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Essentially, yes. They are all variants of the same thing... Merge Down Merge Selected Merge Visible Flatten (Merge All) https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/pages/LayerOperations/merge.html

Since you are viewing the export on screen (rather than print), you need to ensure that your shapes are pixel aligned. All sizes need to be whole pixels, and X, Y position on whole pixels too. It is not ideal. There have been complaints about the antialiasing of snapped shapes for many years. Turn ON Force Pixel Alignment, and turn off Move by Whole Pixels, can both help. Affinity Snapped Rectangles.afdesign

OK. Confirmed. I get the crash too. You had selected Isometric Cube (which crashes), where I used Isometric with Planes (which works). Hopefully the staff will log as a bug.

I was unable to reproduce this crash on my machine. I enabled a simple isometric grid. Drew some rectangles in various planes. Snapped them together with the alignment handles. Everything worked as expected. Do you have a simple recipe that demonstrates the issue? A video / GIF might be helpful too. Or a particular file that exhibits the crash.

I tend to find that having turned on most of the snapping options, I rarely need to touch them, and mostly leave it turned on. I do agree it can be confusing. I wish the Snapping options were all in one place rather than half in the drop down, and half in the Pen tool. I also wish it was a proper panel that could be arranged like the other panels, and left open for easy access. As for snapping to nodes... Do look at the snapping options in the Pen tool itself. Snap—Controls node snapping: Align to nodes of selected curves—will horizontally or vertically align any node you drag to any other node on the same or a different curve. Snap to geometry of selected curves—will snap dragged nodes to the same or different curve's path (or node). Snap all selected nodes when dragging—will snap multiple selected nodes, when dragging, to a "target" node on any selected curves. Align handle positions using snapping options—will snap a control handle using any of the snapping criteria currently set in Global snapping, e.g. to grid, guide, object geometry, key points, spread, margin, etc. Perform construction snapping—allows control handle snapping: inline with adjacent node. to 90° from inline. to reflected angle with adjacent control handle. parallel to adjacent control handle. 90° to parallel control handle. to logical triangle. These options are independent of the global snapping options.

From the help... 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. Snap to object geometry—when checked, curves can be snapped to vertices and not simply to the bounding box or key points. Vertices are object corners or intersections, such as the points of a star, within a shape's bounding box. Not as explicit as it could be, but certainly seems that nodes are considered part of the geometry rather than key points.

Hi @awakenedbyowls, A few suggestions... I replied yesterday to a similar query about drawing a cylinder, with my preferred method, so I'll link you to that. You may also consider saving a cylinder as an asset, if it is something you need frequently, to save time and effort in the future. Regarding snapping... So far as I am aware there have been no changes between v1 and v2. Why doesn't the top of the ellipse count as a Shape Keypoint? No idea! Sounds like it should, but it is no different in v1 compared to v2. Remember that there are more snapping options in the context toolbar of the Pen tool. If you enable Snape to Nodes of Selected Curves, and then have the ellipse selected at the time when you want to snap to it, the nodes are visible, and do act as snapping targets. Also, be slightly wary about snap to Geometry, as that makes the entire edge snappable, so you may not hit the very top point. Hope these thoughts help.

I think you just need to do things in a slightly different order... 1. Drag out a Star, and don't worry about constraining it to be regular / symmetrical. 2. Press arrow keys to make your row / grid. 3. Hold arrow keys to add spacing between stars. 4. Finally, hold Shift to constrain the star to be regular / symmetrical.

If you select the end point of your semi circle, with the Node tool, and then switch to the Pen tool, you should be able to extend the curve as a straight line, by setting the pen mode to Line. https://affinity.help/designer2ipad/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_pen.html But you will still need to add the two shapes together, and I think drawing a rectangle is a lot easier than extending two straight lines. Or you can try Merging the Curves, and then Joining the Nodes, but this is even more drawn out.

I would... 1. Draw an ellipse. 2. Duplicate the ellipse, with a vertical offet. 3. With snapping turned on, draw a rectangle that connects the two ellipses. 4. Add the rectangle to the bottom ellipse, and move to the bottom of the layer stack.

You might get away with an Outline effect applied to the group. https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/LayerFX/layerFX_outline.html 1. Group the objects that you want to outline. 2. Add Outline effect to the group, via the Layer Effects button in the Layers Panel.

We should ould be able to do both. If the Warp is inside the symbol (and the symbols are Synced) then it should affect all symbols. If you want to warp symbols individually then the symbol should be in the warp. Anything else is inconsistent with existing behaviour.

3rd crash... I duplicated a third copy of the square, and did expand stroke on all three copies simultaneously - instant crash.

I had a go at recreating this... Have had 2 crashes to desktop. Neither time happened when I expanded the stroke. 1st happened after the expansion, when I rapidly dragged the resulting shapes on the artboard. 2nd happened after the expansion, when I moved the resulting shapes, then used Undo (Ctrl+Z) to return to a point prior to the expansion. Attached is the simple file I used. Affinity Multi Stroke Expand Crash.afdesign

Confirmed. The Warp Mesh is applied to the Symbol, but the nodes / handles are not updated in Sync with other instances.

I agree. This is a useful feature in theory, but in practice the timeline soon becomes unmanageable.

Create some text. Clone, and add a contour. Group. Move the group. Expected: The two objects move together. Actual: The contour is offset from the original. Related: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/172947-possible-bug-with-contour-and-grouping

Looks very crisp and believable. I'm assuming it is all vectors?

Perhaps I misunderstood, but isn't it Select > Invert Pixel Selection? Shortcut Ctrl + Shift + I

This can be done in Quick Mask mode. Hit Q (or icon on main toolbar, or Select > Edit Selection as Layer) and then transform the selection with the Move Tool.

You can draw your rectangle and then Select > Selection from Layer and Delete. And optionally set a keyboard shortcut to speed up the process.

Take a look at the status bar. Orientation can be cycled with Shift + O.

You are right, holding right mouse isn't required - dragging is sufficient to get the snapping.

Hi Max, To me this does look like a bug, or at very least unhelpful / unintuitive behaviour. However... I have found that dragging while holding the right mouse button as the modifier does snap correctly to the target object. Tried to upload a GIF, but forum seems to be having an issue right now... will try again later.

Hello @onqun, Looks like you are off to a good start. I think the key is to know what you are trying to draw, and that often starts with observation of a reference image. I was inspired to challenge myself, so grabbed a stock photo from Unsplash, and then spent a while trying to recreate all the shapes, hilights, and shadows that I could see. It is easy to make assumptions about what things should look like, rather than see what they do look like. And the real world is also a complex place, so you have to decide how far to push things. Lots of different blend modes, blurs, a bit of stroke profiles. Fairly happy with what I achieved. Which one is the photo? Observed Red Sphere.afdesign