Increase Precision?

[000]

Hi,

 

I have tried doing a technical drawing in Affinity Designer, but for some reason, the software doesn't accept two decimals behind the comma when entering a measurement or position in millimeteres, but it rounds up or down.

 

When I enter a size of 25.25 mm, it get's rounded DOWN to 25.2

When entering 100.25 mm, it gets rounded UP to 100.3

 

Giving the unbelievable zoom level of the application, I did expect a higher precision of measurements.

 

So my question is: Can this be adjusted / changed or is there an option, I need to check to get more precise measurements (and two decimals behind the comma on millimeteres isn't asking too much; it's very common to have this not only on technical drawings but also in Layout when you need to shift letters or graphics a quarter of a millimeter).

[MEB]

Hi Jens

The rounding is just to avoid the display look cluttered. Affinity software uses around 20 decimal places internally. So even if it just displays 25.2 mm (your first example) it actually uses 25.25 mm internally.

Maybe you should create a thread/request  asking to display more than one decimal place.

[000]

Thanks for the Reply, MEB. For some reason, 2 decimals are shown when setting the document to cm, this only affects the mm. Also, it doesn't explain, why 25.25 is rounded in one direction and 100.25 in the other … 

 

I'll put a post in the "suggestions" box, but would appreciate it, if you could file a bug report for the rounding issue.

[MEB]

It's probably because millimetres is already a small unit, but i may be wrong here. For others (where makes sense) we display more decimal places.

 

I've not filled a bug yet simply because i wasn't able to replicate it. I'm checking on other OS first.

On mine (El Capitan) 25.25 mm and 100.25 mm both round UP to 25.3 mm.

Where are you inserting those values? And which OS are you running?

[000]

Hi MEB,

 

I accept that millimeters are a small measurement, but in graphic design .25 (a quarter) is used regularly; In this specific case I needed to recreate a certain element on a scale of 1:100 and the original happens to be 6055mm  —  even though the precision is there internally, I need to see the two digits when selecting the object later on to confirm the measurement.

 

In regard of the rounding: I did use El Capitan public beta and AD version 1.3.5. (happy to provide screenshots).

The new beta from yesterday produces .3 in both occasions, so I believe it has been fixed.

[Kobold]

Yes, there should be 2 decimal places for sure, some people do precison work with an app as Affinity designer, for example an easy way making jobs for CAD work, exporting as pdfs, and then converting to autocad files. I been doing this a couple of times going fine. The problem to me is "not seeing" the right value, after once having typed it in. Example is a 15,75mm value, ....... how can I see what is the exact value if I have to check that back later? Don´t get me wrong, I understand that it´s not been the main work Aff. Designer been made for, but as it´s been Freehand for me, I see that as a muliti weapon app, giving you the chance of making .......  what ever you can make with it. So only one decimal place is very poor, I think 2 places are a must, and 3 would even be better for some jobs. So why restricting that to optical reasons? I see there is plenty of space for more decimal places, or why not adding a precison mode for all needing that?

[anon1]

You can now (in the beta/ next MAS version update) customise the decimal places displayed :)

 

Settings > UI > decimal places for unit types

 

Cheers :)

[MEB]

Hi Kobold,

It's already possible to choose the number of decimal places you want to display with the latest Beta. You can get it from here (usually pinned at the top).

You can find the settings in Affinity Designer Beta ▸ Preferences, User Interface section, Decimal Places for Unit Types.

[Kobold]

Thanks for info, I can see it´s getting better and better!   :-)

[Oval]

@MEB

 

Wow, AD is living: Just repeat your input: sometimes 100.25 results in displaying 100.3, sometimes in displaying 100.2

 

Feature request: a CATweazle expression that displays the next lottery numbers, please

[anil0757]

The coordinates in an SVG are exported to 3 decimal places. Is there a setting where I can get the export to 7 decimal places?

[HonzaKo]

On 10/25/2015 at 8:14 PM, MEB said:

Hi Kobold,

It's already possible to choose the number of decimal places you want to display with the latest Beta. You can get it from here (usually pinned at the top).

You can find the settings in Affinity Designer Beta ▸ Preferences, User Interface section, Decimal Places for Unit Types.

Hello. Maybe there is an issue with the units. When I do calculations in any of the fields in Transform panel, it calculates the result from the rounded numbers. For example I have Width 1.54mm (displayed 1.5mm) -> I divide it by 3 and then multiply by three. The result there is 1.5mm (the actual width of the shape is visible smaller) and should be 1.54mm. Better precision in settings helps with that, but I would expect the calculations would be done with internal precision (20 places as you mentioned).

Edited November 26, 2020 by HonzaKo

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, HonzaKo said:

Better precision in settings helps with that, but I would expect the calculations would be done with internal precision (20 places as you mentioned).

The calculations are done with internal precision, and then rounded for display. But if you increase the number of decimals displayed you'll see the field update, which shows it had the full internal precision.

Make sure you're not typing anything in the field after the first calculation. Or if you are, makes sure it's just "/3" or "*3", not 1.5/3.

[HonzaKo]

36 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The calculations are done with internal precision, and then rounded for display. But if you increase the number of decimals displayed you'll see the field update, which shows it had the full internal precision.

Make sure you're not typing anything in the field after the first calculation. Or if you are, makes sure it's just "/3" or "*3", not 1.5/3.

Thanks Walt. This works! Just need to do this even with the first calculation (if you by the chance meant me making division or multiplication)

[walt.farrell]

Yes, thats what I meant. And you're welcome.

[John Rostron]

On 8/29/2015 at 2:09 PM, Jens Krebs said:

Thanks for the Reply, MEB. For some reason, 2 decimals are shown when setting the document to cm, this only affects the mm. Also, it doesn't explain, why 25.25 is rounded in one direction and 100.25 in the other … 

if you round (say)  5.25 to one decimal  place, should it round to 5.2 or 5.3? Both are equally valid. Many rounding algorithms will round up for an even integer part (such as 100) and will round down for an odd integer part (such as 5).

John

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

Many rounding algorithms will round up for an even integer part (such as 100) and will round down for an odd integer part (such as 5).

I would expect that to apply only for rounding the first decimal place. But for rounding the second decimal place I would expect the relevant decision to be whether the first decimal is even or odd. (And usually I'm used to evens rounding down and odds rounding up, but there are certainly variations on that.)

But I just tried and Affinity (Designer, on Windows) seems to always round up, as MEB said his Mac  does.

[Old Bruce]

Rounding is tricky, I am always expecting x.0, x.1, to x.4 to be rounded down to x.0 and x.5, x.6 to x.9 to be rounded up to (x+1).0

Sometimes though there are programmers who will not round, they will truncate so x.0 to x.9 is x.0 and then there are programmers who will round up forcing anything greater than zero to be increased. x.0 is x.0 but x.1 to x.9 is (x+1).0

And remember that in base ten one tenth and one fifth are not  repeating decimals but in binary they are. 

[kuhnbnubstahl]

You can tell Affinity Designer to display more decimals, as described here:

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Workspace/preferences.html?title=Preferences

Preferences -> User Interface Options -> Decimal Places for Unit Types

in German:
Einstellungen -> Oberfläche -> Dezimalstellen für Einheiten