Friksel

Bumping thisone, because this happens to me all the time during illustrating which is pretty annoying!!

Hi @MEB, thanks for your reaction. The method you're suggesting I already tried (see above in this thread) but is not what I am after. Although it is a nice feature to know.

For future reference: the post is splitted in two, some of it is refering to this post:

We agree on that!

Same here. I had a lot of times where I needed this feature too for illustration work. Now everytime I accomplish this by duplicating a layer first and than using subtract, but a lot of times I need to trim on multiple (sometimes to a hundred) different layers and than all those extra steps really count up in the time you need to accomplish this. So a trim function would be very welcome here as well and I would definitely use it a lot! I understand for a lot of people masking tools may come in handy to do this, but in my job I always need to have destructive output in the end. Just think of it this way instead: if we can do this manually by duplicating a shape and subtract one from the other, it could be automated. As a developer myself for like 20 years, I learned that customers should not think in solutions and how to implement things, because they don't know what Affinity knows. Only their developers could really tell if something is difficult to implement in their system or not. So just ask what you need and want as a user and they decide how they do it. Sometimes things that look difficult and complex to a customer/user are in fact easy to implement or visa versa. [edit] Like @reglico I now see this is not for Designer on Desktop but for iPad. So I get out of here Although on the Desktop version the same feature is missing... and still very welcome

It's a little much to split into different items and I also need my time to do my job, so I write them in one post. The list is definitely not all, but a lot of other things I posted on the forums already. It would be great if somebody would pick them up and fix em! Guess I'm hoping for a miracle. REQUESTS IN SVG EXPORTS Request: When setting a stroke-align on closed paths to inner or outer Designer automatically converts those strokes to outlines in the svg export. I understand why Designer does that, because that's the only way browsers can replicate what we see in the Designer GUI, but when using the svg for interactives (being used with svg), like morphing paths and stuff, this is unexpected and can cause confusion pretty quickly, because a path suddenly is different in the svg-output than inside Affinity Designer. I guess there's no way for Affinity to do that differently because of the compatibilty issues with browsers (and maybe other software), but it would be great if we could at least see somewhere in the interace that Affinity is automatically converting these borders into outlines during export. So a warning in the svg export-panel would be great. So the same type of warning we now get by Affinity when there happens to be rasterisation in the svg output (which is great information and very helpful). Request: Not really a bug, but not very efficient: When exporting a simple line from point A to point B I would expect that to be exported to a <line> element in SVG. When working with javascript we need to be able to readout the starting point (x,y) and ending point (x,y) of the line a lot of times. That's the reason SVG has a <line> element and we decide to use that <line> element instead of a polygon or path. But Affinity exports the line to a path, which is much harder to read out and we have to write special code everytime we have to readout pathdata just to get the x- and y-values of the line-definion. Please, if there are only two anchor points and we draw a line, export that to <line> in svg! Especially when Affinity is set to Line-mode. Request: Working with all kinds of different projects during the day we have to switch the svg output settings everytime, because these doesn't seem to be stored inside the file, but on an application level. It would be very helpful if we could store the output settings in the affinity file. EXPORT PERSONA Request: Does the 'Continues' watcher really have to update after every single change in the file without the affinity file even being saved? That means a lot of triggers. Sometimes this is very usefull though. But I think a setting to be able to just trigger this refresh just on saving an affinity-file would make sense and would be great for must usecases I'd say and prevents some of above mentioned problems I think. Request: Please make it possible to remove the slice containing the 'full' artboard (or the first one?). A lot of times we don't need it and would like it to be removed from the file. PLACE IMAGE Request: After placing an image it would be very helpful if we could swap the image by another image. As far as I can find that's not currently possible, so everytime we want a different image, we need to remove it and place a now image again. But I might be missing something here? STROKE SETTINGS Request: The stroke settings for alignment are confusing: Left we don't find 'left align', but 'center align'. Followed by 'outer align' and then 'inner align'. Wouldn't it make more sense to have it in this order instead: 'outer', 'center', 'inner' ? SWATCHES Request: Save the current selected swatches-group in the file!! Even if we are using document-swatches, everytime when we load a file we have to set the swatches panel to the document-embedded swatches again. That's really annoying when you have to do that all day, every day, while Affinity just knows you have document-swatches. It would be a lot more efficient if Affinity keeps track of the currently selected swatches (at least when we are using document swatches, because it makes sense we want to use them again after opening an existing file with document swatches in it).

