36.5 37 37.5 38 38.5 39 39.5 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 90 Now, the problem I've still got - after V_Kyr's solution is that I'm drawing a rect of 6px wide at the centre line guide. i.e. the middle of the rect (vertically) is running through the 1024 guideline that is the middle of the entire image / page. When I put in my computed formulas from these numbers, the last one - 90 is at 360 i.e. 0 so, it should have a rect at 0 with the middle of the rect running through the vertical guideline, right? Also the first number 0.6 gives a result of: 3.60372245860544 degrees, however when the resulting ticks have been generated, the one that should be at 0 is at about 1, and the one for 3.6 is at about 7, however, if I rotate all of the ticks around the centre of the image / page i.e. 1024 x 1024 by exactly 3.60372245860544 degrees, then they all line up perfectly!?!?? So I don't understand why it's not all skewed and by such an exact amount. Here's a snipped of the SVG with all the formulas in: <g id="Outer"> <rect x="1027" y="98" width="5" height="42" style="fill:rgb(16,217,233);"/> </g> <use xlink:href="#Outer" transform="rotate(3.60372245860544, 1024.0, 1024.0)" /> <use xlink:href="#Outer" transform="rotate(360, 1024.0, 1024.0)" /> As I say, if I rotate the whole set of ticks by -3.6xxxxx. then everything perfectly lines up.. I've tried drawing the rect so that it's right side is on the centreline guide, but that doesn't change anything after all the rotations. It still ends up like this.

Hi John... it might indeed be broken. I'm struggling with a 'bug' or, more likely, user error... Here's the file I'm currently working on: From the file, you should see that there is a 'tick' at 12 o'clock, and this is the 'master' of which it needs to be duplicated by 173 'line' commands that you worked out. In the file too, is one of your line commands, rotating said 'master' tick by 10 degrees.. The problem is, that after rotation, it's stretched the line... which I can't accept because even if I 'reset' it in Designer to the original 42pt length it's not even in the right position anymore i.e. the 'bottom' of the line if now protruding over the next 'disc' Why is it stretching it? The translate command I've had to manually enter the original drawings cx and cy = 1024.0. Can you please help? I'm blocked again but I don't understand why... outerTicks.svg

Actually, that wouldn't have helped me at all. The previous version has the 'translation' command in it and the degrees to translate the 0 degree line by. My formulae spit out about 174 numbers from 0 to 360 representing the angles at which these 'tick' marks need to be drawn. Thus, with just a bit of text manipulation in Numbers, I'm able to construct 174 of those translate line commands and it draws all the marks I need. I believe that your 2nd approach would have required me to do the trig for each of those angles to get the Adjacent and Opposite lengths to enter into it - much more complicated, error prone and unintuitive. Your first solution is perfection! Doesn't need messing with!

John, you're my hero. You've done it!!! I used your brilliant template and created the ring I need! And as I have the formulas for the other ones, I can just rinse and repeat and then combine, rescale and edit in Designer. This is truly amazing work, and it should be pinned. Thank you SO MUCH!!!!

John, that's truly amazing, and I can't thank you enough for the time, energy and hard work you've put into researching this. I've never done anything with SVG's or python before, but this creating an SVG, then hacking it to add in a formula is genius! All the stars on the Internet today for you!!! Thank you.

Ha! It's either manually draw thousands of 'ticks', or learn python! lol...Sophie's choice or what!

6 of the 10 I need to do require a different logarithmic formula for each one. e.g., one the the rules has a formula of [Log.base10 ( Sin ( input number ) ) * 10 ] * 360 ... with 'input number' being from 0.1 to 90 inclusive. So regular duplication isn't ever going to work...

Exactly. Which is why, with all the algebraic functions and power built into Designer, I wondered if it was married to some 'auto draw' system, where you created the formula, and a range of 'input' numbers, draw your first line, and then it would use all there as inputs, and draw the remaining lines (based on the output of the 'input' numbers and the formula') and create the rest of the lines for you. I already have a spreadsheet of the maths with the input and output numbers for all 5 rules, but the logistics of doing each of these lines, by hand, is monumental. One 'rule' alone has over 800 'ticks' on it. That's 800 manual duplications of the vertical line, with the rotation angle set to the output of the formula. So my question more was on the automation side, not duplication of lines with even spacing... sorry if that was unclear to the first responder.

