jackamus

This sounds a bit complicated!
I think my original posting has been over-reacted to!
I have attached a file showing a cross section of a box with crudely drawn hatching. I'm looking for a very simple way to do this as an extra feature in AD.
AD2.afdesign

Maybe this thread should be aired on 'Feedback suggestions' but I would like comments from users first.
ADV2 can now offer different coloured guide lines. This is a very useful feature for what I am suggesting.
I have searched to see if anyone has suggested angled guide lines and there appears to be none.
Different coloured angled guide lines would be a great feature for those who like to draw in perspective.
Image 1 Shows a screen with 3 sets of angled coloured guide lines. Each set of lines can be on a separate dedicated layer if so desired. The layers can be selected using the selection icon below left of screen.
Image 2 Shows the 3 sets of lines converging to a point (vanishing points). The idea is that further guides can be drawn that will automatically converge (snap) at the same points. These guides can be turned On and OFF
Image 3 Shows how the guide lines can be automatically adjust for 3 point perspective. The left and right hand vanishing points (LVP and RVP) can be moved, along with their respective guide lines, onto a horizontal line representing the 'Horizon'. A perpendicular guide line can be moved left or right to snap to the vertical vanishing point (VVP).
Image 4 Illustrates how some one who wants to draw accurately in perspective buy using an ellipse and adjusting the guides accordingly.
Image 5 Illustrates how the 3 vanishing points can be used to draw in perspective.
Image 6 Illustrates a further refinement which may or may not be easy for a developer to manage and may cause the eyes of those following this procedure to 'glaze over'.
The purpose of the following procedure is to establish the correct ellipse proportions for the LVP and RVP guides.
Image 7 It will be necessary to draw the major and minor axis on the green ellipse using conventional vertical and horizontal guide lines.
Guide lines from the LVP and RVP should be drawn through the centre of the ellipse.
Image 8 Draw a blue ellipse with the same major axis as the green ellipse positioned with its minor axis on the blue RVP guide line and transformed to intersect the green ellipse at points A on the red LVP guide.
Image 9 Repeat 8 above only on the red LVP guide to intersect the blue ellipse at points B. If drawn accurately the the red ellipse should also intersect the green ellipse at points C.
Image 10 Illustrates These ellipses drawn on a cube although over distorted in perspective.
Have I made a good case for angled guide lines?
 
 
Screen 1 .afdesign Screen 2 .afdesign Screen 3 .afdesign Screen 4 .afdesign Screen 5 .afdesign Screen 6 .afdesign Screen 7 .afdesign Screen 8 .afdesign Screen 9 .afdesign Screen 10 .afdesign

Just done it!.

I never thought of checking Area Tool. Thanks.
 

I never thought of checking Area Tool. Thanks.
 

The reason I asked this question goes back to the day of DrawPlus. As I understand it AD was developed to replace DP. Ever since AD was published I have repeated asked why AD does not have all the same features as DP had? I understand that the build of AD was not just a case of doing a simple conversion from one platform to another and I accept that.
Since DP had a useful low-level engineering drawing feature, mainly the dimension tool, what kind of developer originally introduced it and why? Surely It must have been someone who had some knowledge of engineering drawing or architectural drawing. So why was this feature dropped? Coupled to that, is a very necessary feature of being able to move a guide to coincide with an object's handles or nodes but without the handles and nodes disappearing when you move the guide!
Also as a retired technical Illustrator, AD is pretty good for creating better looking technical illustrations than CAD software - trust me I know what I'm talking about because I have thoroughly researched it! Its the AD 'Pressure' feature where a stroke thickness can be changed along its length which makes all the difference. If you want I can send you a file of one of my illustrations which shows-off this feature at its best!
Going back to my complaint about guide lines and disappearing handles and nodes, this makes doing a technical illustration more difficult to position guides as major and minor axes or trying to align an object's node with another node or some other object's feature. Again I can provide a file that shows this problem.
To cut a long story short Serif may not realise that they could fill the middle ground between full on CAD and a basic engineering/archtectural drawing/technical illustration facility.
I'm happy to offer Serif any help or answer questions in order to bring in these useful feature into AD.

One of my problems is that I can have a great number of snapping candidates all over my work space. Therefore when zoomed in dragging a guide to snap to a chosen node or handle doesn't always work accurately as the guide may be snapping to an off-screen candidate. Constantly either turning snapping ON or OFF or unchecking different snapping features is a real pain!
Therefore a feature that lets you snap only to objects in screen view will save zooming-in in order to get an accurate position of a guide. Also what would make a huge difference is to stop handles and nodes from disappearing when moving a guide!

