bpedit

I'm working at about 100%. My current page is a bead loom pattern, many small rectangles forming a rectilinear matrix. Each rectangle abuts its neighbors with no space in between and no overlap except for the 0.1 point lines defining the borders. I am constantly selecting these rectangles in order to color the beads.

I notice the arrowhead cursor selects the area under its approximate geometric center. Is there a way to adjust it such that it selects what is under the tip of the arrowhead?

That sounds good, I will give it a try. Thanks!

Thanks all for the help. I think the best solution for now is to move the Swatch palette close to my grid and drag colors onto the rectangles. It's slower that what I envisioned but has the advantage of filling in a column at a time, regardless of color.

This is only a small portion, the pattern extends 10 inches. Also, imagine 25 rows, versus the 7 shown here, with more intricate designs.. Marque selection is out. I can't imagine how layers will help.

Thanks. This is currently the manner in which I am forced to work but is inferior to what I would like to do. As you choose successive objects it gets dicer to accurately select the next one, having to carefully place the cursor to avoid other operations such as rotating the previous selection. These rectangles form a dense matrix, abutting edge to edge. Too, it's difficult to accurately gauge which rectangles have been selected. It also lacks the visual feedback of successively building the design. Finally, it adds the extra operations involved in selecting the color after the fact of selecting the objects.

Is there a way, in Designer, to efficiently color (fill) an unselected object with the current color in the Color manager by just clicking on it? Imagine a matrix of rectangles representing a beading pattern. Choose a bead color, then click the rectangles which you want of that color. I've tried various tools in various ways but all methods seem rather burdensome for this application. I would imagine the Fill Tool would do this but it only act as the Color Picker Tool on an unselected object.

Arrowheads may be among the "least elegant" but are for me and others among the most useful tools. Personally, I've never found a use for placing clubs, spades,hearts or even circles at the ends of lines, especially with enough frequency to need a tool. I don't mind these features eventually being provided for those with a need but I'd hate to see arrowheads held hostage to await this capability.

To be clear, as I envision this "feature", it would only apply to selected text. That is, text within a text object which is currently highlighted with the Text Tool. It would not apply if the text were selected with, say, the Move Tool.

Thanks!

Onerous design, I guess Illustrator trumps in this regard. Your point is well taken, I do want to keep using the particular set of attributes, but not for every character. I do science education apps and often use subscripts, superscripts and Greek symbols. Or sometimes I want to slant, bold or kern a word. What a pain resetting to my current set of attributes each time. Is there any use in moving this to a feature request or is this a static paradigm?

I suspect this is probably more generic to Designer but this is where it's bugging me the most. Suppose you have a line of text with particular character attributes such as size and baseline set. Now you select a particular subset of characters and change those attributes with the intent of the changes only applying to the selecion. Designer now retains those changes when you enter new text and you have to re-enter your "default" parameters again. Am I missing something? It would seem the behavior should be that when particular text is selected and changes should only apply to that text then revert to the former settings when the text is de-selected.

Arrowheads have finally, ta-da!, made it to the "feature roadmap". Affinity Designer feature roadmap - Feature Requests - Affinity | Forum

Thanks MEB, Designer calls the 1x, 2, and 3x resolutions. Let's keep to that. By size I refer to the overall pixel dimensions of the output image. So, I need to export different sizes of the same vector image. For example I need 1024, 180, 120, etc size PNG's (all square). Plus, I need these at different resolutions ( 1x, 2x, 3x). It gets worse. I can't even do this the laborous way! I can export at different sizes, no problem. However, this is not possible using slices where the resolution can't be set. So I'm attempting to do this in standard export fashion using Export from the menu. This allows size adjustment but not resolution adjustment. I thought this could be adjusted by setting the DPI in Document Setup where 72 DPI corresponds to 1x, 144 DPI corresponds to 2X, etc. But every time I reset the DPI from the initial 72 to 144 and attempt to export, Designer crashes. I guess my next resort is to create different Designer files at different sizes to get this done. But what a crude kludge with hell to pay if I want to tweak my design. Surely other folks are using Designer for this purpose, any help? Edit: I got the job done by creating a new layer for each size the creating a slice for each size. This allowed exporting at different resolutions as necessary. But there were a lot of crashes, each one upon hitting the export icon in Slices. These crashes were eratic but mostly occured at 2x and 3x. I also still face repeating this whole procedure if I ever tweak the design.