I've only recently (last few days) purchased Affinity Designer as a way to move from the Adobe shackles, and due to another question / feature request I found that there is a formula composition tool within Designer that (whilst missing log base10) does allow quite complex algebraic compositions. My question is this: As part of my work, I have to create all of the 'tick' marks around a circular path to create a circular slide rule. I have to do 5 different 'rules' within 1 disc, and I have two different discs to do. Kind of (but not quite) like this: Some of these tick marks need to be short ( like 0.5, 1.5 etc) and some longer (1, 2, 3 etc). All of these 'ticks' can be thought of as drawing a line (of different widths depending on 1/2 or whole numbers) with a centre that is on the origin ( centre of the image ) and extending at the calculated angle from 0 - 360, out to the specified 'length'.. like spokes on a bicycle wheel with the centre at the images centre, but the spokes extend at slightly different lengths depending on whole or half numbers. Then the unwanted circular centre can be cut out, leaving just the 'ticks' around the circular path... Does Affinity Designer have a feature that with a specified formula, and a specified range of numbers, of doing this drawing automatically? Otherwise, I'm going to be forced to draw thousands of lines INDIVIDUALLY out from the centre to each target's length.

I was recently shown: https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Workspace/expressions.html However, the function I need (Log10) is missing. Please add? Also, is it possible to use multiple functions in a single text field? I have need to specify a number between a range of positive real numbers into a formula like this: (360.0 * log10(sin(number that can vary between 0 and 1)))

Oh...go on then.. you've tempted me! lol, But it won't help for my current project.

Thank you - didn't see that... but alas, no log10 function...

My problem is that I have to use logarithmic functions to spit out an 'angle' that can be up to 8 decimal places, and that's the point at which I have to draw my 'tick' mark. I doubt I can enter a logarithmic and sine / tan / arcsine function in the angle field.

Ok, your help, in conjunction with : Has basically fixed this. Thank you all for tolerating my frustration and for helping me. MOD: Please delete this thread as it's not a bug, and a fix (or correcting a faulty user) has been found. Thanks again.

Fantastic! That fixed it! Thank you SO much!!!!

Thanks for your help; I saw the line was from my file, and in extreme embarrassment, I edited my reply post - please check out the changes. So to recap, you're still seeing rotational changes even over x.0001 of a degree? I couldn't get that to work...

You're saying that there is 4 decimals places of precision even though the text field and angle displayed don't show it? Can I get proof because when I rotated a line to 12 degrees, another to 13, and another to 14, with a final line at 12 (over the top of the first) and tried to move it by increasingly small amounts between those 'supposedly' correct degrees, I got completely inconsistent results, and after moving the needle from 12 to 13 and back again it would never line up exactly with 12 again. But to your point, that midline of the pink line needs to be on the centre of the image / guidelines, so if my example was wrong, colour me embarrassed... I'll double check. And is there a way to force Designer to remember where you dragged the rotation anchor to? It resets every time I leave a path.

I'm making a clock face. I set the guides to the dead centre, and I draw a 'tick' mark centrally using the guides. It's placed evenly over the vertical guide at 12 o'clock or 0/360 degrees around the clock face, then set the rotation anchor to the dead centre of the page using the guides. I duplicate that layer, and translate it using keyboard entry to exactly 5 or 10 degrees (depending on the tick mark I need). I press CMD+J to duplicate layer and transformation and populate the outside of the clock face. NOTICE: The rotation text field only allows single decimal places; this is functionally unusable, because in many cases we need multiple decimal place precision, and in fact if you manually rotate a layer you see displayed 2 decimal places, yet you can't manually set that in the text field. At least 4 is required, preferably 8 decimal places. Continuing with the bug description: I do the same for the 5 degree marks until the clock face is populated with marks at 5 degree and 10 degree points all around. To verify the correctness of these 'tick marks' I draw a long (extending past outer edge of clock face) 2 pixel wide line from the centre and rotate it so an random 'degree' that is a multiple of 5. e.g. 135. Then I see how it lays along the computed 'tick' marks. BUG: NOTICE that the tick mark at 135 isn't placed correctly, in fact none are except 0 degrees, 90, 180 and 270. All others are off by small amounts from those cardinal points up to the greatest amount of imperfection at the points directly between the cardinal points. If you MANUALLY drag the pink line you'll see that you still can't set it perfectly (due to poor 2 decimal place precision) but the black 135 tick mark is somewhere between 134 and 135, This level of precision isn't enough for my work. Suggestion: Please fix immediately the rounding / precision bug when doing rotations, and increase the decimal place precision on dragging AND by text entry to at least 4 decimal places, but preferably up to 8 decimal places. Current implementation is too inaccurate to use. Designer_Errors in rotating paths (lack of precision).afdesign

I have an urgent need to create a ring, where along the ring there are 'tick marks' like degrees on a compass, however, due to the nature of the project, I need to be very specific about where these 'ticks' lie around the circle, such that some need to be at a decimal precision of about 8 places. As far as I can tell, Designer only supports rotation precision to 1 decimal place. Is there an option or away to increase this to at the very least 4?