Designer crashing/not responding on pasting ..

[RichardM]

I have two A4 pictures in .afdesigner format of Arabic numbers that I want to reduce down to A5 for printing as flash cards.

I have opened both as either Designer or Pixel Persona (NOT at the same time of course) and also opened a third new blank in A4 portrait.

The plan is to reduce the two A4s down to A5, copy and paste them into the A4 an then print as smaller flash cards.

I came across three VERY aggravating issues.. 

1) Copy/paste the first picture went OK. (N1.Shrunk.jpg, new.Page.PrePaste.N1.jpg, New.Page.PostPaste.N1.jpg)  > Q1 .. Why has the A4 page Outline/Paste Board gone (invisible??)

2) Copy/paste the second picture went VERY NOT OK.

(N2.Shrunk.jpg,  (OK)   

Immediate.PostPaste.N2.jpg  >Q2 ..Why is the A4 page Outline/Paste Board still gone (invisible??)

Positioned.PostPaste.N2.A.jpg  >Q3 ..Why is the A4 page Outline/Paste Board still gone (invisible??) and what is that white line off center from anything?

Positioned.PostPaste.N2.B.jpg  >Q4 ..Everything has apparently returned to normal... The Page outline has returned.. There are 2 Groups shown in the Layers SubMenu

Positioned.PostPaste.N2.C.jpg  >Q5 .. After a slight realignment , Everything is screwed up!!  The Group has now DISAPPEARED.. Seemingly realigning it has Transformed/Cleared the Group , according to the UnDoMenu sequences..  I tried to simply nudge the position with the arrow keys, same thing..

So, What is going on here?  Very big problem.. Very big annoying problem when working to a timetable..

 

Further more, in the middle of this when trying to Print just one of the images (from the Designer Persona, from the .afdesign file, Designer simply closed without any warning..  Did this a couple of times.  This is new bad behavior. I have done this sort of thing number of times before and never with this result. Something has been broken.

 

After ALL this, when I export the final A4 .afdesign file as a pdf, it displays .. Saved.As.PDF.A.jpg 

and PRINTS as separate pages ...  Saved.As.PDF.B.jpg 

 

Also just realised that picture names are not displayed.. Is this not rather problematic, when trying to explain a sequential event/problem?

[Sean P]

Hi RichardM,

Firstly your description states that Designer is crashing or not responding when pasting, however the contents of your post is mostly about other issues. I would advise creating separate threads for separate issues. If you've got a file that crashes when you attempt to print then please attach that with the steps you're taking and what print settings you're using.

With the contents of the post its quite hard to understand what you're actually doing - is it possible for you to to a screen recording showing the steps you're taking that is causing the issues you're getting? If you can include copies of all the documents you're using that will help us massively investigate the issues.

However at a guess you may be posting artboards inside artboards which is not advisable. When copying contents from one document to another, either copy the contents inside the artboard, or if you do copy the artboards then ensure after pasting it is not inside another artboard.

From the last screenshot I can see you've got two artboards in a group - there is currently a known issue that moving these groups will fail to redraw the screen afterwards giving you something that doesn't look correct. A zoom in/out will correct this as its only requires a visual refresh. This is most definitely what is happening in Immediate.PostPaste.N2.jpg and the following screenshots. Although this is not a new issue - it has been an issue for a while.

I will also add that when you export to PDF artboards are considered as separate pages, so that is why the export is creating separate pages, as it is doing them for each artboard.

To be honest I personally wouldn't group artboards - to me these should be kept separate with each artboard being the top level and all its contents contained inside. However in your case I would completely avoid using artboards as it sounds like they're confusing you and giving you results you don't want. It is may also be worth checking all of the documentation out for Artboards (check the link below and all the topics in that section) to help get a better understanding of them:
https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Artboards/artboards_about.html

If you're wanting to take two A4 pages shrink them down to A5 and then paste back onto A4 you likely don't need to have an intermediate A5 document. It should be possible to just group the contents and shrink it down by half. Of course that all depends on the contents of your files which I can't see.

[RichardM]

Thanks for the prompt and thorough reply..

I am not trying to use Artboards, that is just way it works, isn't it?  They are automatically created as a file is dropped into Designer.

So if I then shrink it and copy it to a second, it is on an Artboard because Designer is not intelligent enough to know it can't really do what I am about to do??  If it shouldn't do something, why does it do it, create a nasty looking error, yet NOT put up any flags whatsoever to tell the increasing exasperated user what they/it shouldn't have done?  Not very good at error catching..

Your answer sent me straight back to the programme and I found out, quite by chance, that I could delete an Artboard and keep the objects ,, BUT each A4 picture (they actually came from .pdfs so that explains the way there were handled by Designer.. We learn summat everyday ... ) consisted of 2 Artboards side by side .. When I went to delete the 2nd Artboard but keep objects, all that was deleted were the objects from the first..    Your answer explained a lot, thanks very much .. but also revealed that Designer is probably becoming too complicated.  Middle Aged bloat catching up maybe..

 

Thanks again.

Richard

PS  A correctly labelled picture is worth a 1000 words, ain't it??    So Y can't we label 'em? If this platform displayed the captions of pictures it might have been (much) more obvious what I was doing ...