How does the Isometric system work within Affinity?

[Ision Industries]

I hope I can articulate this properly. How does the isometric work under the hood in Affinity Designer? Coming from Illustrator I noticed the power of the isometric system in Affinity with the plane system. When I was designing a basic isometric cube I noticed that fitting each side of the cube to its corresponding plane keeps the dimensions of each side of the cube a perfect 1:1 ratio even in isometric perspective. (screenshots from iPad but I work with Isometric on the desktop app as well)

 

But when working in Illustrator and I make each side of the cube fit its corresponding plane the dimensions are not equal

 

Even when I do the SSR method in Affinity the resulting objects still keep their 1:1 ratio. So I am just curious to know how the inner workings of the isometric system work within Affinity.

[Dan C]

Hi @Ision Industries 

I'm not personally familiar with the 'ins and outs' of the Isometric system, so the following is an explanation based on an internal conversation with our developers on this subject;

"We try to present the user with the most useful information possible, the bounds of your selected object on its plane. AI is presenting the skewed box, with rotation as a separate component.
The size shown in the Transform Studio provides the dimensions of the selection box, which is represented 'pre-shear'.
In the case of a rectangle, it'll be the edge length we provide. We do not present the absolute X-Y dimensions of the object, unless you cycle the selection box from the context toolbar (in which case you'll see the numbers change in the transform panel).

In the future we hope to add an option for presenting sizes relative to 'plane units' which would hopefully simplify working 'in plane'. "

I hope this helps!

[Ision Industries]

Thank you for taking the time to talk to your devs about this subject. It’s really insightful to learn how the system works under the hood. Is there an option to cycle selection boxes on the iPad? Also this brings me to another related question. I know there is a isometric grid zoom rendering bug on the iPad but I keep finding myself trying to zoom in and align the points, I’m very OCD about alignment. So at what zoom level is the grid actually perfectly aligned and when a point snaps to the grid at that zoom level is it 100% accurate? I’m hesitant to work on Isometric designs because of this bug

[Dan C]

No problem at all!

On 1/22/2021 at 4:03 PM, Ision Industries said:

Is there an option to cycle selection boxes on the iPad?

Absolutely, please see the below from the iPad help file -

On 1/22/2021 at 4:03 PM, Ision Industries said:

I know there is a isometric grid zoom rendering bug on the iPad but I keep finding myself trying to zoom in and align the points, I’m very OCD about alignment. So at what zoom level is the grid actually perfectly aligned and when a point snaps to the grid at that zoom level is it 100% accurate? I’m hesitant to work on Isometric designs because of this bug

As I understand it, this issue is a rendering issue and not an issue with the accuracy of the snapping itself - with your Snapping settings on, the objects will snap correctly to the Isometric grid, however the more that you zoom into the page, the more offset the object becomes from the grid.

Again, this is a rendering bug only, as if you open the same file on the desktop you can see that the objects remain aligned correctly at any zoom level.

You should find that at 100% zoom the grid/objects are drawn correctly and snapped to their respective points accurately.

Our developers are working on this issue and hope to have it fixed shortly, I hope this helps

[Ision Industries]

Ahh that option is down on the bottom panel with all the other options that I still need to take time to learn. I have learned a few as I have been learning the app but there is a lot. Thanks for pointing this tool out. The isometric system in Illustrator is not intuitive at all and rather destructive and I find myself constantly having to zoom in all the way to manually align each point to the grid. So that's why I am very OCD about the alignment. It's good to hear that the snapping is 100% perfect in AD now I can work on isometric designs without hesitation. 

[Dazmondo77]

I didn't think I'd find a use for the isometric grids in affinity but I recently had this to do and and found it to be the perfect tool for the job. really intuitive, no messing around, just works the way you'd expect - I hope there's an up and coming perspective grid feature in the planning as I'm make tonnes of use out of such a feature, providing it works with vectors   

[Ision Industries]

Hi @Dan C 

I exported my project from Affinity on my iPad and opened the project in Illustrator. The exported file opened in AI as expected. The isometric cube planes were identical to the the original affinity design just displayed in different dimensions. I personally really like how the Isometric system works in Affinity and I’ll work around the grid zoom render bug. Which brings me to my next observation, I just came across the “outline” view mode in the navigator studio and I’m curious if the outline view mode is rendering properly. I often make isometric icon designs so I’m using super small art boards. The zoom level is not at 100% but as you can see in this screenshot, in outline mode some of the edges of the shapes look aligned correctly. Except for the bottom left group I can see I need to fix some of the edge alignment. But im just wondering if the outline view mode is rendering correctly.

Thanks for your help

[Dan C]

On 1/30/2021 at 1:58 AM, Ision Industries said:

I exported my project from Affinity on my iPad and opened the project in Illustrator. The exported file opened in AI as expected. The isometric cube planes were identical to the the original affinity design just displayed in different dimensions.

That's great to hear, many thanks for letting me know!

On 1/30/2021 at 1:58 AM, Ision Industries said:

as you can see in this screenshot

Unfortunately it doesn't appear as though your screenshot has been uploaded, could you please try this again for me?

[Ision Industries]

@Dan C sorry about that. Here you go

[Dan C]

Thanks for your screenshot! It's possible that this isn't rendering correctly, but I'd need a copy of the document to be sure. Would you mind uploading a copy of your .afdesign file?

[Ision Industries]

@Dan C yes I should have uploaded a project file before hand. I’m just curious if the outline mode is displaying correctly because I’m assuming that the snapping works on point regardless of the grid render bug. 

Abstract_Isomeric_Shapes.afdesign