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Affinity Designer > Create spaces between squares


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You can use power duplicate to make the grid and set spaces. Which OS and app are you using? the reason I ask is for key presses mainly but for time being I'll use Mac key presses.

  1. Set the units to points if not already done
  2. Create your first square
  3. With the Move tool selected and while holding the Option key down, duplicate another square to the right, as soon as you see the duplicate you can release the option key. You should see red lines and numbers, if not press cmd, now you can drag the square until it says '6' between them.
  4. Once you have that space set press cmd+J to duplicate the square and the move twice to get a row of four squares.
  5. Now select the four squares
  6. and do the same as step 3 but moving the four squares down.

This sounds more complex than it really is and once you've done it you can create arrays of shapes very quickly.

Here's a video of the instructions above.
Make-a-grid-of-shapes.gif

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31 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Unfortunately the Transform panel's basic calculator capabilities do not support conversion of units in transformations, so if you want to add exactly 6 pts between the objects, you'd first need to change the document units to points. You can do this by clicking File > Document Setup.

 

31 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

But you cannot do adding and substraction by mixing the units.

You can add points (in the Transform Panel) to a document in pixels measurement, like this...

existing value +(6pt)

 

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As haakoo said the most automatic method is to use the Alignment tool.

Create one row of blocks with any spacing.  Then select all layers in the row and using the top half of the Alignment tool as shown below.  Hit enter after typing in the 6 pt.

1173699613_ScreenShot2019-11-01at8_55_07AM.png.12b0235b50e8e28a2ccbe2beafc5b70b.png

Then the best way would be to place that row in a group.  Copy the group as many times as you need for rows.  Then select all groups and use the vertical alignment portion (bottom half) of the Alignment tool to position each row 6 pts.

FYI you don't have to change the units for the entire drawing, if you type in "6 pt" it won't matter if the drawing is in inches or meters.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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3 hours ago, carl123 said:

existing value +(6pt)

or "+=6pt".

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