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Affinity Designer: Fitting a Repeating Graphic Element Within a Specific Area


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I want to repeat a graphic element to cover the canvas or a specific area on the canvas with precision. I need the graphic element to be the exact size needed, so that it will fit perfectly within a specific area, without falling outside of it.

Please take a look at the image I have attached to get a better idea of what I mean. I repeated a semi-circle along a border on the canvas. The last semi-circle only fits partially inside the border, and the other part falls outside of the border. I want to know if there's a way to calculate so that my graphic will always be the correct size to fit within a specific area as it repeats.

(I'm using the Mac OS version btw.)

Thank you.

Repeating Graphic Should Fit Within Specific Area.png

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Group the first 11 elements and then stretch the group to fit the length. You can decide to have it proportional or not. Alternatively you can group all 12 and shrink the group to fit.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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On 7/31/2022 at 10:07 PM, andren said:

I want to know if there's a way to calculate so that my graphic will always be the correct size to fit within a specific area as it repeats.

It's a quite simple rule of three:
The desired total width divided by the number of wanted elements gives you the width of one single element.

30 cm
––––––––– = 2.5 cm per circle
12 circles

Or, vice versa, if you want a certain width for a single element and calculate the required total width for the parent object:  Ø 2.5 cm * 12 = 30 cm rectangle width.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 7/31/2022 at 4:10 PM, Old Bruce said:

Group the first 11 elements and then stretch the group to fit the length. You can decide to have it proportional or not. Alternatively you can group all 12 and shrink the group to fit.

Thank you for the idea! This could work, but one thing which may be an issue is that it might be difficult to get both the horizontal & vertical semicircles on the border to be the exact same size.

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On 7/31/2022 at 5:45 PM, thomaso said:

It's a quite simple rule of three:
The desired total width divided by the even number of wanted elements gives you the width of one single element.

30 cm
––––––––– = 2.5 cm per circle
12 circles

Or, vice versa, if you want a certain width for a single element and calculate the required total width for the parent object:  Ø 2.5 cm * 12 = 30 cm rectangle width.

Thank you for giving me the formula to calculate this. I not very good at math so I couldn't have figured this out easily lol.

The only thing that might be a little time-consuming for me to figure out in this case is the exact measurements of the border and the circles. I know I can use guides and the rulers to see where each shape begins and ends on the ruler. But it's a little tedious and prone to error to find this manually. Is there a more precise way to measure the border and the circles in Affinity Designer?

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2 hours ago, andren said:

Is there a more precise way to measure the border and the circles

Every Affinity app has the Transform Panel. It reports the exact numerical x/y position and h/v dimensions of a selected object or layer. This can also be used for your previous concern:

2 hours ago, andren said:

it might be difficult to get both the horizontal & vertical semicircles on the border to be the exact same size.

Alternatively – if you don't set object dimensions numerically in the Transform Panel to scale them but prefer dragging object handles – then you should activate "Snapping" in the Toolbar. With the according setting it will not only automatically snap at edges of other objects but also show guide lines and numerical dimensions.

In case you don't know the Transform Panel or the Snapping feature it is recommended to invest a few hours to get familiar with the basics of the Affinity interface. The first thread in this forum offers a sorted link list to various topics and tutorials. And the Help menu in the Affinity apps guide you to the complete Help chapters with short descriptions of every single spot in the interface.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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11 hours ago, andren said:

Thank you for the idea! This could work, but one thing which may be an issue is that it might be difficult to get both the horizontal & vertical semicircles on the border to be the exact same size.

To avoid this problem, you must plan ahead and decide how many half-circles you want to be put into the containing object. If it is a square, this problem does not exists. If it is a non-square rectangle, you must create it entering the number of semicircles as width and heigth.

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Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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On 8/5/2022 at 6:57 PM, thomaso said:

Every Affinity app has the Transform Panel. It reports the exact numerical x/y position and h/v dimensions of a selected object or layer. This can also be used for your previous concern:

Alternatively – if you don't set object dimensions numerically in the Transform Panel to scale them but prefer dragging object handles – then you should activate "Snapping" in the Toolbar. With the according setting it will not only automatically snap at edges of other objects but also show guide lines and numerical dimensions.

In case you don't know the Transform Panel or the Snapping feature it is recommended to invest a few hours to get familiar with the basics of the Affinity interface. The first thread in this forum offers a sorted link list to various topics and tutorials. And the Help menu in the Affinity apps guide you to the complete Help chapters with short descriptions of every single spot in the interface.

 

Thank you for reminding me about the Transform panel. It's been a few months since I've gone over the basics in Affinity. I remember now that the Transform panel shows the length and width of a selected graphic. I used this panel mostly for moving graphics a specific distance, so I forgot that it also shows the length and width of graphics. I will keep this in mind to help me get more accurate measurements. Also, yes, my snapping is already activated.

I appreciate your help :)

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On 8/6/2022 at 3:01 AM, NotMyFault said:

To avoid this problem, you must plan ahead and decide how many half-circles you want to be put into the containing object. If it is a square, this problem does not exists. If it is a non-square rectangle, you must create it entering the number of semicircles as width and heigth.

Thank you. It seems a bit tricky because my border needs to have a fixed width and height, so there's nothing I can do to adjust the border itself. I'm just going to try to get the semicircles to be the right size in order to fit within the length and width of the border.

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12 hours ago, andren said:

my border needs to have a fixed width and height,

That means it could be possible for any given rectangle that no (large enough to be seen) semi circle will fit an even number of times for both Height and Width. Just geometry.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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