Finding the green line to indicate centre with moving elements

[Chillr2021]

First off this is for Affinity Photo on a windows 10 PC

 

Hi, this is something that I can never workout, sometimes I get a green line show to tell me that I'm in the centre but often this green line refuses to show itself when I move it near where the centre would be, yet it shows all these other green lines to less important distances to other elements, I would think the centre line would be the most important, is there a reason why it only shows sometimes, I know you can simply place a guide in the centre but I like the green line as it just makes things quicker without setting up a guide. Is there any setting to make it show all the time.

Also even when I have a guide in the centre my elements don't seem to snap to this guide, is there a setting to get it to snap into the guide line.

[Callum]

Hi Chillr2021,

The green centre line will only show when you have snapping enabled perhaps this is why it sometimes doesn't show for you? As for your second point it sounds like you need to enable Snap to Guides in the Snapping Manager which can be found by clicking the horseshoe magnet icon or by going to View > Snapping Manager.

Thanks
C

[Chillr2021]

1 hour ago, Callum said:

Hi Chillr2021,

The green centre line will only show when you have snapping enabled perhaps this is why it sometimes doesn't show for you? As for your second point it sounds like you need to enable Snap to Guides in the Snapping Manager which can be found by clicking the horseshoe magnet icon or by going to View > Snapping Manager.

Thanks
C

Hi @Callum, thanks for the reply, currently got these as my snapping settings, I take it the horsehoe magnet has the darker bg its selected so yeah always had this pressed on and these are what I have things set to.

[Callum]

Please could you provide a screen recording showing the green line not appearing?

[Chillr2021]

1 hour ago, Callum said:

Please could you provide a screen recording showing the green line not appearing?

Hi @Callum, so I take it with the settings I have it should be appearing, how do I do screen recording?

[GarryP]

 

[Chillr2021]

39 minutes ago, GarryP said:

 

Hi I'm on a desktop PC windows 10

[GarryP]

Did you follow the link, or did you just see “iPadOS” and assume that it didn’t include other information?

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Chillr2021 said:

Hi @Callum, so I take it with the settings I have it should be appearing ...

I think it should be as long Snap to Spread & Include spread mid points are both enabled, but for me at least, sometimes this works & sometimes not. I am not sure why.

[Old Bruce]

I would try with All layers instead of Immediate Layers

Without seeing the document's construction (Layers and groups etc.) I won't speculate. One other thing I would do is turn off most of the snapping candidates except for the Bounding Box and its Midpoints.

[R C-R]

26 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

One other thing I would do is turn off most of the snapping candidates except for the Bounding Box and its Midpoints.

What about Snap to Spread & Include spread mid points? In general, I think that should be enough to snap a layer to the horizontal and/or vertical midpoints of the document.

For me that usually works even if no other snapping option is enabled but sometimes it does not. When it does not, quitting & restarting the app usually (always?) fixes that....

[Jumpshotcrazy_3]

I am having the same issue. I wasn't having this issue last week. This only started after I reset my MacBook for a repair. I have to tap alignment then center to get anything centered. there used to be a green line down the middle that would appear when trying to center any shape/object. Now it does not show for the very center whether it is the top center or the bottom center.

 

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Jumpshotcrazy_3
to add media for viewing

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Jumpshotcrazy_3 said:

I am having the same issue. I wasn't having this issue last week.

For me, this has been happening off & on for months. Snap to spread & Include margin mid points are enabled, just like shown in your recording. Snap to margin & Include margin mid points may or may not also be enabled, but that makes no difference.

[Jumpshotcrazy_3]

46 minutes ago, R C-R said:

For me, this has been happening off & on for months. Snap to spread & Include margin mid points are enabled, just like shown in your recording. Snap to margin & Include margin mid points may or may not also be enabled, but that makes no difference.

