Gear maker

Alex, very good. I don't think I did a reset selection box, but maybe accidentally... Don't know how you came up with this. I was just left scratching my head. Thank you for solving the mystery. Mike

My project was using a lot of gradients of various types. Somehow when I turned one of the radials into an elliptical the arms are not at 90 degrees. I didn't know this was even possible. Is there a way to change this angle? I can't see where it would affect the gradient, much. Anyone have any ideas? None of the other ellipticals have had this property. The shape is attached if you are curious. test22.afdesign

I didn't know that. Very handy. Thanks for the info A_B_C. Doesn't seem to be a combination that deletes a guide like this. I wish there was a list of shortcuts like this.

Alex, missed this thread somehow last month. Neat technique. Gotta remember that one. Mike

MEB, can you possibly coordinate a cure with a fix? :rolleyes: I've already used this 3 times in 2 hours to help me in this project. It's really handy.

Alex, my thoughts exactly. I hope if it's not it will be made selectable instead of just fixing it.

I just ran into another aspect of this. I had over a hundred objects that I spent quite awhile reorganizing so that they would display in proper order. Then I needed to move about half of them to a group far away so I figured I'd do a cut and then paste them into the new group. The group was already existing and I wanted the paste to occur right below the bottom object. Which I can't be done. So I clicked on the "Insert behind the selection" then did the paste. Much to my surprise and dismay they were pasted into the new group below the last object but in reversed order! So now we know how to reverse the order of objects. Do a cut, then "Insert behind the selection", finally paste. Which is how I got them back into the proper order again. Phew!

I guess "contrast issues" must include me also. I have to always double check to see which tool is selected. It's just not obvious, like it should be. Especially seeing as if I hit an A, the node tool isn't the only one that might be selected.

I can't say I'm the least bit surprised. You people have done a great job of creating a fantastic piece of software. Congratulations everyone.

I find that when I am creating a drawing, about half the time I'm building down (the foreground then the back ground). Then half the time I'm building up the drawing (the face then the eyes). AD assumes that all building would be bottom to top so that everything done creates the new object above the existing object. Because of this I was happy when I discovered the "Insert behind the selection" icon. But my happiness was short lived when I found that it only worked for one object per press. It's just as easy to drag the new object behind the preceding one as it is to hit this icon before every object's creation. I seem to spend a lot of time reorganizing objects. One of the biggest times this happens is using the Power Duplicate. I always seem to start with what I want to be the top layer. If I create 100 duplicates I end up spending many minutes reversing the order when I am through. And it's really hard to keep them in order when manually reordering 100 objects. It would help if there was a modifier that would latch the "Insert behind the selection" until it is turned off. And/or a command that would reverse the order of a selection of layers. Both would be very valuable.

In the movie I was up around 50K% or more just to emphasize it. When I found it I was about 2K%. Trying to get accuracy and AD wouldn't let me.

Why are there areas on a curve that AD will not let me create a node? I was trying to create a node on a curve and AD refused to place one where I wanted it, so I zoomed in and moved the node tool cursor along the curve and noticed that the little tilde below the cursor is missing what seems to be a majority of the time. And when the tile is missing AD will not let a node be created. See attached video. The distance between possible node areas seems to vary. I thought I could create a node anywhere along the curve. What's up? :( Is it when the curve has a certain angle? Does a straight line have this same issue? Node tool1.mov Just tried it and a straight line has the same issue.

Matt, if I could provide a suggestion to consider... In a pixel document the nudge tool jumps one pixel of the image per nudge. But with a vector document when you could be zoomed in at 0.1% 10%, 1000%, 1000000%, etc. the current nudge is really only useful around a 100% zoom. If instead the nudge could cause a movement of about the equivalent of a pixel on the display maybe for each nudge. So changing the zoom will change the nudge. That pixel count per nudge could be something that is selectable by the user. So with 10 pixels selected about 10 nudges would give a movement of 1" on the display regardless of the zoom. Also what would you think of having it so that if the nudge keys are held down for more than a few seconds, have it accelerate. Sometimes the nudge works better even for longer distances than dragging does.

