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Visibility of Guides Outside the Artboard / Canvas for all Desktop Apps


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Can you explain what the benefit(s) of this would be?
Or, to put that another way, what use(s) do you have for guides that extend beyond the canvas/artboard?

Note: When a document has artboards, the guides are specific to each artboard so being able to see guides extending beyond the extents of all artboards might make things quite ‘messy’.

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2 hours ago, GarryP said:

When a document has artboards, the guides are specific to each artboard so being able to see guides extending beyond the extents of all artboards might make things quite ‘messy’.

In the case of artboards, it would probably be useful if the guides and grid could be set together. Sometimes specificity for each artboard is a big advantage, but sometimes matching would be useful - it would save the work of setting matching values.

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12 hours ago, GarryP said:

Can you explain what the benefit(s) of this would be?
Or, to put that another way, what use(s) do you have for guides that extend beyond the canvas/artboard?

Note: When a document has artboards, the guides are specific to each artboard so being able to see guides extending beyond the extents of all artboards might make things quite ‘messy’.

Note: With the option to enable/disable this functionality, the user will have the choice to make the guides specific to each artboard or not... So no need to worry about things getting messy:

The benefit(s) depend on the user - for ex; you might be creating a logo & naturally make slight modifications in the process... Before you know it, you might have several variations based on the initial design - Some users might group these variations as layers and turn them on/off to compare/contrast, but that can actually get messy and does not allow you to see all the variations next to each other... Other users might create a separate document for each variation which can also get messy & also make it difficult to view them altogether...

This is one example where artboards are very useful - After your initial design, you duplicate the artboards, and using the same guides going horizontally and/or vertically across all the artboards, make your variations -  Think of the artboards as storyboard panels on a single sheet & the universal guides as construction lines....

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When I am experimenting with different versions of, for example, an icon or similar, I find it useful to create the first version in an artboard, and then duplicate the artboard as necessary to make variations. This way I can see all of the variations at the same time, assuming that I have enough screen space.

Those ‘variation artboards’ may not all be ‘lined up’ nicely as I can have other artboards – of different sizes – containing reference material interspersed between them. Because of this there would be no need for the guides to be ‘lined up’ between artboards as the guides would not be in the same places relative to the contents of the artboards.

Also, some variations may use different guide spacings if I wanted to, for instance, make the design (or parts of it) larger or smaller, and in these cases having ‘universal guides’ would be of no use.

Also, only horizontal guides or vertical guides could be ‘lined up’ at any one time as guides can only be drawn horizontally or vertically, they can’t have any kind of ‘repetition across the design space’.

Since it’s easy to copy an artboard, including its guides, and artboards can be placed anywhere on the pasteboard, and having ‘universal guides’ would be limiting on artboard placement, I can’t really see the benefit of your suggestion.

I’m not saying that it’s a bad suggestion, I just can’t see how it would produce a better situation than what we currently have where each artboard has its own guides.

It would be nice if we could copy guides between artboards – and that has previously been requested – but I’m just not seeing the benefits of your suggestion. This could, of course, be purely down to my lack of expertise and/or imagination.

Having said all of that, if you could show me a good visual example of the sort of thing you mean then there’s a chance that I could be persuaded otherwise.

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You are correct - if it was either or, I would choose the current behavior as well, but if universal guides was an option you could enable / disable, then having the option for the guides span across the entire document is useful sometimes - I'm not sure if I can provide a good enough visual example that would persuade you because any example is also achievable by the method you mentioned...

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23 hours ago, GarryP said:

Having said all of that, if you could show me a good visual example of the sort of thing you mean then there’s a chance that I could be persuaded otherwise.

Not sure if this would qualify as a good visual example, but here is a basic example demonstrating one way you can use universal guides across artboards...

UniGuide.jpg

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I notice you missed one of the necessary guides.

I would set five guides for horizontal and four for vertical once then duplicate the artboard. If I used your method I would need to set 12 vertical and 10 horizontal.

Now add a 7th artboard that is for a different purpose. You are going to have to add more guides no matter where you place it.

I honestly think this would drive me mad trying to work like this.

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On 7/23/2022 at 9:40 AM, Old Bruce said:

I notice you missed one of the necessary guides.

I would set five guides for horizontal and four for vertical once then duplicate the artboard. If I used your method I would need to set 12 vertical and 10 horizontal.

Now add a 7th artboard that is for a different purpose. You are going to have to add more guides no matter where you place it.

I honestly think this would drive me mad trying to work like this.

You're correct - it was a quick example & also not the best example.... It's difficult to show by generic examples but it is a useful feature to have sometimes... I was hoping that at the very least, if you set bleed for an artboard, that the guides would at least show up in the bleed area, but they do not - That might be a happy medium; to allow the guides to at least be visible within the bleed that is set for each artboard...

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5 minutes ago, reefsar said:

That might be a happy medium; to allow the guides to at least be visible within the bleed that is set for each artboard...

What purpose would Guides in the Bleed area have?

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18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What purpose would Guides in the Bleed area have?

The guides in the bleed area was more of a secondary feature request - A compromise that can be used as a workaround for some users who might want the guides to be visible outside the artboard - The original request would still be more desirable & with the option to enable or disable the visibility of guides outside the artboard, you do not need to worry about the purpose of it for someone who might find it useful:

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