Is there a way to reset the resolution of a slice? I'm creating icons for an app. The original art is 1024 x 1024 "(iTunesArtwork", largest size needed). I would like to set up slices to export full image png's at different sizes but Designer doesn't seem to allow this, at least as inferred from the input options available and from Help. On a side note, it seems that the "Resolutions:" chosen must apply to all slices as opposed to being set for particular slices. I can do this the way I've always done it but the idea of slices seemed to promise a more elegant and expedient solution. Thanks, Byrne

I try to remain positive on this forum but I gotta to express my dismay at the newly revised roadmap (Dec 11) for Designer. No arrowheads! Where's the emoticon with tears streaming down? The roadmap does have Bullets and Numbering for text. These are features I don't even use in a word processing app, they are much easier to do "by hand" than constructing your own arrowheads. for index = 0; index < 10000; ++index { print(" :( ") }

After updating to 10.11 I get a warning that I am missing a font, Calisto MT. I have gone through all my layers and am pretty sure I have replaced all occurences with Times but I still get this warning. Maybe this belongs in bugs. In another post there is a reference to an Update Fonts button and a Replace Fonts panel. I can find neither of these. I do find a Reset Fonts button but it doesn't seem to effect any cnanges, at least in regard to my issue. (Reset Fonts cannot be found searching Help.) Byrne Edit: Apology for wasting space. I went through my hundred layers again and found the culprit. The warning is now gone. Instead, let me divert this into a plea for global search and replace. (After arrowheads, of course!) And maybe a way to withdraw a post for the impulsive among us.

Ronny, I can find neither an Update Fonts button nor a Replace Fonts panel. I've looked in both the current beta (1.3.5.18) and the current release version. I do see a Reset Fonts button but it doesn't seem to do anything. Byrne

vitor: Ouch! I'm not sure that fighting "disrespect" with disrespect is the best approach. It's certainly not the tone taken by most form users here. MRC MBU: It's a good idea to read an entire thread before responding. The "roadmap" hasn't been updated since April but we've been apprised of arrowheads' future in this thread.

Thanks, Matt and Tony; Sign me up for Option A. It's all I need in a pasteboard. Byrne

Matt, Thanks for the explanation. Is the idea that you can compose in the second mode, essentially having a pasteboard, then toggle to the first mode (current implementation) for print or export? If so, sign me up! If not, see below. I'm unclear about the second mode in option A. Does this still have a defined document area? If one prints or exports, from the Draw Persona, does the document area define the edges of the output? I understand there would be issues with objects straddling the document area, would they be ignored in the output? This appears to more of an undertaking than I expected. I've been pestering on the basis of this seeming easy. I have other ways of doing what I need so please don't compromise or take time away from other priorities such as, say, arrowheads. ;) Byrne

Tony, Is there a particular reason you seem reluctant to implement a pasteboard? It seems like it's already there except that objects in this area are not visible. They can be selected (if you know where to click), edited and moved back into the print area when desired. Artboards seem an indirect and potentially problematic way to achieve the simplicity of a pasteboard. My use of pasteboards is to store alternative elements, as a palette and as a place for notes. Sure, there are other ways to achieve this in Designer but they are indirect and abstruse compared to the simplicity and handiness of a pasteboard. Byrne

I'm working with Designer in Draw Persona. Saving is via File > Export. I just tried a couple tests, I get the extension with a JPEG as well. I also get the extension when outputting from Expert Persona but I have very little experience in this mode; I selected a Preset and clicked Export Selected. OS 10.11.1, mid 2015 iMac

Andrew, Yes it is turned ON. It seems this option affects the Affinity file extension but not those of exported images, at least PNGs.

Where in System Preferences (El Capitan) are you finding this? Perhaps you are refering to "Show all filename extensions" which is found in the Advanced panel of the Finder Preferences? I have this turned off but still Designer has its way with attaching the visible extension name. Even if this did supress the visible extension, I would much rather control this option from particular apps so I'm not forced into an all-or-nothing.