Transform square to rhombus

[henryanthony]

Hi!

I'm new to Affinity Designer and come from an Illustrator background. What I describe is easy to do in Illustrator and am wondering how I can do this in Affinity.

1. Draw a square 1" x 1" with either the rectangle or the pen tool. Note, there is a "handle" attached at the top of the square consisting of a vertical line segment that ends with a small circle. I don't know what to call this. It always is attached at the top. Why?
2. Rotate square by 45*. Note, the "handle" as described above rotates along with the square. So now, while the square is still a square, it could be described as a diamond.
3. What I want to do next is transform the height only or, width only which would turn the square/diamond into a rhombus. This was easy in Illustrator. Just change the X or Y dimension. But in Affinity, changing those dimensions results in a rotated rectangle. The line segments of this shape are locked to 90*.

So, it seems to me that Affinity retains the world coordinates in created objects. To my mind, this is not how it should work. To me, X and Y do not change just because I rotate an object. Seems to have something to do with the "handle" described above. Transforms seem to be relative to its axis.

I think I am not understand something correctly. If not, I'm sure I can work around this behavior but it seems cumbersome to me.

Thanks for any help!

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

That handle you're describing is the rotation handle, which is always attached to the top of the figure when you're looking at its basic bounding box. Rotating the figure does not change where it's top is. Note that rather than drawing a square and rotating it, you could have started with the Diamond Tool, which would get you there directly, and with the rotation handle attached to the top node.

For your purpose with a rhombus, you could use some alternative approaches:

1. Start with a square or a diamond as you did. Switch to the Node Tool, and adjust the nodes using that.
   or
2. As in 1, but use Layer > Convert to Curves, then use the Node Tool.
   or
3. Start with the Polygon Tool, set the number of sides to 4, and adjust the sides directly using their nodes.

[henryanthony]

Hi Walt!

Thanks for the quick response! In the time it took you to respond I figured out pretty much exactly the method you described.

It's different from how I would do it in Illustrator but no better or worse. Its hard overcoming 30 years of muscle memory. I just need to explore the tools and options until I get more comfortable with the basics.

Thanks again!

[JimmyJack]

Hi Henry,

I would call when the object keeps it's original handles as it's local space, and when the handles stay in relation to the page as world space (i.e. the page is the world) but maybe that's just me.
Anyway...
You could make it how you did and just toggle the bounding box to use the handles in the world/local (😉) space you're looking for.

[dominik]

5 minutes ago, JimmyJack said:

You could make it how you did and just toggle the bounding box to use the handles in the world/local (😉) space you're looking for.

 

I was thinking the same but interestingly the bounding box toggle icon is not there in my V2 Designers context toolbar. To me it looks like your screenshot was made in Designer V1. Is this correct?

d.

[JimmyJack]

Hi @dominik, yes V1.

Interesting, I can't imagine they would get rid of that. Maybe it's somewhere else 🤔?
Sorry, can't help you find it 🥴.

[henryanthony]

Ah-ha! Cycle Selection Box - makes sense now. And, yeah, I am familiar with the world/local space.

FYI I am using  Version 1. 

Thanks for your responses and help.

[v_kyr]

Keyboard Shortcuts: Cycle Selection Box  --->  .

[dominik]

18 minutes ago, JimmyJack said:

Hi @dominik, yes V1.

Interesting, I can't imagine they would get rid of that. Maybe it's somewhere else 🤔?
Sorry, can't help you find it 🥴.

@JimmyJack, thanks for confirming.

I found out that it actually was moved from its context toolbar icon to a menu entry. This forum is a great source of knowledge: 

The good thing about this is its keyboard shortcut '.' (dot)

@henryanthony you might try this out.

d.

 

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, henryanthony said:

3.   What I want to do next is transform the height only or, width only which would turn the square/diamond into a rhombus. This was easy in Illustrator. Just change the X or Y dimension. But in Affinity, changing those dimensions results in a rotated rectangle. The line segments of this shape are locked to 90*.

Hit the Add button on the set of Boolean operations. Now you can adjust the height or width of the rotated square, which is now a closed curve. This will keep the four sides equal length.

[henryanthony]

Wow! Thanks so much for all the support. I'll explore all this advice and let you all know how things work our.

[henryanthony]

Hi Everyone!

Your responses to my question resulted in a great primer on shape creation and manipulation and how some of the transform tools work in contextual ways. This has given me a real jump start to getting a personal project back into the development stage.

Back in March, my computer crashed and I lost use of Adobe CS2. Although I have the original discs, I cannot install it due to Adobe not allowing activation of the product. I have a very old machine with CS2 still functioning but, for a variety of reasons, decided to give Affinity a try. It has been a big change for me but as I get more familiar with the product I am glad I switched. I guess there are probably a lot of people in a similar situation.

So, now I am excited about my project again, happily creating and manipulating shapes with some very powerful tools and relieved to have joined this very helpful forum.

Thanks so much and MERRY CHRISTMAS! to you all!!!