Is there a way to "crop" and cut away any extra Designer info when resizing the document to a smaller size?

[Otto Manuel]

Hi,

 I started working with a project in Affinity Designer that was handed off to me as an .svg with arbitrary frame sizing. Now, I have realized that I can trim a few pixels off the width of the document to make the file a nice and tidy width : height ratio. For example; lets say I started with 309x360, and I am willing to reduce the size to 300x360, but I want to crop rather than shrink or distort the content.

 I tried the crop tool, but it didn't seem to have a dialog entry where I could make a precise crop, and it sort of seemed like it was some type of mask rather than an old fashioned crop.

 I reduced the width with a document setup, which allowed me to work precisely, but now I nodes and such outside the boundary of the document and I am concerned that it will create confusion in the future.

 Is there a good solution using Affinity Designer?

 Thank you!

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, Otto Manuel said:

 I reduced the width with a document setup, which allowed me to work precisely, but now I nodes and such outside the boundary of the document

If reducing the width left something outside the document boundary, wouldn't cropping do the same thing? It sounds like it's the size it needs to be.

[thomaso]

11 hours ago, Otto Manuel said:

(...) crop, and it sort of seemed like it was some type of mask rather than an old fashioned crop.

 I reduced the width with a document setup, which allowed me to work precisely, but now I nodes and such outside the boundary of the document and I am concerned that it will create confusion in the future.

There is no scissors / knife tool yet to cut or delete objects partially. For specific object types (vector) you could use the Geometry / Divide option as a workaround to divide an object into two parts, one within, the other outside your document area, and delete the outer parts. This way you kind of "crop" the objects and get new nodes for the left items.

Edited October 29, 2021 by thomaso

[MEB]

Hi @Otto Manuel,
Leaving elements or nodes outside the canvas shouldn't cause any issues and it's actually part of a regular workflow. For example, you may want to have part of a watermarked logo or a brand's specific element/pattern as the background of the document. Leaving them where they are - allows you to edit/reposition those elements later if you need to do some changes, other workflows include placing/leaving elements on the pasteboard area for later or common use. Again this is all fine and desirable to have in a master document so you can keep doing changes. Typically, exported files simply ignore the elements outside the canvas or depending on the format may keep them intact but only visible in the canvas area. 

If you really want to "crop" these elements you can use Designer's object based Crop Tool to crop the parts that lay outside the canvas area. You can even group a few objects if they are more than one and apply the crop to the group to hide the parts you don't want to see (the crop in non-destructive). This way they still remain editable and hidden where outside the canvas area.

[Otto Manuel]

Thank you @thomaso for providing an answer to my question and suggesting a work around solution.