Guides

[jackamus]

This may be a daft question but what use is there in knowing, from the Guides manager, what the positions of the guides are?

[tonyt]

Hi

I guess becase you might want to reposition them to an exact point?

Cheers.....

[jackamus]

I figured that but have you considered the amount of maths you would need to do if you were doing a technical drawing where accuracy of one object to another is important?

 

AD guides work from the corner of the page. That's OK if your drawing's position is relative to the page. But what if you to place objects relative to each other and not the edge of the page?

 

What would be useful is to be able to move the Zero position of either rule to line up with a guide then it would be easy to position another guide relative to it.

 

For example if you had a vertical guide that was at a position of 150.79mm and you wanted to position another guide 17.36mm to its right. You would have to add 150.79 and 17.36 to get its new position on the horizontal rule and then, probably, have to zoom in to position it accurately on the rule. Not very practical!

 

The way I currently get accuracy is draw an object either a line or rectangle and put in its size then snap it to the first guide and move the new guide to snap the object. This is very tedious but I know of no other way to get the accuracy I want.

 

What would make more sense would be to be able to drag the Zero of the horizontal rule to the first guide and then type in the position of the next guide in a "Guide' box or select the guide and type in the distance in an 'Offset' box for the next guide.

 

DrawPlus had this feature because I used it a great deal when doing technical drawings.

 

I await comments before I offer this to the New features list.

[anon1]

you could duplicate the 150.79 guide and then type into the numeric input field +17.36

I´ve not actually tried it out but 99% sure it works that way

[jackamus]

Where is the guide numeric input field? Is this something I have missed all this time?

[anon1]

I don´t know .... ;) 

 

But if this works for you...maybe...

[jackamus]

How did you do that?

[anon1]

just double klick into the row and then it becomes editable 

[jackamus]

OK this works but it is very clumsy! You have to be able to locate, from the list, which guide you want to edit. This means counting down the list to get the one you want. This would work better if there was a way to select the guide on the drawing and then seeing it highlighted in the Guide manager. Then you could edit it. Too involved! At present it is easier for me to just draw a line the correct length and using it to position a guide.

 

I still feel that DrawPlus had the right idea - just drag the zero point of the rule to the old guide and then position the new guide.

 

But better still would be a dedicated guide positioning box which would tie in nicely with positioning guides at an angle.

[anon1]

I think I´d quite agree to all you said and the devs will probably do these things along with the custom 0 point and guide improvements which are still ahead 

[VIPStephan]

I’ve already suggested/requested a functionality as in Fireworks where you can just double click a guide and it brings up a modal box with numeric input. There was no reply though, if I remember correctly. I assume they have just silently acknowledged it and will implement it when they have time.

 

And as to setting the ruler zero point: The devs mentioned that this will also be implemented at some point.

[jackamus]

That is good to know. i just feel that the priorities have been given to issues, although desirable, that are not directly related to actually drawing and making it easier to draw.

[anon1]

Even Pub is now announced for "sometime late next year" https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/15108-the-future/?p=67840

So it really is time to sit down with some warm tea in the coming months ;) Not only for the ones that miss drawing tools  :blink:

[MEB]

Hi jackamus,

The developers are already doing the best they can. It's not possible to improve all areas at once - there's not enough people to do it that fast and still keep the application accessible.

There will be improvements to the guides, including changing the zero point, but it's probably wiser do it during/after the artboards implementation since they are tied to the rulers/guides/snapping, than wasting time implementing them before just to then change/adapt everything again to work with the artboards.

We will get there.