jackamus

Well done Hagman you've highlighted yet another snapping problem!

I can confirm Hagman that it has nothing to do with our OS. I complained about this years ago with V1. I had a lengthy forum and letter exchange with the developer and Patrick Connor. Their reason for not allowing the handles to remain visible whilst moving a guide was to reduce 'screen clutter'. How on earth can bounding box handles appearing for as fraction of a second be considered 'screen clutter'. I think this problem, because of my incessant complaining, has become one that Serif refuses to give way on no matter how sensible my argument, and those of some others appears to be.

Hi Bruce, Your are correct except that with the angled Item I want to snap a guide to the mid-point of the group's bounding box. Regarding all the other work-arounds messing around with snapping settings is not a very convenient way to operate. Far and away the simplest solution would be for the developers to alter the code so that the handles do not disappear when moving a guide. They only disappear for a fraction of a second whilst the guide is being moved. What's so difficult about that?

Well of course and that is why the forum is so helpful. If you are now going to say, "Then why should we help you when you do not use AD in the orthodox manner", I have no defense. I never had this problem prior to AD when I used 'Page Plus' which I still say, from my perspective, was a better app because it had more technical drawing features.

Having complained over many years about bounding box handles disappearing when dragging or moving a guide I never actually offered an example file of what I meant. Attached is a file showing an number of groups A, B, C, D and E. I invite you to drag a vertical guides that will snap to the disappeared bounding box handles. This is just a simple file - some of my technical drawing files have a great number of objects and the problem gets even worse. The only way that I can get a guide to snap to a bounding box handle is to zoom right in to the handle and drag the guide until it does snap or switch off snapping and do it by eye. The problem is caused by there being a great number of places, out of screen view, where a guide can snap giving a false snapped position to the object in question. I rest my case. Guides and bounding boxes.afdesign

Thanks Walt. The reason why it looks complicated is because I just selected this particular group of object from a another file that had many more objects. I saw no point in sending the whole file - just enough to show the problem. On checking the original file the Adjustment layer was for a jpeg image which I no longer needed and hid. Effectively you are saying that if an adjustment layer is added then it will affect all the other layer beneath it rather than just the layer that it is applied to? Another aspect of this is the way I use AD. If I were to use it in the correct manner I would be spending more time organizing layers than actually doing the work. I use AD in a way that gets me the result I need rather than slavishly obey all the rules - hence the comment in my signature! I will use this file to illustrate, in another thread, my long standing concern and complaint about bounding box handles disappearing when moving a guide.

I have attached the file. The Yellow object changes to orange when raised to the top layers. Change colour.afdesign

I have an grouped object that is filled with orange. When I move it back to the bottom layer it changes to yellow. Why?

Over the last two weeks AD2 has crashed 3 times. The last time was today it happened when I went to print a file. Isn't there a way of recalling the history at the point of crashing?

It looks like I've opened a can of worms here! Great!

Do they have to be used by many to be included? How would Serif know how many? This is all part an parcel of my constant bitching about the mid points of bounding boxes disappearing whilst dragging a guide line to coincide (snap?) with the mid point. I must have complained about this a dozen times but the one thing I probably never mentioned was how important it was when technical drawing! Most of my use of AD2 is technical drawing and having large paper sizes like A2, A1 and A0 can allowing full size drawing plus using the 'Scale' function. In technical drawing being able to move a guide to an object's bounding box mid-point is very important especially with ellipses when technical illustrating (major and minor axes). Its no good saying "adjust the snapping features" because when there are a great many objects, some in line and some not in line, a guide may snap to another snapping-point that is almost in line but not quite but out of view of the drawing screen. Sometimes I have to zoom-in really close to get a guide to coincide with the mid-point. If necessary I will create and send a file to serif where a developer can find this out for himself! Although I shouldn't have to do this as I'm not asking for much in the first place! At the end of the day why not just eave the mid-points still visible when moving a guide? Its only for a fraction of a second so its not going to make drawing take any longer!

I discovered that I can do it if I just select A4 then open 'Document setup' and all the 'A' sizes appear and I can then select the one I want. Why would Serif want to remove them in the first place?

Foe some reason or other the maximum page size I can select is A4, previously the choice would offer up to A0. Is this a setting issue?

I didn't finf the instruction all that helpful - explained the different ways to use the tool but not how to use the tool. I took a chance by selecting the tool, setting the size, clicked alt to select clone area of the background and then tried to remove the parts of the image I didn't want. It did one area but not the next and was very slow. I gave up. Not as easy as Photoshop was! What was I doing wrong?

Maybe that's what it needs to get Serif to do something!

I know - I was probably responsible for many of them!

Normally when I come onto this forum it is often with a complaint about some aspect of AD. Today is different! I want to thank Serif for the 'Measure Tool'. Since a lot of my AD work is technical drawing the measuring tool has made it much easier to work out dimensions. Now to revert back to my old self - being able to create dimensions lines, like the old DrawPlus had, is still a missing feature. The measuring tool is a step nearer but has still a long way to go.

You never seem to get the point of anything I say! If Serif removed everything, because of screen clutter, except for a pen, pencil, paint brush, colour pallet and stroke thickness you would go along with it and justify it to people like me who make obvious comments.

That wasn't an improvement! Does Serif operate a policy of removing a feature every time they add a new one?

I've just updated AD2 and now I don't seem to be able to select a New page size up to AO. Where have they gone?

But if you do that aren't you still selecting a child object that is still attached to the group?

Yes.

Hi Walt, If I have a group of objects then select one object, copy and paste then drag it to another position from its original position then if I select it again in order to make another copy to paste elsewhere a bounding box appears linking the pasted object to its original group. I am unable to free it up other than to cut it and ten paste it elsewhere. It would be useful for grouped objects to be unconnected to the original group for purposes of moving to another position. In other words it would be like a bunch of objects that even though grouped could be independently dragged out of the group to a new position. I'm happy to use a layer to contain a group of ungrouped objects that can be selected and dragged elsewhere. The way I use AD is not like the way the rest of you do. its a way that suits me.

Is there a way to switch off child objects in the layers tab? Meaning that every object can be independently copied regardless of its group and moved to another position without a bounding box that ties it to its previous location.

Like you said Affinity may be able to offer all their AD apps with file compatibility on Mac OS and Windows OS but like I said it still doesn't have the drawing features that DrawPlus had. I'm only interested in the drawing aspect of an app rather than its file swapping capability. When I look around for a drawing app I look at their drawing features first and their drawing features second!