One of my problems is that I can have a great number of snapping candidates all over my work space. Therefore when zoomed in dragging a guide to snap to a chosen node or handle doesn't always work accurately as the guide may be snapping to an off-screen candidate. Constantly either turning snapping ON or OFF or unchecking different snapping features is a real pain!
Therefore a feature that lets you snap only to objects in screen view will save zooming-in in order to get an accurate position of a guide. Also what would make a huge difference is to stop handles and nodes from disappearing when moving a guide!

One of my problems is that I can have a great number of snapping candidates all over my work space. Therefore when zoomed in dragging a guide to snap to a chosen node or handle doesn't always work accurately as the guide may be snapping to an off-screen candidate. Constantly either turning snapping ON or OFF or unchecking different snapping features is a real pain!
Therefore a feature that lets you snap only to objects in screen view will save zooming-in in order to get an accurate position of a guide. Also what would make a huge difference is to stop handles and nodes from disappearing when moving a guide!

One of my problems is that I can have a great number of snapping candidates all over my work space. Therefore when zoomed in dragging a guide to snap to a chosen node or handle doesn't always work accurately as the guide may be snapping to an off-screen candidate. Constantly either turning snapping ON or OFF or unchecking different snapping features is a real pain!
Therefore a feature that lets you snap only to objects in screen view will save zooming-in in order to get an accurate position of a guide. Also what would make a huge difference is to stop handles and nodes from disappearing when moving a guide!

Thanks Walt but what was missing from the comments was where to find this tool! I discovered it by looking at each tool in turn to see what it offered and found in the 'Patch tool'.

Thanks for the suggestion but it was easier to just reset the mouse settings on my Mac.

I have now downloaded Blender and it could be very useful for perspective drawing. I expect to take some time getting familiar with it.

There is something wrong with these shortcuts!
Ctrl-drag dfoes not resize from centre and it can rotate as well.
Shift-drag does not maintain the original shape i.e. a circle can become an ellipse.
If I want to resize a circle by dragging whilst maintaining its centre, I use alt-cmd whilst dragging a corner.
None of these solve my original question.

I would agree if snapping was reliable nut it isn't because it can't be. A guide does not know which handle you want it to snap to. If the handle was always visible at least you would see if it snapped to it or not.
I believe you are only saying this because you do not want to admit the obvious - which is that it is much better and not worse to be able to see a handle when snapping a guide.

So it seems that it is not just a problem of disappearing bounding box handles but a snapping problem! Looks like I've opened a can of worms!

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.

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

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

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

I'm beginning to think its pointless discussing this with you RCR! Of course you couldn't use it on a Mac but that doesn't mean it wasn't a better program. Even it was used only on a BBC or a Sinclair or any other generation of computer you could still was a better program.
BTW Why don't you remove that silly mask from your Avatar since everyone now knows that COVID was a scam and was created to get people to take a dangerous jab as a population reducer.

So what? File incompatibility is fact of computer life. If you just wanted to create  something to look at at or print then they were OK. But if you want to put it though a washing machine of different file formats then it was useless but it still had more drawing features than AD!

So what? File incompatibility is fact of computer life. If you just wanted to create  something to look at at or print then they were OK. But if you want to put it though a washing machine of different file formats then it was useless but it still had more drawing features than AD!

I'm beginning to think its pointless discussing this with you RCR! Of course you couldn't use it on a Mac but that doesn't mean it wasn't a better program. Even it was used only on a BBC or a Sinclair or any other generation of computer you could still was a better program.
BTW Why don't you remove that silly mask from your Avatar since everyone now knows that COVID was a scam and was created to get people to take a dangerous jab as a population reducer.

It has been suggested from another forum member that I post this topic as a 'Features Request'.
I do not have AD v2 but AD v1 so I believe that this request will also be for v2.
There has been a lively discussion today and at various other times over the years regarding why object bounding boxes disappear when either dragging a new guide or moving a current one. I maintain that if the bounding box remained visible then position a guide to snap to the centre handles is easy. However with the handles disappearing it may require changing snapping settings. This is not always satisfactory as it can create snapping problems elsewhere. For example another snapping point somewhere on the work area that is almost coincident with a bounding box midpoint handle may grab the guide.
I am merely asking not to implement some new that that is not current but to simply change the way an existing feature is displayed. How much code needs to be unwritten to do that?
All the suggestions that have been suggested are all workarounds taking more effort to implement when all that is needed is for something not to disappear momentarily.