Matt, are you playing with us. The title of this topic is "Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.2.1.25598)" but the version I ended up getting when I downloaded is 1.2.1.25597. Is ...597 the correct version or is there really a ...598 that should have been installed? ;) Now I'm hungry for 1.2.1.25598! Great work team. Thank you for all the toys.

Tazintosh I would guess this is so it can be used to make spirals with a simple drag and drop. How about putting in a feature request that asks that the offset used be determined by the form of the offset specified. So that... if an exact offset is entered from the transform panel (+=.75 or *=2) then that exact offset is used for each iteration. If a percentage is entered from the transform panel (+=75% or *=200%) then the percentage is used for each iteration. If the copy is just dragged and dropped then that could use a percentage for each iteration. Maybe that way we could have it as it has been design but it could handle both modes of use.

Lille, AD knows what the order of the nodes were at creation. So a simple keystroke could easily (for the user) jump to the next or previous. Yes, Karim has it. I like your idea.

A feature that would be really handy to have is a hotkey that would allow one to be zoomed way in on a node. Pressing the hot key would then jump to the next (or previous) node while remaining at the same zoom level. Currently we have to zoom out to find the next node then zoom way in to make an adjustment, then zoom way out, etc. In my current project this would have saved me hours. Most of my projects it would have saved me considerable time.

Is there any way to get the AD help window not to always be at the front. It would be handy to be able to enter help, then pull AD to the front to try doing what was read, then switching back to the help, etc. With it up front it gets in the way of using AD.

I don't think I've seen this request before... When I have multiple drawings open with long layer lists AD forgets the position in the layer list when switching back from another drawing. If we are 2/3 of the way down when switching drawings, then AD should show 2/3 of the way down when switching back. AD does remember which layer is selected but we always have to scroll down searching for it. If AD can't remember the exact position in the layer list, then maybe it could return to the position where the selected layer is at least being shown in the layer panel.

When working a complex drawing it would be handy to be able to select one shape to always stay a candidate, or never become a candidate. My drawing has hundreds of shapes all intertwined and I seem to spend a lot of time hovering. Alex, I'm assuming you are kidding on that suggestion! :o

Linking is one feature from PS that I really miss. Especially seeing as locking the layers really doesn't stop their movement.

The toolbar is certainly stripped down in this release. Couldn't our modifications of the toolbar be carried over from one update to the next? Otherwise it's looking great!

I use the Option key to cancel snapping more than probably any other key function. The snapping is great, but frequently I don't want an item snapped, just placed close to where it would snap to. I would hate to have to turn it off then turn it back on again. I can do that with the mouse and the Toolbar. A quick off and on is what is valuable, the way it is. It also needs to be a key that is easy to instinctively hit with the left hand. The Option key is perfect.

Ben, I totally agree that the Option is the correct key for canceling snapping. And I sure do agree that the Option drag to duplicate causes a lot of accidental duplicates. And they always take at least two cmd+Z presses to fix. Even after my Aha moment I am still having to fix duplicates. There are so many ways to duplicate already that work with single or multiple shapes that I don't see the need for the Option drag. Cmd+J, cmd+C/cmd+V, cmd+drag, Edit menu choices, right click Duplicate, etc. Personally for multiple shapes I prefer the cmd+C/cmd+V as it puts the shapes in an unbroken sequence. Which is usually what I want. I vote for not duplicating using an Option drag.

I just ran into something that seems awkward to me and I was wondering if that is the way it was meant and what other people thought of it. I had a group of shapes that I was using to create a mask for several other shapes. So I was using the "Insert behind selection" to place the batch of shapes behind the intended shape to allow tweaking as necessary. What surprised me was that the "Insert behind selection" inverted the order of the multiple shapes being pasted. This created a problem in that after tweaking I had to do a subtract to get a single layer for the mask, which didn't work due to the inversion of order. Is there a reason the order of shapes is inverted using the "Insert behind selection"? I don't see any benefit and it did cause extra work that negated the benefit of having a "Insert behind selection" function. :unsure: