Please allow us to enter transform values for multiple objects, in a normal manner.

[Stokestack]

By default, when you select multiple objects, the dimensions in the Transform panel don't reflect the size of the objects; they reflect the size of the bounding box needed to enclose all of them on the canvas. I can't imagine why you'd want to type in numeric values for the dimensions of an arbitrary bounding box instead of the objects you've selected. The box is not a "thing" to be resized; it does not exist in the project.

There's no preference to change this odd behavior. But it turns out that there's a cryptic button whose ToolTip says, misleadingly, "Transform objects separately." Well, if I wanted to transform them separately, I wouldn't have selected them all at once, would I? But even if you accidentally discover this button and press it, the Transform panel is still uninformative and defective. It's also inconsistent with other UI in Designer itself. Other applications have solved this situation for years in a simple and intuitive manner. Illustration attached.

 

[Fixx]

I have to say I find AD current implementation be rather good. It does not make much difference if it is named "Transform objects separately" instead of "Transform in Place". I also find that AI implementation is not always intuitive, sometimes you have to do an operation, undo it, and do "transform again".

[Stokestack]

How is it better than what other applications (not necessarily AI, which I got rid of) do? I demonstrated the problems above. How would the functionality be harmed by fixing them?

[fde101]

On 8/25/2021 at 8:49 PM, Stokestack said:

when you select multiple objects, the dimensions in the Transform panel don't reflect the size of the objects; they reflect the size of the bounding box needed to enclose all of them on the canvas

If the objects had different sizes, what would be displayed?  Using the bounding box of the selection seems reasonable to me.

 

On 8/25/2021 at 8:49 PM, Stokestack said:

I can't imagine why you'd want to type in numeric values for the dimensions of an arbitrary bounding box instead of the objects you've selected.

If the objects are arranged on the canvas and you need to fit them into a hole in a larger design then by entering new dimensions for the bounding box you are scaling them as a group so that the entire set of objects fits in the space available.

 

On 8/25/2021 at 8:49 PM, Stokestack said:

But it turns out that there's a cryptic button whose ToolTip says, misleadingly, "Transform objects separately."

It is not misleading.  This option causes the individual selected objects to be transformed independently, but all of them at once.  In other words, if you scale around the center, then each individual object is scaled around its own center instead of the entire set of selected objects being scaled around the center of the bounding box.

 

On 8/25/2021 at 8:49 PM, Stokestack said:

even if you accidentally discover this button and press it, the Transform panel is still uninformative and defective

It scales them proportionally.  If one of the objects is 1" and another is 2", then setting the 1" object to 0.5" results in the other becoming 1".  Thus when you set the circle that was 0.9" to 0.9", you were scaling by a factor of 1:1, so the other objects similarly kept their existing sizes.  This is consistent with what happens when you scale them using the mouse while Transform Objects Separately is enabled, so there is some logic behind that behavior, even though it may not be the behavior you are looking for.

Setting all selected objects to a matching size would be a nice feature to have, but I do agree that it seems to be missing at present.

[Stokestack]

Did you not watch the video? If selected items have disparate values for particular parameters, those fields should either be blank or say "multi" or "--" or otherwise indicate a discrepancy. This has been a solved problem for years in numerous applications. Again: Did you not watch the video? Everybody except Affinity knows how to handle this situation.

Quote

It is not misleading.  This option causes the individual selected objects to be transformed independently, but all of them at once.

Take a look at that comment and think it through. And repeating what the application does isn't a defense of it. Yeah: We know it doesn't work right. Thanks for the confirmation.

Let us know when there's a way to set the sizes of multiple objects at once.

[fde101]

On 8/28/2021 at 2:53 AM, Stokestack said:

Did you not watch the video?

I did watch most of it, granted I missed the bit at the end.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:53 AM, Stokestack said:

If selected items have disparate values for particular parameters, those fields should either be blank or say "multi" or "--" or otherwise indicate a discrepancy.

I am familiar with that behavior, but it is not what Serif chose to do with the Affinity suite.  I agree that would make more sense for display purposes except that it would not indicate the starting point for any operations you carry out from there.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:53 AM, Stokestack said:

Everybody except Affinity knows how to handle this situation.

Most other applications handle it differently than Serif chose to.  They are different, not wrong.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:53 AM, Stokestack said:

Take a look at that comment and think it through.

It is accurate as stated.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:53 AM, Stokestack said:

Yeah: We know it doesn't work right.

It does work correctly, it simply works at doing something different from what you are trying to accomplish.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:53 AM, Stokestack said:

a way to set the sizes

The transform panel currently scales the sizes instead of setting them.  This is the key difference.  If you have one object which is 3 inches and another which is 4 inches, and 3 inches is displayed, changing it to 6 inches is asking the program to double the size - so the one which starts as 4 inches becomes 8 inches, not 6 inches.

It is clearly working as designed, but the design is contrary to the feature you are looking for.  I agree that what you want to do is currently missing, but not that what is there now is wrong.  It is a different feature.

[Stokestack]

The panel shows that you're setting a dimension precisely, not scaling. So yes, it is wrong. To provide scaling, you provide a scale field or function. Expecting users to guess at wholly un-indicated and unprecedented behavior is ridiculous.

You can keep jumping through hoops to defend this defective and obscure design, but there's no reason for it. There are well-understood and explicit ways to provide all the functionality we're talking about, but Serif ignored them... to no benefit.

[DieterW]

I already wanted to post a bug report, as for me clearly this is a bug. If I select multiple objects and then select to transform them separately then I do this to transform each of them "separately", just in a single step to save me some work. And if I then enter an exact dimension, then I cannot expect anything else as that all those separately(!) transformed objects will get exactly this entered dimension.

Right now they do get scaled relative to each other. But if I wanted that, I could enter a percentage, which is possible already. So the current behavior could be achieved by entering a percentage (would be perfect if I could enter the math directly, e.g. "30/25%", but anyways), but the intended behavior cannot be done at all. What else should be needed to say?

(I am just referring to the resize behavior, as I do not agree with the OP regarding the "bounding box issue". Although I would not mind a setting where you can define that "transform separately" is the default.)

[P.N.]

Quote

I already wanted to post a bug report, as for me clearly this is a bug. If I select multiple objects and then select to transform them separately then I do this to transform each of them "separately", just in a single step to save me some work. And if I then enter an exact dimension, then I cannot expect anything else as that all those separately(!) transformed objects will get exactly this entered dimension.

Agreed. I was looking for this, in my perception, basic feature. Scale all objects to have the same height. For some reason I is a lot of manual work. I do think it is a bug. No one  is stupid enough to not design this as a feature.