MJ

[MJ2112]

Hi,

I'm brand new to graphic design, and giving Affinity Designer a whirl.

Can anyone tell me why in blazes the Octagon shape in the picture is at an angle, while the other shapes are normal? What am I missing?

Thank you.

[h_d]

Hi @MJ2112 and welcome!

 

Check the rotation (R) in the Transform panel:

 

(Although I have to say your octagon looks perfectly level to me, and the left and right points align perfectly when I paste your screen grab into Designer and drag a horizontal guide over them.)

Cheers, H

[Move Along People]

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[GarryP]

As h_d said above, your octagon looks to be drawn just fine and level to me.
The Polygon Tool starts drawing its shapes from the top-centre of the bounding box, which allows it to draw all polygons consistently.
If you want the ‘flat edges’ of an octagon to be horizontal then all you need to do is rotate the shape by 22.5 degrees (360 divided by number of sides divided by 2), see attached image.

Note: The formula above only works for regular shapes; if they are stretched in some way then it won't work.

[lepr]

@haakoo is correct, the octagon is rotated by about -0.5 degrees.

On a Mac, holding down ctrl key while dragging a bounding box handle to scale will enable simultaneous rotation, so maybe something like that happened.