I have reported this as a bug. For whatever reason I cannot get objects to center. I can work with clicking alignment then center but makes my work flow longer 

[Jumpshotcrazy_3]

20 minutes ago, Jumpshotcrazy_3 said:

I have reported this as a bug. For whatever reason I cannot get objects to center. I can work with clicking alignment then center but makes my work flow longer 

**UPDATE** once I downloaded my other apps to get access to studio link, I now have center snapping for affinity publisher. Very strange but I am happy.

[Old Bruce]

18 hours ago, Jumpshotcrazy_3 said:

I have to tap alignment then center to get anything centered. there used to be a green line down the middle that would appear when trying to center any shape/object. Now it does not show for the very center whether it is the top center or the bottom center.

You don't have the Object's midpoints selected for snapping. So it will only be the sides/top & bottom. Here is a screenshot of your screenshot.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

You don't have the Object's midpoints selected for snapping. So it will only be the sides/top & bottom.

I may be interpreting the OP's issue incorrectly but I think this is about snapping objects to the mid points of the document spread or margins. If so, I don't think any of the snapping to object bounding boxes (mid point or otherwise) options. At least for me, even with none of those bounding box options enabled, I can usually snap dragged objects to the mid points of the document spread (or margin if one is set).

For me, it is just that every so often this document mid point snapping does not work, & I have no idea why.

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, R C-R said:

For me, it is just that every so often this document mid point snapping does not work, & I have no idea why.

I get the same thing here with Mac OS 11.6.8

I think I have it down to too many possible items nearby to snap to. What I do is select the item I want to snap to and then grab the item I want to move or create it. If it is the spread/margin that I want to snap to I choose a bunch of things far away from that area and then try to move/create the item I want. This seems to make the candidates for snapping be far enough away that they get ignored.

Frequently I will have to nuke all the choices and just have the one thing I need for snapping turned on.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

I think I have it down to too many possible items nearby to snap to.

For me, the document mid point snapping occasionally has failed even when there is just one object in the document & no other snapping options are enabled. When this happens, the object will still snap to the edges of the spread, just not to its horizontal or vertical midpoints, so I know snapping is enabled -- it is just the mid point snapping that doesn't work, as if that option was not enabled.

This happens rarely. Maybe 98% of the time it works as expected, so it is hard to get even a vague idea of what might trigger it.

[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

This happens rarely. Maybe 98% of the time it works as expected, so it is hard to get even a vague idea of what might trigger it.

As far as bugs go this type is like the mosquito in the bedroom at night. I may not get bitten but I sure as [expletive deleted] get no sleep.

[Chillr2021]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

I may be interpreting the OP's issue incorrectly but I think this is about snapping objects to the mid points of the document spread or margins. If so, I don't think any of the snapping to object bounding boxes (mid point or otherwise) options. At least for me, even with none of those bounding box options enabled, I can usually snap dragged objects to the mid points of the document spread (or margin if one is set).

For me, it is just that every so often this document mid point snapping does not work, & I have no idea why.

No worries, yes I agree for me also its very random with snapping to things, sometimes it just doesn't snap and sometimes it does, wish I knew why.

[GregoryOR]

Weirdly, I've just encountered this too.  For me, it's not about snapping, but about the document center lines (red and green) showing up when I drag a layer across the workspace.  I can't think of anything I've done differently today to make them not show up from what I've done in the past, where they reliably appear.  At least I learned from this thread about aligning to document when only one layer is selected - that's actually awesome!

[walt.farrell]

41 minutes ago, GregoryOR said:

Weirdly, I've just encountered this too.  For me, it's not about snapping, but about the document center lines (red and green) showing up when I drag a layer across the workspace.  I can't think of anything I've done differently today to make them not show up from what I've done in the past, where they reliably appear.  At least I learned from this thread about aligning to document when only one layer is selected - that's actually awesome!

Maybe it is about Snapping, as the Dynamic Guides are part of the Snapping function. Do you have it enabled?

https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/DesignAids/dynamicGuides.html