Guess that's not the only bug while trying to create just an artboard that fits...

Accidentelly posted something and tried to delete it... but forum won't allow me to remove this post ?!...

Thanks. That one sounds familiar

No problem @walt.farrell. Thanks for your effort to help!

Yes! That's what I was looking for! Thanks! BTW I just noticed that snapping with the artboard tool works, but only snaps to other artboards, not graphical elements. No worries. Yes, I think so too that it would be better for us to have seperate forums for those products. But chances are they are in fact the same software with the same codebase underwater with only a different GUI, so maybe Serif thinks for that reason it makes more sense to just have one forum for both and it prevents all questions and problems will be mentioned double, instead of just once. The mac version is obviously a different codebase, so does have a seperate forum and different version-numbers.

No I'm not. I'm using the artboard tool.

That's a different issue. What I want is to snap a new artboard around an object. That's right. That's right if your object has a rectangle shape and doesn't use transparencies/holes. But my object is an ellipse. If you convert that ellipse to an artboard 1) the ellipse is suddenly something I don't want; an artboard. 2) There's no rectangular artboard with a checkerboard background to show transparancies, but suddenly the ellipse is visible directly on the dark GUI of Affinity, which I don't want, because all other artboards in the file do have a checkerboard background so it would make a mess to have all different kinds of artboard in the file (one with and the other without a checkerboard for instance) and I also would like to view all objects on the same type of background (so the checkerboard). 3) I just want to use an artboard and snap it to the object. Not making artboards out of objects or whatever strange workflow to accomplish such a simple and very common workflow task. Just like Illustrator, where you even just doubleclick an object or a group to make the artboard fit tightly around it. It's a big mistake in my opinion if that feature is missing in Affinity. If we could at least snap the artboard bounds to the object that could compensate that missing feature (for now), but even that doesn't seem to be possibe. I think it's crazy we have to set values for x, y, width and height, by hand everytime we just want to snap artboard-borders to an object. I just can't believe even that's not possible. @walt.farrell I don't know how you manage to get snapping working. I tried it a lot of times here and whatever I do, none of the bounds snap to the object and all snapping options are checked.

Thanks for your quick response @walt.farrell. I have all my snapping options enabled, but still I can't get snapping to work with the bounds of the artboard. With no bound at all. I didn't know about 'Convert Object to Artboard'. That's a nice one to know. Thanks. But it's not really what I'm after. I don't want to convert the object into an artboard, I want to fit an artboard directly around it without any gaps. With your suggestion I tried adding a rectangle and convert that into an artboard (because I can snap rectangles), but then the background of the Artboard is set by the rectangle, and I need no background (it must be transparant and if I set the opacity of the rectangle to 0 is gets exported as an extra object, which I don't want). I also looked at converting the object itself (the one I want to snap to) into an artboard, but that's not what I want, it seems to lose the edit-capabilities and there is no checkerboard background. I would be very suprised if this wouldn't be possible. Snapping an artboards after finishing a design seems to be a very standard procedure to me. Are you sure snapping should work on artboards? That would be exactly what I'm after, so if I could get that to work that would be great!

I try to precisely fit the artboard to an element, but somehow snapping doesn't work on artboards (?). So I have the following questions: 1) Is there a way to fit an artboard to a graphical element (like in Illustrator, with I believe doubleclick on an object)? 2) How can we use snapping to snap the artboard-bounds (with the arboardtool) to a graphical element?

@MEB And this finally also solves the other problem I had; when I was holding SHIFT to snap during rotation of the handle I didn't understand why the snapangles were always different and somehow related to the (direction of the) curve instead of the canvas. Guess I have to take a very close look to this snap options. Nice to have thisone solved too!

@MEB Damn.. I was just about to reply to my own response 'cause I just found them, but you beat me! Snap! I just found it in a ... snap Silly, I thought I already knew Designer pretty well, but never really took the time to figure out these buttons and seem to have overlooked them since. Never knew there were more snap-settings! Briljant! These will come in handy! Nice. Thanks!

