awakenedbyowls

Yup. I'm sure it's all of the above and I'll figure this thing out some day. You get into a flow with it and then out of the blue it starts not doing what it's told. And then you start thinking it's a bug, but it's probably not.

So I'm drawing objects. I trace a rough shape with the Pen Tool, then I select the Vector Brush Tool with a view to drawing round the edges with a Solid Pen to create a more natural effect with a view to Expanding the Stroke and adding to the object I just drew with the Pen Tool using the Boolean tool. Only when I select the Vector Brush tool and then select the brush I want there it goes every time plonking a big fat black stroke round the object I just traced! This is not what I'm asking the software to do. Why is it doing this???

I'm just hitting walls with this software again and again. I've got an object which comprises several independent shapes lumped together. I duplicated the layer and want to delete some of the shapes within it. But when I select the node tool and drag the marquee over it - nothing! It's now one object so can't select each object individually in the layers panel. It won't even let me select individual nodes by clicking on them. ..unless (as I just worked out) if I switch to Outline View Mode then it works just fine. Why can I only do this in Outline View Mode? It works in normal mode when I create a simple artboard with a few shapes, but on this file or more complicated designs it doesn't seem to work!

Sometimes you just have to take things in another direction. Less is more.

Thought I'd share this I've been working on a lot recently, trying to get it right. No so much for- hey look at what I did, but more to perhaps get some feedback on how I could improve it? I was quite happy early on with how the tail, legs, head and wings turned out. But the body has never looked right and I've been tweaking it and adding effects and hairs and stuff trying to get it right - but it still looks more like an inflatable sunbed than an insect. If anyone has any tips or suggestion, online tutorials I can watch then I'd appreciate any feedback. Please don't take the image and do something with it and repost it though as I'd prefer to make any changes myself.

I'm also experiencing really bad lag when changing brush size. Whether it's with the scroll wheel on my XP-Pen or using keyboard shortcuts - I have to sit and wait 5-10 seconds for it to respond. The pen shows the pattern on the screen, which is handy but so often I find myself playing around with the scroll wheel and it lags and I don't know which way is smaller or bigger and the next thing I'm sitting waiting and looking at three concentric circles because the brush size has expanded to bigger than my screen. I've just had to shut the software down several times using task manager because it just locks up. I think this appears to be a problem with the XP-Pen though.

Just wondering what actual use this feature is if I then can't apply the node tool to objects within the group I'm isolating? According to the official Affinity help pages I just hold down Alt and click on whatever it is I want to isolate, which includes Groups. But then when I select the node tool 1. it still won't let me select individual curve by clicking on them on the artboard or dragging (a previous issue I've had) but also 2. if I then try to select the object within the layers panel it just un-isolates everything! Yet again I find more limits to the functionality of this software. If anyone knows of a way to actually use the isolation mode in Groups then get in touch..

Has this been fixed yet? I've noticed this before. I'm trying out different brushes to see what one I like, then I find one so I think - I'll just add that to my personal brush folder. Oh but what brush is it? I can't remember which one I just selected and it's not highlighting it 😒 It seems to deselect the brush when I change the brush size, unless I change it in the editing panel. I guess I'm just going to have to learn to live with this counter work-flow feature..

Never used Fireworks so don't know. Adobe ended up with so many different bits of software it all go too convoluted for me, and also too expensive!

So let's say I have objects arranged in groups and I want to move them around. I have to select each one individually within the layer panel before I can move them? If I select the Move Tool and try to click on individual objects within a group it just selects and moves the whole group! I only have the functionality of clicking and dragging objects around if first select a layer with a specific group? Seriously, if there isn't a way to do this that I'm missing then that's very poor...

I expect it to select all the nodes within the rectangle I draw that aren't locked. If all those nodes correspond to whole objects then I expect it to select the whole object. But it's not selecting anything. It won't even select a single node unless I'm also selecting other nodes within the group at the time. What is the point in being able to lock things if it won't select them anyway? Yes I know how to select objects within the layers panel. Sometimes though, I also like the convenience of being able to select them with the node tool. I fail to see why expecting this kind of basic functionality is somehow unreasonable to you.

Still a mystery why the node tool won't select objects. If I select an object within a group it selects the whole group. If I click and drag a rectangle round the objects I want to select nothing happens. If I click on an object within a group in the layers panel it allows me to select any other individual object with the mouse but then I can't click and drag to select multiple objects within that group. Seriously, why isn't this working right? If this is the limit of functionality of the node tool then that's just garbage and needs to be fixed pronto.

So a shape "key point" is the centre point of a shape then and nothing to do with nodes or curves? I am unable to figure out what else this might refer to. I guess we might be getting down to semantics here but a "key point" of something in my view could refer to any of the nodes in a shape, as well as perhaps geometrical points of interest. In the page posted above on Snapping it says "Snap to shape key points—when checked, objects can be aligned to key points on shapes, such as the start and end of a rounded corner" - but from what I can see there and in my own examples is this option allows NODES to be snapped (not objects). I can't get objects to snap to anything, and also what does "start and end of a rounded corner" mean?

Always useful to look at the instructions.. Which I have, and I've done the tutorials but there is a point where you have to just go out and start playing around with the settings to get a feel for them. I forgot "snap to shape key points" is for snapping objects together and not for snapping nodes to objects. However, I just drew two simple squares and turned this setting on and tried to snap them together - nothing. But when I select "snap object to bounding boxes" they snap together and line up no bother. What's that all about? What am I not doing there that I need to be doing?

