Grid offset

[jasonteunissen]

Hi Affinity team,

 

Im really liking the customisability of the grid systems.

The only thing that I feel is missing is the ability to offset the grid, hopefully I just havent found the feature yet.

Sometimes its important that the grid aligns with the middle of the document instead of the top left. :D

Hopefully you understand what I mean, if not, i'll try upload an image.

 

Cheers,

 

[Ben]

It's coming soon...

[detailfreude]

Hi,

 

is this function already implemented?

 

I am using the grid tool to design a custom grid for a magazine layout. And I really would appreciate to have an offset of the grid on the left side.

Thanks,

Annett

[MEB]

Hi Annett,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

No, this is not available in the current version.

[Ben]

A sneak preview of some grid and tool improvements coming in 1.7.

 

Quickly using new tools to form shapes on plane of a grid with plane sets

FastPerspective.mov

 

Creating a new grid that lines up with existing geometry

FittingAGrid.mov

 

 

[A_B_C]

This is amazing, Ben! 

 

(What about a sneak preview of the new snapping options for the Pen Tool? … )

[MEB]

This is awesome Ben  So much potential here...

Can't wait to get my hands on this!

[Ben]

Which pen tool snapping options?

 

1.7 will enable grid and guide editing in a number of tools (not just the Move Tool) - pretty much all the vector creation tools.  There will be options for enabling editing of grid and page origins, and guide positions.

I'll be working on more methods for conforming objects to grid planes, in addition to being able to create new objects in grid perspective.

And, when cycling through selection boxes using the "Reset Selection Box" button, it'll now also try and create a selection box in the current plane - this will allow you to do scaling, etc, in plane space.

 

My next pass will be to look at improving guides - custom angles, and ways we can auto-generate guides.

 

This has come at the back end of a pretty major overhaul of our tools.  It's all backend, so your experience should not change as far as the way the tools used to work, but the refactor has enabled me to widen to scope for grids and snapping.

Snapping has also had some internal improvements - it's now multi-threaded and some performance fixes to avoid timeouts when mousing over complex geometry.

 

[Aammppaa]

@Ben While you are working on snapping options, would you consider whether there could be a modifier to allow snapping within groups?

 

Coming from Xara Designer, where I can hit G while dragging an object, to temporarily extends snapping to objects within groups - both as target groups and in the dragged group.

[LCamachoDesign]

2 hours ago, Ben said:

My next pass will be to look at improving guides - custom angles, and ways we can auto-generate guides.

Converting any (reasonable) objects to guides would be great. But this is a start.  

[A_B_C]

Which pen tool snapping options?

 

Ben, what I primarily had in mind was the option of re-aligning Bézier handles vertically or horizontally, as discussed in several threads. I remember we had a little talk about the available options elsewhere, and you said that this option would probably be implemented in the general snapping system because of a lack of available modifier keys or key combinations:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/40022-locking-handles/&do=findComment&comment=202823

 

And later I had the impression that you found a solution: “you will be able to hold shift to constrain and that will allow you to constrain to the original direction of the handle or one of the axis directions (including intermediates)” [my emphasis]:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/40022-locking-handles/&do=findComment&comment=203326

 

Forgive me that I am so insistent at this point, but I really need this feature. It is incredibly difficult to vectorize hand-lettering or do type-related design projects without being able to snap back the Bézier handles to the rectangular grid. So I am really curious to know what happened with your plans of implementing the options you were talking of in the linked posts. 

 

I added some additional ideas to a separate thread:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/51848-control-polygon-mode-—-nudging-and-snapping/

 

Thanks,

Alex 

 

 

[Ben]

So, I reworked the Pen/Node tool a while ago for 1.7.  In Node tool, when dragging a Bezier handle, you will be able to hold Shift to snap the handle to your grid axis, or the current direction.  This should give all the scope you need for realigning curve handles.

 

So, all those above constraining options will be in the Node tool. In Pen tool you'll be able to constrain while creating a new point - for corrections, you'd use Cmd to switch to Node tool, then press Shift.

 

 

[A_B_C]

This sounds great, Ben! Thank you so much for adding this already in the next version …