Power Duplicate in Affinity Photo

[Lem3]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Wouldn't it be just as natural & perhaps even more logical to do the transform in the panel with that name? 

I ran into this issue when I needed to visually align the first duplicate with an existing object on the canvas.  It would not be natural or logical to try to do that using the Transform panel.

[Lem3]

7 hours ago, Pšenda said:

You must select Move Tool before duplication starting - Move Tool. select object/layer, Duplicate, Transform, Duplicate.

That may work, except the Help says Duplicate, Activate the Move Tool, Drag.

[Lem3]

6 hours ago, Pšenda said:

So you have to request it as significant improvement (in the suggestions section). For me, selecting the Move tool before doing the transformation is a natural and logical step, so I have no problem with it at all.

P.S. As is often the case - Help would need to be supplemented, because the current description of Power duplicate does not mention the need for the Move/Transformation tool in any way, and it can be quite confusing for many users.

Yep, color me confused, I assure you that happens often!  I followed the instructions in the Help and it didn't work.  I'll accept this as a deficiency in the Help file, but I'd prefer it worked as stated:
Create
Duplicate
Activate Move tool (it's actually more logical to me to click on Move here), transform in any way possible (drag, transform panel, etc.)
Duplicate as required

[R C-R]

16 minutes ago, Lem3 said:

I ran into this issue when I needed to visually align the first duplicate with an existing object on the canvas.  It would not be natural or logical to try to do that using the Transform panel.

Yes, it would not be very practical to try to use the Transform panel for that, but consider for instance wanting to evenly space 11 shapes around some center point, like in this power rotate.afphoto example, where I just entered "360/11" in the R field of the Transform panel for the first dup & then power duplicated that to get exactly 11 evenly spaced arrow shapes.

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, Lem3 said:

That may work, except the Help says Duplicate, Activate the Move Tool, Drag.

Where is it stated like this?

[NotMyFault]

As in other cases, the help is not 100% accurate. It actually misses the important first step (activate move tool).

Step 3 can be misinterpreted in the way @Lem3 did (as i did, too).

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

As in other cases, the help is not 100% accurate. It actually misses the important first step (activate move tool).

It is not necessary to have the Move Tool active to do this. For example, create a new shape, say a Triangle, making sure "Select New Object" is ticked in the context toolbar, & duplicate it. Note that in the Transform panel you can change its width, height, rotation, skew, etc. Change any of those transformations & you can start power duplicating.

[NotMyFault]

23 hours ago, R C-R said:

It is not necessary to have the Move Tool active to do this. For example, create a new shape, say a Triangle, making sure "Select New Object" is ticked in the context toolbar, & duplicate it. Note that in the Transform panel you can change its width, height, rotation, skew, etc. Change any of those transformations & you can start power duplicating.

Your steps do not match the steps from the help file at all. It describes another (undocumented) edge case.

The help file starts with „select one or more objects or groups“. If you have any other too except move tool (or vector shape tool) active while selecting objects (in the layer stack), before you duplicate, power duplicate will not work.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

The help file starts with „select one or more objects or groups“.

But it doesn't specify how that selection can be made, so that does not rule out selections made in the Layers panel. As for the tools that allow you to use the Transform panel being edge cases or exceptions, that includes 19 shape tools, the Contour Tool, & the Move Tool, so it applies for about half the tools, more or less.

In addition to that, even when using the Move Tool, it is not necessary to select it first. That can be done after a selection is made on the Layers panel.

So i think the help is not inaccurate, just not as complete as it could be.