Constraining removes snapping

[Maxdanger]

Hi everyone,

I posted something similar in the feedback forum a few months ago, but I've realised that the behaviour applies not only to grids but to all forms of snapping so I'm posting here now as a bug.

It is currently not possible to snap when constraining the curve's angle even with snapping enabled when using the pen tool normally. I've recorded a short video to show this in action.
 

 

I am using MacOS Ventura 13.1
M1 pro Macbook Pro
Affinity Designer 2.0.4

Confirmed that this bug exists on version 1 of Designer.

The only workaround seems to be to press and hold on the trackpad/mouse when drawing the curve and snapping will work, but this is really unintuitive and impractical for large amounts of drawing.

 

[Paul Mudditt]

31 minutes ago, Maxdanger said:

Hi everyone,

I posted something similar in the feedback forum a few months ago, but I've realised that the behaviour applies not only to grids but to all forms of snapping so I'm posting here now as a bug.

It is currently not possible to snap when constraining the curve's angle even with snapping enabled when using the pen tool normally. I've recorded a short video to show this in action.
 

 

I am using MacOS Ventura 13.1
M1 pro Macbook Pro
Affinity Designer 2.0.4

Confirmed that this bug exists on version 1 of Designer.

The only workaround seems to be to press and hold on the trackpad/mouse when drawing the curve and snapping will work, but this is really unintuitive and impractical for large amounts of drawing.

 

Strange,I am not seeing this on my M1 Mac Mini, macOS Ventura seems to work ok.

EDIT: My cursor shows a star next to the pen tool, yours shows a cross next to the pen tool might be relevant.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Paul Mudditt
Cursor issue added

[Paul Mudditt]

I have just checked on V1 and in Affinity Photo and my lines do snap when constrained AND my cursor icon remains a STAR  which I cannot find out what that means and why you appear to have a cross not a star when you press shift key to constrain. Mine does mot do that.

[Maxdanger]

Hi Paul,

Thanks very much for that. How curious... Good to know it's possible to get the behaviour that I desire, just need to work out what that star next to the cursor means.

Hopefully one of the Affinity Mods will be able to assist.

Thanks!

[Paul Mudditt]

3 minutes ago, Maxdanger said:

Hi Paul,

Thanks very much for that. How curious... Good to know it's possible to get the behaviour that I desire, just need to work out what that star next to the cursor means.

Hopefully one of the Affinity Mods will be able to assist.

Thanks!

Yes so weird, I think the change from a star to a cross is telling you the snap behaviour has changed. All I can think is there is a buried setting somewhere which changes what happens when shift is pressed. Cannot understand how it would be like that for you on V1 and V2. Did you try the same in Photo V1 V2?

 

[Maxdanger]

Yes - just tried with Photo and Publisher V1 and it's the same. I've amended my pen tool settings to exactly what you have on your screen recording and still no luck.

How do these settings compare to yours?

[Paul Mudditt]

My setting were slightly different but I changed mine to exactly the same as yours and mine still snaps.

Rather frustratingly, whilst playing I have occasionally seen the cursor change to a cross but not sure why and then it flips back to being a star as yours starts out being a star. It still could be a bug.

[Maxdanger]

That's frustrating. Sounds like a bug or a hidden setting buried somewhere I haven't found.

Thanks so much for your help, hopefully one of the Mods will be able to confirm for us

[Paul Mudditt]

6 minutes ago, Maxdanger said:

That's frustrating. Sounds like a bug or a hidden setting buried somewhere I haven't found.

Thanks so much for your help, hopefully one of the Mods will be able to confirm for us

Ah, the star cross thingy is maybe a red herring I messed around with the snap: options on the context toolbar and then I got the cross like you, when I tried the constrained line again it still worked fine. It looks like it shows a cross because your first point is not snapped to the line either. If I click in mid space then my cursor changes to a cross as well.