@MEB @Gear maker I'm starting to feel a little stupid... these are my snap-settings when I have the node-tool selected AND have a node selected. They look the same independent of the selected tool, so my guess is I'm not looking in the right place? It is the snapping section though on the bar that I'd say is the context bar... maybe later I find my aha!-moment but so far without luck

@Gear maker Great! thanks!! That alt-click to remove the handle was exactly what I was after! Finally! You just made my day! The other tip about 'snap off-curve handles' is also a very useful and welcome one, but I can't find that setting in my snap settings dialog. I'm using Designer 1.6.5.123, but can't find it in the snap dialog nor the settings panel. Where should I look for that setting?

Hi @COBRASoft , I was intrigued by your question and tried it myself. When I place a SVG the SVG will be an embedded object in the designer file, so you cannot edit it directly. But when you doubleclick that embedded file on the canvas, the svg, you can go and edit the vectors like you're used to, including converting to curves. That looks to me as exactly what you want. But I might be missing something here? If you want to vectors themselves to be placed inside another vector file, than you can also copy and paste layers and stuff directly in to the file. That way you don't have the svg embedded, but copied into the file. And then you also can convert to curves. Maybe this helps?

@hearth Did you look at the export persona? It's briljant

In the transform panel you can enter percentages too, or calculations like '60px*0.5'. I use percentages like 50% a lot, having the aspect on lock to scale width and height at the same time. But maybe you're like me and like to have a special slider/value textbox just to set the scale for a quick and intuitive to set the scale by a slider/mousewheel and numbers. That would be a great addition in a future version. The mousewheel suggestion is great! I'll definitely gonna use that.

Hi, I'm working a lot with the pen tool to draw smooth curves or straight curves, but I find myself a lot of times wanting to make one handle in a 90 degrees straight angle (no curve) leaving the other side smooth (curved). Look at the video of a simplified situation I have almost dayly here. As you can see there's no way (at least I know rightnow) to make one side of the curve 90degrees straight. Just to be complete: I know about boolean operators and masks, but boolean operators unfortunately result in a lot of junk anchors at the current version of Publisher and change the way the curve is build. That's not what I want. Neither do I want to use non-destructive methods like masks, clips, artboards or whatever. I really want to cut off the shape destructive without creating extra/different anchor points that messes up the shape. So in short: I'd like to cut of one handle or make it straight... 1) Is there a way to cut a handle, or making one handle a 'straight' one, leaving the other one curved? 2a) Is there a way to snap a handle to a 45, 90, ..., 180, ... and so on degree angle or set the rotation from anchor to handle by numbers? 2b) Right now I can't find a way to know if the angle is straight. Is there any way to know at what exact angle a handle is to its anchorpoint? If this would be possible that would make my day(s) how-to-cut-a-handle.mp4

Thanks for your response @Dan C. Although I still have to get my head around the passthrough blending mode as in the order seems to be in reverse in my head somehow, I understand your point. Today I was mainly testing what all kinds of grouping, masking and clipping doest to the svg output, 'cause I use the svg outputs to program interactives with and want to know exactly what action is causing what svg output to control with javascript. That's the reason I tested out and found this strange situation, which I normally would never try. And I wasn't sure if this is some feature I didn't know about or maybe some situation that shouldn't be used. Guess it's the last one. Have to tell you btw, although I'm very critial on Affinity Designer and there are some things I really think need a lot of attention by your developers to go to a professional level, especially its svg output which I use everyday and could need some improvements, and the 'convert to curves' methods, I am very enthousiastic about Designer. I am using it now with the 'continues' method on in the export persona while designing and developing at the same time and it's marvalous and makes developing so fast in combination with webpack and svgo to even compress and strip the svg output on the go after each change. So just wanting to tell you guys at Affinity I'm not only critical on the software and that I'm critical, just BECAUSE I'm using it on a dayly basis because I chose this software over Adobe's. If the SVG output will be improved and the convert to curves methods are fixed this software is just excelent! Just saying

Thanks for your reaction @firstdefence. I know about masks and clips and how they work, but this looks like something different. As you can see in the screenrecording. In the doc, found on the link you provide, it says about Masks: And that's exactly my confusion here: this isn't masking the layer itself (only), it is masking the layer underneath it. And even stranger... the layer underneath it is masking the layer with the mask... that is strange to me. Next to this it's very strange to me that an EMPTY layer can be masked... What are we masking here?