I'm doing that but struggling to differentiate between some of their functions and the tick boxes in the snapping menu. Also, in the snap menu if I select "snap to object geometry" the nodes I'm drawing snap to the curves and nodes of objects I'm drawing and other objects. But what is "snap to shape key points"? I drew a shape and then turned that on and started drawing a curve and nothing is snapping to anything on the shape. But if I select "snap to geometry" instead then the nodes snap to the edges and corners of the shape? It seems like "snap to geometry of selected curves" in the context toolbar is just doing the same as "snap to object geometry" in the snapping menu, the only difference is the latter will snap to other objects whereas the context toolbar option only snaps to the object I'm currently drawing. I don't understand why the setting are organised in this way. It's really confusing!

I'd probably bag a copy if I had a need for it, but it's not something I'd use. I wish I had a job making up bill board posters for cool indie bands, because I like doing that. I did a few mock up posters years ago on Apple Pages and that was fun.

In reply to all of the above: I'm doing all those things NotMyFault. It was an issue last night when I was using my XP-Pen but this morning on the mouse it no longer seems to be an issue. Force Pixel Alignment isn't turned on, but maybe something to do with Candidates? I don't know what that setting is all about and need to look into that. As for the Context Toolbar Snapping Options - I'm always a bit confused as to what they're for. I think it's for snapping the handles to the geometry of objects. The main snapping is for nodes and the context snapping buttons are for handles - or is that an oversimplification?

It's not hard to understand all the options in the drop down menu. I seem to have to go through the same pi festival all the time to just get a node in node mode to (say) snap to a line. I'm trying to move a node and I want it to snap on to the edge of another curve and so I turn on snapping and select "snap to geometry" and it's not doing it. So I try again and it's still not doing it. So I think to myself, maybe it's the other buttons for snapping, but no it's not them either. Then after repeated efforts I end up trying to move the node and suddenly it won't let me move it at all, instead it'll only let me move the handles.. And so on and after so much effort mucking about trying to get it to work it finally decides to do what it's supposed to be set to do, snap to the god damn edge of the curve! Why is this happening? What am I doing wrong? So far as I can see I'm not doing anything wrong, and it's just the software not working I hope it's me doing something not right though

It's not really any use to me at the moment really, but it might be? I have the 3 month trial version and I've played about with it once. I just don't have the time to use it any more because I'm busy figuring out Designer. Is it useful for web design? I'm just wondering what it can do that Designer and/or Photo can't be configured to do? I mean I can create my own templates for that on either..

I just worked out how to do this (for my purposes anyway) ! Just click on one object within the group and Select > Select Same > Fill Colour It will select other objects on other layers that have the same fill colour, however if you take this into account during the design process OR you can select the group and change all the objects in the group to a new colour not in use by anything else At least I thought that would work but something weird is happening when I perform a Boolean add - it all just seems to disappear? If I select all the objects in the group (but not the top layer of the group) it works but when I select all as per above it by defaults also selects the top layer as well and therefore (for reasons beyond me) it just doesn't work!

I see what you mean and I know about tagging and Select Same, but with so many other layers I found it easier just to copy the group onto another file and perform the operations there. Still more hassle than having to go through the whole list of objects though, but has the advantage of being less likely to cause the software to crash - which it nearly did before. I ended up adding them all together in chunks in the end. On a new file though it was more responsive. Another handy way to get round this would be to be able to set the name of each layer as you draw them, but the only way I can see is to drop the layer then click on it and rename it which is obviously too laborious to be worth it. Again, this should be part of group functionality so why isn't it??? Why so many basic oversights. I thought this software was the nuts when I first started using it but lots of minor negs starting to surface. Are they all going to be fixed for a future update when my period of free updates runs out? That's an Adobe trick that is...

This makes complete sense to me and I know that about the vector. It just feels like the stroke and fill settings have a mind of their own sometimes, very frustrating. So anything that I do that's part of a brush, eg. vector brush and paintbrush in pixel mode - it's the stroke I need to select colour for? Apart from if I want a fill in vector brush mode of course. In pixel mode though, it seems that I can select either the stroke or the fill though, and it works the same. Does that mean I can set either and it doesn't matter? Why does it always default the unselected stroke or fill to white when I do this though?

I'm genuinely perplexed about this, in either vector or pixel mode. I'm playing around with the paint brush in pixel mode and the ones I'm using it doesn't seem to matter whether I pick stroke or fill, the same effect is produced. And also, sometimes if I leave the other mode blank it automatically defaults it back to white when I start using the brush. Is that doing something to affect what I'm creating? I don't know. Also with the Vector Brush tool, I've yet to fathom out what I'm supposed to be setting colour to- stroke or fill? Or a combination of either? I also keep losing the colour I've selected, like when I draw a line and it's wrong and I ctrl+z the stroke/fill combination seems to default back and I have to keep setting it.

I don't understand what you are doing there. I just want to select 300 odd curves I just drew with the pen tool, expand stroke and then add together into one shape. This is an issue I have experienced a few times so far in AD. In order to perform these operations in groups of objects you have to go into the layer and select every single one individually. There doesn't seem to be a way to just select everything in the group through the top layer of the group (which kind of seems like one of the reasons why you would want to group things in the first place) Instead I have to scroll through every single layer and select them all in order to do this. Is there really no easy way to do this, because the way you described there seems as complicated as just selecting the objects individually. Seems to be so many obvious, basic features that are missing in this software..

Can't really tell unless I can compare in AD with the circle feature. Any time I've tried I always get margins AND asymmetry. I guess ultimately it probably comes down to using many more nodes than just the four..