Gear maker

I believe the problem you are having is that the body of the guitar is made up of a combined 16 pieces. AD doesn't know which pieces you want to subtract from. Also what is being subtracted, the white layer, is a combined 7 objects. Usually we can just select a layer that is a type Curves and use the Divide tool to separate them, for some reason the combination of the dots, bar and paisley that divide doesn't like. Okay it's the bottom right dot. Something about that dot is causing a problem with divide and subtract. So I copied the combined (white) layer and from the copy deleted the bottom right dot. Then from the original I deleted all but the bottom right dot. Then I used divide on the black layer. Then I selected the black neck layer and the two white layers and did the subtract. Everything worked.

I totally agree. I think out of the last 100 duplicates I have made using the option key, all but maybe one were followed by two undo's. I put in a request for being able to deactivate it a few years ago. Nothing yet. I never figured out why we needed so many ways to duplicate something. On one project last year it was a handy option though.

Andy, there isn't a way to duplicate while nudging that I have ever found. While dragging yes, but not nudging.

socialconnection, what resolution are you making the export and document? By going to PNG or JPEG you are rasterizing the image at the resolution selected. As with a picture if this isn't enough resolution it will have jagged lines that will look blurred. There are a couple things that can be done depending on what you are using the image for. You can increase the resolution of the image, say to 300 dpi. Or switch to a non rasterized output type like SVG or EPS. I hope this helps.

Just a thought... There are always comments about Designer being slow. I just ran into a possible cause for some of this. I had a simple shape I needed in my drawing that was used in 6 places after being created. It involved a couple shapes and a mask to shape the edges of a blur. To make the mask I used a couple versions of the shape and did a couple geometry functions. It wasn't until a few days later that I just happened to look at the mask while in the node tool. Each one of the six shapes had 1740 extra nodes added by probably the Subtract function. I can't help but think that there had to be some possible slowing by the addition of over 10,000 unneeded nodes to the drawing. Especially if this had occurred several times in the complete drawing. It only took few minutes to delete the 10,000+ unneeded nodes from the 6 shapes. Once I noticed they existed. I need to remember to always double check the results of the geometry functions from now on. Test 1.afdesign

After 5 years of using AD and I didn't know that. I guess I never explored that menu or forgot about it. Thanks Lee that will sure help make it easier.

Are you running AD in Separated Mode? If so this is normal that it appears to not open but with a cmd + tab it then shows. What I do when I start AD is to right click on AD icon in the dock then left click to select the Recently Open file I intend to work on. Or you can cmd + tab after clicking on the dock icon. Or you can click on the AD in the dock a second time. I hope that helps.

I'm not sure if this is what you are after. In Designer you can take any shape, one you've drawn or something from the shape tool. Say a star, then convert it into a text path (Layer>Covert to text path) then add any text using the text tool.

In Affinity Photo there are a couple ways. Go to the View tool (hand) and in the tool bar there is a "Units" field which can be set to inches. You can also do it in the menu Document>Resize document.

vicentlepes, thanks for getting the video to Sean, I was having problems with QuickTime. Sean, yes I always run in Separated Mode. I guess I should mention that as this isn't the first time it has been important. Mike

MEB, a video doesn't show the problem well as you can't see keystrokes. I thought you were able to reproduce this back in April. We have been waiting to stop the cycling of tools for years and now there is a way but it causes a worse problem. Did you try my example with the test4 file I had attached above in April? With Use ⇧ modifier to cycle tools selected: Several things seem to trigger the problem, one of those is to: Click in the area of the layer panel below the layers to unselect all layers Then click on the unnamed layer Press a P twice you'll end up in the Pen tool but the layer selected now is the Purple layer, even if you wait a few minutes between presses Press G twice you'll end up in the Fill tool but layer Gray selected Press M twice you'll end up in the Rectangle tool but with layer Marble selected Press A twice you'll end up in the Node tool but with layer Apple selected The idea of the Use ⇧ modifier to cycle tools is supposed to be so that if we happen to hit a letter key more than once it doesn't put us in a different tool than what that letter calls for. If we forget we are already in the Pen tool than hitting a second P won't dump us into the Brush tool. And now it doesn't, but frequently the second P will switch to a different layer which I think is worse because we end up modifying the wrong layer or creating a layer in the wrong location. You are right it's not every second keypress, but it happens frequently. It used to be that when I pressed a P I would have to look at the tools or at least the cursor to see if it was correct. Now we have to look at the layer panel to see if the correct layer is still selected following the keypress. Not what I'd call forward progress. Unless we always have all groups expanded then searching by the first character of the layer name isn't a reliable method of finding a layer. And I usually don't keep everything expanded. Mike

It could be just pressing tab which erases toolbars and panels. Then tab shows them again. It could be shift cmd H which hides just the studio of panels, menu View>Studio>Hide Studio or shift cmd H again. Do either of those work for you?

There is a preference that can be used to affect this. But with the default if you hold down the opt key (on a MAC) the wheel will cause zooming. With out the opt key down you'll get vertical scrolling and with the shift down you'll get horizontal scrolling. The preference can set it so that the wheel just does zooming. I don't think you can do scrolling if this is set, but I've never tried it.

eobet, did you mean the keystroke? Use a ctrl + 2 or cmd + 2 to get a 200%, a 3 gives a 400%, etc.

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