Ruler - Scale .75" = 1Ft?

[56_kruiser]

I can't find how wto set a ruler where it will scale. For example I want to use 3/4" = 1 FT. So, I want what would normally be 1" to be 3/4", but show 1. 1.5" would show 2, etc.

Is this not possible in Affinity Photo? If it is, guidance would be appreciated.

[kirkt]

In the New Document dialog, you can specify the units for the document (you can choose feet) and the size of the document (in the units you choose - so, for example, you could choose 50 feet by 30 feet as the size of your document).

When you establish the units, the Transform panel will show you the location (X, Y) and size (W, H) of an object in the units you have chosen.  For example, you can make a rectangle shape that is 8 ft by 10 ft just by typing those units into the Transform W and H fields.  So you are essentially working in native units to make your document.  In any dialog field, you can type in values in real units and AP will do the conversion to pixels or points, etc.  Let's say you make a rectangle that is 8 ft x 10 ft and you want the stroke to be 6 inches wide - in the stroke width field just type "6 in" and AP will do the conversion to points for you.  Grids and rulers will also be in feet and you can enable snapping to the grid and guides to help place and align objects precisely.  When rulers are displayed, you can right-click in the upper right corner of the ruler area (where the unit name is displayed) and a drop-down menu will appear with alternate units, if you need to switch to pixels, for example, to measure something.  When you do this, the units displayed in the Transform panel will be switched to those units.

When you are finished, you can resize the document to establish the working scale - this will just require some simple math to figure out the final size of the document, in pixels, and the PPI (pixels per inch) to get a real, printed inch in the final output to be whatever you want that length to represent in the drawing.  In your case, you want one real, printed 3/4" to represent one foot at the final scale (1 real inch = 1.33 ft).  You can include a scale rule on the drawing, in feet, to check your scaling for final output.

This is a little bit of a different process than working at scale - you are working in real units (ft) and then scaling the master document to its final scale for final output.  You have to do this because AP does not work with scales, but does work with real units at the working resolution.

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As an example, let's say you make a new document that is 20 ft wide by 10 ft high at 200 PPI (pixels per inch).  This will generate a document, with a scale in feet, that will be 48000 pixels wide by 24000 pixels high.  You can work in real units of feet to lay out your objects, etc.  When you are ready to scale the drawing to 3/4" real inches (i.e., printed inches on the paper) equals 1 ft in the drawing, you will need to scale the drawing by:

0.75 (in/ft) / 12 (in/ft) = 0.0625

In the Resize Document dialog, you can type "48000*0.0625" in the width field and AP will do the math.  The result will be a document with one printed inch equal to 1.33 ft, or 3/4 printed inch equal to 1 ft.  If all of your objects are shapes (i.e., vector objects) then they will all scale nicely for print.  

Kirk

[kirkt]

Because AP lets you type math into the size fields, you could work at scale that way too. Set up your final size document and type <size>x<scale> into the width and height field each time.  Klunky, but workable. 
 

kirk