Designer shapes reference / library

[Juc1]

Hi all,

I love the different shapes in Designer but often I find myself wasting time with trial and error trying to find the right shape or shape settings. For example see the three interesting shapes below all made with the star tool and none of them look like stars - I mean it is not obvious that you can do this with the star tool. So wouldn't it be good if there was some kind of online visual reference listing hundreds of shapes so a user can look through thumbnails for the shape they want and then see the corresponding details for that shape

eg star tool, points 4, inner radius 70%, outer circle 100%, inner circle 0% 

Is there anything like this online already? If not is anyone interested in seeing this or collaborating if I start building a library?

 

[v_kyr]

There are some selectable/reusable star (also for other shape types available) examples, which should give an idea about possibilities here.

[Pšenda]

... and it is possible to supplement them with your own.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_star.html

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Juc1 said:

So wouldn't it be good if there was some kind of online visual reference listing hundreds of shapes so a user can look through thumbnails for the shape they want and then see the corresponding details for that shape

Personally, I would not want to spend my time looking through hundreds (or quite possibly thousands) of shapes to find one I want, & then adjust the shape I am creating to use the same parameters. At least for me, it would be a lot quicker just to experiment with the various shapes enough to get an idea of what each of them can do, & also to use the Preset Manager (with or without the Filter) to do the same thing.

More about the Preset Manager at the end of  https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/pages/CurvesShapes/draw_geometricShapes.html.

[Juc1]

@v_kyr @Pšenda yeah these presets are helpful but they stay close to the star shape - I am also thinking of many cases like my examples where it is not obvious that the star tool can do this. 

[Juc1]

31 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Personally, I would not want to spend my time looking through hundreds (or quite possibly thousands) of shapes to find one I want...

I am thinking of something like 5 thumbnails per row so you could have several hundred on one page so you could quickly find the one you need. In the long run this would be  a time saver for me because my brain does not have enough RAM to remember all the variations. 😀

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, Juc1 said:

@v_kyr @Pšenda yeah these presets are helpful but they stay close to the star shape - I am also thinking of many cases like my examples where it is not obvious that the star tool can do this. 

Have you tried opening the Preset Manager & setting the filter to (for example)  Star? You should see something like this:

They are not exactly like your examples but it should give you a fairly good idea of what that tool is capable of.

3 minutes ago, Juc1 said:

I am thinking of something like 5 thumbnails per row so you could have several hundred on one page so you could quickly find the one you need.

If say it included just 500 variations of what the Star Tool can create (quite possible if you consider the number of points is effectively unbounded even though the slider only goes to 48), that would take 100 rows to show them all. And once you found one you like, you would still have to note the settings that create it & apply them to your Star shape.

Frankly, I do not see how this would save any time vs. just experimenting in a test document & maybe adding a few custom presets for the most interesting or least star-shaped variations.

[Ron P.]

I can see what RC-R is saying when he does not see any time saving. However you do, and this appears to be user preference, which the ability to create, export and import presets. It allows each user to build their preferred library of presets for the specific shapes. We can then export them. Why would we do that? Well, back-up comes to mind. Also as your original post stated, for on-line sharing or use, and collaborating.

For on-line use or collaborating, what website? Are you asking Serif to provide this? A sort-of contextual help? That's probably not going to happen beyond what they already have done in their on-line help. HOWEVER they have provided what is the Share Your Work forum. Users can share their exported presets through that forum. Those that are interested in expanding their preset libraries could access them there. Those that are not, would not have to worry about scrolling through hundreds of presets.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year   🎅

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, Ron P. said:

I can see what RC-R is saying when he does not see any time saving. However you do, and this appears to be user preference, which the ability to create, export and import presets.

I think the OP is asking for something different from the shapes presets; that being an online reference library of shapes, in some way categorized by which shape tool (Star, Cog, etc.) created them, with a list (?) of each shape parameter value (number of points, radii, etc.) that creates that specific shape.

This seems both impractical (because there are an almost limitless number of shapes these tools can create); & unlike the presets, would not provide any way I can see to automatically apply those parameters to any shape being created in an Affinity project.

Maybe a drag & drop or copy & paste interface of some kind would be closer to what the OP wants, but I think that would require changes to the Affinity code so it could accept the objects as parametric shapes.

[Juc1]

On 12/24/2021 at 6:33 PM, R C-R said:

If say it included just 500 variations of what the Star Tool can create (quite possible if you consider the number of points is effectively unbounded even though the slider only goes to 48)

I don't mean repeating the same shape with 5 points, then 6 points, then 7 points etc but rather just one example of each distinctive shape and in particular shapes that are not obviously stars (in the case of the star tool) as in my original examples. So maybe 50 - 100 examples of the star tool.

On 12/25/2021 at 9:52 AM, Ron P. said:

For on-line use or collaborating, what website? Are you asking Serif to provide this? 

The presets are very helpful so I guess my original post becomes a feature request that the presets feature could be expanded. I recall that Adobe has something like an online asset library where users can browse thumbnails of svg's etc and then import any they like. Users could also submit their own examples for sharing.

The idea is that each new Affinity customer learning these shapes by trial and error seems to be a duplication of effort and sometimes frustration / reinventing the wheel, so some customers such as me might find a library helpful in unlocking or accelerating the possibilities of the shape tools.

Of course I realise that this feature request would require coding and may not be easy and may never happen. 😀

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Juc1 said:

I don't mean repeating the same shape with 5 points, then 6 points, then 7 points etc but rather just one example of each distinctive shape and in particular shapes that are not obviously stars (in the case of the star tool) as in my original examples. So maybe 50 - 100 examples of the star tool.

If you play with the Star Tool for a while, you should see that the number of points of a star when combined with the other parameters can make a very large difference in what it looks like. For example, consider this stars.afdesign example with just 3 different numbers of points.

To me, each of the nine of them looks distinctive, different enough from the others that they would merit being a separate entry in an online reference library of star shapes. Add to that entries for all the other shape tools, particularly for the very versatile Cog Tool, & I think you will see that such a library reference could easily include one thousand or more distinctive shapes.