Muppet64

Perhaps that was their intention, but it did not come across in their tone, and they did not offer any guidance - it was simply a series of repetitive variations on the theme 'You're not doing it our way! Do it our way!" It did not help that they chose to misname the PPI setting as DPI, so when I was searching for a relevant setting to check and test I could not identify it. This all came about as a result of me finding a glitch that they now have on their list to fix. I did understand the points they kept making, but their replies just kept circling around the same thing. i.e. "Do it our way. Use Pixels, not standard print measurements.", and my opinion remains that they offered no real help, just repeated advice to do it some other way. Owenr has been particularly helpful in this instance, and patient enough to not call me an idiot. I have no problem understanding that resolution and pixels density are linked, but to find that pixels trump everything as far as they are concerned, with not even a mention of how to tailor the pixel setting is what lead to my rather circular meanderings. If they'd said in the first instance that there was a pixel setting that could be tailored to to suit then I'd have gone straight to that and experimented. I'll look at this further tomorrow, but now I've actually been given the necessary information I'll refrain from further posts.

Yes, very poor choice as it's the reason it never occurred to me that it could be changed, because DPI would only be relevant at the printing stage. Thanks for the heads up on that, you've solved my whole problem I think because I can (in theory) create a resolution PPI(sic) that will hopefully bring the shape/object snapping back in line. Whereas the Affinity support were only attempting to get me changing everything I do fundamentally to fit in with how they've set the defaults. Cheers!!

Ah right, Since it appeared to be a simple drop down selection (plus labeled incorrectly DPI ) I'd not given it any further attention. Thanks for that pointer, that's helped me a lot, Cheers!

Just had a look on the new document panel and it's the one I described, which is DPI not PPI and it only goes to maximum of 400DPI

I meant from my point of view... With that available I can experiment to get a working compromise. All I've seen so far is a document setting that offers a handful only going up to 400.

Really, where's that setting? You're right, that sort of fundamental fix would sort all of this out. In my defence (again...) I've had the program since it was launched, but found the user guide rather rudimentary. I've only started looking at it properly over the last couple of months.

Thanks for that info, it's all falling into place after it was explained to me how the Devs have hard-wired in the old 300ppi print standard. Cheers!

Ah right, the old standard for pre-press, so at least that mystery is solved, but it is still locked into a single setting, which is forced onto you by the developers with no option. So the root of the issues I've been uncovering is because they've chosen to set it to a maximum quality setting that was showing it's age when I first came across it 30 years ago... That would explain the artifacting I noticed with all my test output files, which I'd mentally noted to look into once I'd got the hang of the program. So a way to overcome that might be to create the artwork at larger than life size, then reduce in the RIP to overcome the accuracy limitations. Thanks for that info owenr, appreciate it.

Hmmmm... I've been looking at these suggestions now for a while, and they're all good but they're based on starting everything from scratch as well as torturing all work into fitting within Affinity Designers limitations in order to avoid it's in-built shortcomings. With a small amount of experimentation, creating a pixel based document and then producing a 1mm square, this then measures 11.8px, which subsequently cannot reliably snap to another identical object... So say for example: I have to create artwork that is to follow precise specifications for corporate identity where position and dimensions are stipulated to the millimetre. All I have to do is times any measurements for margin and position details by 11.8 to be correct, and then I can simply kiss goodbye to any hope of getting accurate snapping that won't risk an unsightly hairline gap. Maybe I'm out of touch on this, but aside from video post-production I've never had anyone request work of me based on pixels, and even then it was the old PAL/NTSC spec or 720/1080 dimensions. I have no idea where 11.8 comes from, but it seems to be the route of these problems as it dictates that matching whole scaling is going to be a rare occurrence in real-world work. It's fine for creating free form designs, but the insistence on a my-way-or-the-highway approach based on such an arbitrary number is just bizarre IMHO. I'll keep pluging away at it, but I think anything that's got intricate contours to match other shapes will need careful thought rather than jumping in hopefully. Thanks for all the suggestions, they've helped me understand the underlying issue and I do appreciate and take on board your help and information. 11.8...

In My Defence: There's a lot of things that the software handles admirably, and I get the impression that the 'Big A' company will have thoroughly copyrighted all the features they could have to make competition as hard as possible.

Oh yes, I agree that's certainly sound advice. I was just making that comment so that you could see how things had panned out. In reality, I chose to mess with a pattern like this specifically to find out where things would fall over. I do have rather a tendency to press the big red buttons that are labelled "Do Not Press!"

That's an interesting number of points owenr, I'm attaching a screen grab and document illustrating a totally new file, created with pixels as default and I've reset the units to defaults as well. Snapping still leaves a hairline gap. Is there something I'm missing? Faulty.afdesign

Yeah, I understood what he was getting at, but when the solution to such a seemingly small misalignment consists of a process that can be (light-heartedly) summarised as: Throw that all away, open up a fresh document, start from scratch, work in a new arbitrary measurement system that is intrinsically linked to the size and resolution of an output device as yet unknown, and then recreate every single object... It's sort of off-putting. Whereas my solution of just adding a base layer that makes a suitable colour fill in the gap for safety seemed a reliable quick solution.

Cheers owenr, that's a really useful point! Thanks:

That's a very off-hand reply. I understood every point you have made in the above statement - before you posted it. I'm fully familiar with Raster Image Processing systems (RIPs), so I understand that their handling of any graphics sent to them is based on the underlying software that they use, but that it is also influenced by the screening capabilities of the final output device they are connected to. To use your analogy, I could create artwork at a pixel resolution of 10,000,000 pixels-per-mm, but that would be a waste of processing power and memory if the final imaging device was not capable of resolving imagery of that detail, because the RIP would end up downscaling. The idea of resolution independence is so as to not need to design artwork for a single 'known' output. What your describing is fine if it works, but so far it appears not to be doing so to a reasonable and reliable standard. Yes, if your software is chained to pixels, then that is the basis that the user is constrained to, but just as you suggest that mm/cm don't exist (they do, and there's an internationally recognised standards body that defines them) , I'm fairly sure you would be hard pressed to point me to the internationally recognised measurement for a standard pixel as this is the one that is different on every range of devices - this has been going on so long that even the term you use, DPI, is based on the outdated imperial standard of Dots-Per-INCH. All of which leaves us at the same point that I raised originally, and your last reply (aside from berating me for not using pixel snapping, even though I showed you it was on and I had been using it to create a whole new file) consists of "ignore measurements and just do it our way...". OK, I shall continue to find uses for the software, but it seems I'm on my own as far as support is concerned.