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Strange: Group measures larger than its elements ungrouped?


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I just ran into some strange behaviour in Designer (which transports into Publisher):

I've got a simple graphic of a Union Jack flag consisting of 13 individual curves and one underlying rectangle as a background. These are the only elements on their layer. When I select all those parts individually (and simultaneously) the transformation panel shows a size of – say – 100 mm (width) and 50 mm (height). However, if I group these elements (or just select the layer they're on) the measurements shown in the transformation panel change to 101 mm (width) and 52 mm (height). Accordingly the selection marquee grows a bit on top and on one side to match the new measurements – while the elements making the flag remain exactly as before.

Does anyone know how this might be reasonably explained?

AD_flag_individual_screen.png

AD_flag_group_screen.png

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I can see that the selection box is slightly larger in the second case.
Are the layers we see in the screen grabs the only layers, or is there another further down the stack?
As the background is white it is difficult to tell but what happens when you give the rectangle a different colour?
Are you able to show us the Transform Panel in each case?
Are you able to share the document with us? (Or the bit of it with the flag on.)

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As a matter of interest, why are you creating the flag this way? The background is actually blue, with red and white crosses layered over it.

I would have created it:

  1. Set background to blue.
  2. Add thick white diagonal cross (this gives you the Saltire).
  3. Add thin red diagonal cross.
  4. Add thick white orthogonal cross.
  5. Add thin red orthogonal cross.

This gives you five layers, which should make your life simpler. Note the terms 'thick' and 'thin' here are relative!

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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2 hours ago, John Rostron said:

As a matter of interest, why are you creating the flag this way? The background is actually blue, with red and white crosses layered over it.

Hi John,

as a matter of fact I didn't create that flag myself.. If I were to I'd probably do it different, too.

But as the "problem" I noticed seemed somewhat bizarre and I have no clue yet why that is so, I just took it as it was/is.

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2 hours ago, GarryP said:

I can see that the selection box is slightly larger in the second case.
Are the layers we see in the screen grabs the only layers, or is there another further down the stack?
As the background is white it is difficult to tell but what happens when you give the rectangle a different colour?
Are you able to show us the Transform Panel in each case?
Are you able to share the document with us? (Or the bit of it with the flag on.)

Hi Garry,

I created a new set of screenshots, where all relevant panels are visible. (They seem to be very large in the post - maybe that's due to the retina screen...)

The document (100 mm x 50 mm) itself is entirely empty except for those elements/layers you see in the screenshots. So it's quite a mystery to me where that "ghost space" is coming from that's added top and right when the group or the layer is selected instead of the individual elements.

AD_group-selected_screen.png

AD_layer-selected_screen.png

AD_curves-selected_screen.png

Edited by Lorox
added more info
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2 hours ago, GarryP said:

As I read them, your instructions wouldn’t quite get you the Union Flag; notice how the lines of the ‘diagonal cross’ don’t quite ‘line up’ on either side.

Yeah, exactly. The diagonal "cross" of the thinner red lines actually isn't a cross in a strict geometric sense. If you made all of the 4 thin red lines run diagonally all over the flag you'd get a real diagonal cross of double line thickness.

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Quote

The diagonal "cross" of the thinner red lines actually isn't a cross in a strict geometric sense. If you made all of the 4 thin red lines run diagonally all over the flag you'd get a real diagonal cross of double line thickness.

  @Lorox , @GarryP Yes, I recall now this is  how you tell that a Union Flag is up-side-down. The broad white stripes are on the top on the hoist (the side where it is attached) and on the bottom on the fly (the side that flaps about). In all good children's adventure stories, the heroes fly the flag up-side-down as a sign of distress and the villains do not notice.

I still maintain that you could create the flag by drawing two thin red crossed lines each with a horizontal bar in the middle, which would get hidden by the wider red (St George's) cross.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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Unfortunately I have not been able to replicate this.
A (Group) should have the same position and dimensions as the bounds of the layers within it.
The same goes for a (Layer).

I’ve tried a few things to somehow override this and cannot find a way to do it (which is what I would normally want, but not useful in this case).
You have no Effects applied so that shouldn’t be where the problem is.
If the layers had some ‘invisible’ thick stroke then I would expect the extra ‘space’ to be applied equally around the shapes, but it’s not.
Blend Modes and Opacity should not affect layers like this.
My current ‘best guess’ at the moment is that there’s some strange ‘unreported’ layer hiding in there somewhere.

Can you try releasing all the (Curve) and (Rectangle) layers from the (Group) and (Layer), delete the (Group) and (Layer), and then re-group the shapes individually? Is there a point in time during the re-grouping where the size of the group becomes what you would not expect?

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Just a wild speculation on my side here:

What's the size of the white rectangle in the background? Maybe it's bigger than the canvas and grouping all items reveals the "true" dimensions of all items whereas marking all items without grouping limits the dimension to the canvas? 

If that's the case, I'm not sure whether that'd be on purpose or if it's a bug.

»A designer's job is to improve the general quality of life. In fact, it's the only reason for our existence.«
Paul Rand (1914-1996)

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What happens if in the Transform panel you set the Y coordinate to 0.0 mm for the un-nested group layer while the anchor point is the top left one?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • Staff

The empty space comes from the rotated red diagonals (top and bottom one on the right side). If you reset their rotation (intersecting them with a rectangle with the same size of the canvas) or clip them inside a rectangle with the same size of the canvas) the group will have the correct dimensions. Sample file here (using intersection method): united-kingdom-flag_2_MEB_EDITED.afdesign

Screenshot 2020-04-29 at 17.19.00.png

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18 minutes ago, MEB said:

The empty space comes from the rotated red diagonals (top and bottom one on the right side). If you reset their rotation (intersecting them with a rectangle with the same size of the canvas) or clip them inside a rectangle with the same size of the canvas) the group will have the correct dimensions

I see – I faintly remember that "resetting" the bounding box of previously rotated objects by a similar method proved useful sometimes in Adobe Illustrator, too.

What I do not understand, though, is why this empty "ghost space" is not taken into account when I select all those elements altogether WITHOUT grouping them. It's there when I select a single one of these two (the diagonal red stripes on the right; or the the group or the layer containing them) but it immediately disappears when I select any single or multiple other with it (even if it's just the second one giving us this effect).

Is there any logic behind this?

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  • 10 months later...

I just stumbled upon a group being larger than the content in designer. See the attached Designer document.

I'm seeing this behavior in Designer 1.9.1 on Mac OS Big Sur (M1)

group-larger-than-content.afdesign

🤦‍♂️ I'm sorry I think I know what is going on with my file. It's just that the objects I use were rotated and therefore their bounding boxes made it appear that the surrounding group is larger than it should be. So, nothing wrong with affinity here...

Edited by thenickname
I was wrong ;)
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