Jilly

@Ben Thank you for the thought-out response. It gives us a better understanding of the implications. So you’re saying that permanently resetting the bounding box of a dynamic shape will convert it to curves. That might indeed be a issue, but it also might not make a difference. That is also the outcome of @lenogre’s suggestion. So for example we might ⌥+click the “Reset Bounding Box” option and what it does is convert the shape to curves, reset the bounding box, and show the Assistant informing “the shape was converted to curves”. The second, better alternative, is to make “Reset Bounding Box” a button toggle. So we press it once and the button gets inset in the interface, and from then on it’ll always use the alternative box model until we click it again. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with this — it doesn’t really need to be permanent, it just needs to be done so we don’t have to keep toggling the option (current behaviour).

@Pšenda Thank you for pointing out the other thread. Edited the top post to reflect this is a duplicate.

For te developers, this post by Dennis Hotson succinctly outlines what a curvature comb is and how it’s useful to draw better looking bézier curves. It has animations and interactive examples.

This post is a duplicate. Follow the original instead. This post by Dennis Hotson succinctly outlines what a curvature comb is and how it’s useful to draw better looking bézier curves. It has animations and interactive examples.

I doubt it. With me, Illustrator never had a single hiccup with patterns, and I frequently pushed it to the max of its abilities.

Put me down as one more that wants at least the option to make the reset permanent.

This is really weird. I was under the impression the Beta version did not behave like this (i.e. the change was permanent) but I might be misremembering. You’re speaking of this as a feature, MEB, but to me it looks like a bug. It makes little sense that there’s no way to make this choice “stick”. At the very least it should behave like the pathfinder: regular click makes it permanent and ⌥+click makes it temporary (or vice-versa, I won’t be picky). Having to use the pathfinder is an ugly workaround (especially since AD sometimes messes shapes with the pathfinder).

Again, that wasn’t what I said. Please stop acting like I’m attacking you at every turn. I’m not. I’m asking the developers a question, and you’re just shouting after me.

Which wasn’t my point, and you’re exaggerating. My comment was on your statement, not Affinity Designer’s capabilities. Your statement makes it worse because it makes it seem alternative methods already existed and were known, yet weren’t considered from the start. But lets assume they were considered, and just scraped. That still does not answer why! All I asked for was insight from the developers. I want their opinions on it, not your conjectures. The former will actually affect Affinity Designer’s capabilities, while the latter will not.

I don’t think anyone on this thread actually cares if Figma was first or is unique. In fact, it has been shown Sketchup already does this. What we all seem to agree on is that their method does indeed make more sense than the current pen tool and we’d like to see it in Affinity Designer. By stating so many other tools have some of these options and Affinity Designer doesn’t, it makes it look even worse!

It would be good to at least know the opinion of the developers on this. Is it something they think is worthwhile and would like to pursue? Is it in the works? Do they have better ideas? Do they think this is worse than what we currently have? And if so, why?

Agreed. As much as you might consider Shape Builder a basic tool, there’s something even more basic than it: the boolean operations that power it. Without getting those right first, working on a Shape Builder tool would be a waste of time and resources.

This feature is already implemented in the latest stable of Designer, but not yet in the latest beta of Photo.

For what it’s worth, I for one did read it as a remark to lift the mood, so thumbs up to that. Good news indeed, if it’s going to be as soon as version 1.6. I think they were already reworked once, so fingers crossed for it to be really fixed this time. Yes, I do figure general bug fixing wouldn’t be part of the feature roadmap (not exactly feature, after all).

Problem with joining points. As for the pathfinder, it’s the same issue with expanding strokes: it makes way too many points. It’s impossible to trust its results. I always need to check back and manually fix its mistakes. And if I miss one, that may mean redoing hours of work (I rely on pathfinder for extremely complex shapes). Affinity Designer is marketed as being extremely precise, but most times I do an operation that requires precision, it fumbles. It’s hands down the most imprecise vector tool I’ve ever used regularly. The teams is aware of these two problems, yet solving them is not on the roadmap. I’d say the basics should be fixed before even thinking about adding more features.

You’re the one taking it personally, why not remove yourself from the conversation instead? I wouldn’t criticise the tool if I didn’t see potential in it. Nowhere in my comment did I badmouth anyone. I commented on the tool, not the people making it. Your argument is nonsensical and made out of anger. This thread is about a tool for a specific purpose. You can also make a pattern using MS Paint, but that’s not what we’re discussing.

They’re not very good at showing it (not referring to just this issue). A forum is one of the worst ways to handle bug reports and feature requests. I also remember reading from a member of the team (on twitter? a good while ago) that it was low priority and they weren’t even sure if they were going to build it. I don’t mean to doubt you, but without official confirmation, it means little. I’m not trying to be confrontational, but I’ll believe it when I see it. AD can’t even expand strokes correctly. It also can’t do incredibly basic things like pressing the space bar to temporarily move objects or be consistent with tabbing to move through fields, or have a decent pathfinder, or join points from different shapes. It also has substandard artboards which are little more than layers with a different name. To someone who has never used their other apps (pre-Affinity) the “Serif treatment” is far from impressive. In fact, it is so frequently bad that I’d rather they didn’t give it the Serif treatment at all and just copied what works. As does everything. But that is far from reassuring. The promise of a feature (and not even that, since again, there’s no official acknowledgement) does not mean it will be built. Especially when there’s no ETA and it’s something to do eventually. For all we know, it’ll be years before it is implemented.

Not only is it not implemented, it’s not even in the feature roadmap and this post hasn’t been officially acknowledged by the team. I’d say there’s a good chance they’re not even going to see this. We need more people making noise for it.

To be fair, that wasn’t Affinity’s team claim, it was a testimonial by a user. It is completely false, though, as not only is there no innovation in the way it does bezier curves (nothing new that Illustrator and others haven’t done for years), it doesn’t even do them correctly many times.

Now it’s even more ridiculous that this feature does not exist. From the Affinity Designer for Windows video, 31 seconds mark: Seriously? A symbol repeated multiple times to fake a pattern?

Actually, there’s a very good reason to continue to use the beta: I use the beta frequently and my settings are how I like; not so on the stable. When these stable upgrades are out, it always messes with my workflow. I know I’m not the only one complaining, since I remember another post some time ago on this very issue. Now, until a new beta is out, my workflow is worse. Please just release another beta right after the stable one so we can continue with our workflow. What kind of abuse does this prevent?

Still not showing for me (though I’ve already watched them from Alfred’s post).

Videos aren’t loading for me.

What’s unique about them, compared to Illustrator? I’ve never used DrawPlus, so I’m genuinely interested in what kind of innovative features it has for patterns. Exclusively create my own.

The first one is wrong (but I took that into account). It is snapping to a point further down (you can see the green line that hints at it).