EDIT: Ah well mine is now broken like yours lol ! Need to play with those snap options again!

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Paul Mudditt

[Maxdanger]

Interesting... I'm at a total loss then! 

[Paul Mudditt]

11 minutes ago, Maxdanger said:

Interesting... I'm at a total loss then! 

The line turns greens so it is ready to snap, try moving your cursor closer to where the lines cross.

 

Can you upload your .afdesign document as maybe it's dimensions or units are making the difference here.

[Maxdanger]

Sure - here is a sample file and a screen record from me making it. Keen to see if you can get snapping to work with it

Snapping not working.afdesign

[Paul Mudditt]

OK, try slowing down a bit, as you can see here I occasionally had the snap indicator not appear but when I slowed down a bit it re-appeared.

Since you also have an M1 it can't be you have a slow machine, unless you have something on your computer that is slowing things down like google apps such as Chrome ? or perhaps or one of these fancy high resolution mice that oversamples and kills the CPU?

[Maxdanger]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've not got anything hooked up to the laptop so no fancy monitor or mouse to slow it down. As you say the M1 is not slow and everything is running really smoothly so I don't think that's the cause.

Moving the cursor slowly doesn't seem to help. I have my screen tolerance in snapping set to 30 to make snapping more sensitive. As you can see it does detect the edge I want to snap to without problem. As soon as I press shift it's as if the snapping is overridden. The cursor still indicates that it's snapping to the edge, but the curve I'm drawing continues going - no matter how slow I am.

[Paul Mudditt]

I had problems initially with your design, then I realised every line that was not snapped properly was causing me problems with snapping because every wrong end point becomes a snapping candidate and caused more errors. 

One I realised that on your document, I removed your "bad" lines to stop their end points becoming snapping candidates.

Then my new lines added were perfect.

[Maxdanger]

Yeah I have that problem on every document I open. The most recent video I sent where I moved the cursor slowly was a new document without any lines - you can see in the layers panel that the only thing in my document is the rectangle.

I'm still confused why our cursors behave differently where mine shows a plus sign and yours shows the star.

[Paul Mudditt]

Try making sure your rectangle is selected in the layers panel to ensure it is a snapping candidate. Also see if these settings change anything.

[Maxdanger]

Thanks - sadly it's still not snapping with those settings. Same thing when I selected the rectangle. AD is definitely detecting the rectangle as a snapping candidate as it works if I don't constrain the angle.

[Paul Mudditt]

Why do you get a pop-up saying SHIFT on your screen recordings, I don't. Have you got some key help system running for screen recording?

[Maxdanger]

Yeah I was using Keystroke Pro to highlight when I was using shift. That's not coming from anything Affinity related  

[Paul Mudditt]

8 minutes ago, Maxdanger said:

Yeah I was using Keystroke Pro to highlight when I was using shift. That's not coming from anything Affinity related  

Try uninstalling it !!

It clearly intercepts key presses so may be incompatible with Affinity.

[Maxdanger]

Sorry, that's not the issue. I tried uninstalling and it's still not functioning correctly, which makes sense as I had this snapping issue long before I downloaded the app

[lepr]

When the shift key is depressed to constrain angle, the intersection-snapping for the second node is dependent on the mouse button being depressed while the pointer enters the vicinity of the desired intersection.

In my opinion, that dependency should not exist, but you can work with it: ensure both shift key and the mouse button are depressed as you move the pointer close to the required intersection, and only release the button to create the node when the snap is indicated.

(I think Paul was successful by pressing the mouse button to create the first node of a line and then not releasing the button until the snap was indicated for the second node.)

[Maxdanger]

Thanks very much for that - it does work, though I agree with you and would prefer it to not depend on the mouse button being depressed to enable the snapping. Holding the option key already disables snapping so having this as the default behaviour is fairly redundant.

Serif - if you can implement the ability to disable this dependency it would be amazing!

[lepr]

From the app's help document: