Constraint groups and fill on group level

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

[LOW PRIORITY - @N.P.M. showed that the grouping is not required to slice a fill. Never the less, these UI inconsistencies irritate and distract you from getting things done. If something is labeled "group", it should behave like a group.]

of you create several rectangles (e.g. 3x3, distributed with no gap) and group them, you can assign a fill on the group which gets transferred to the individual member layers: every rectangle gets a portion of the fill. This is a great function to create puzzles etc.

If you add constraints to any member of the group (before using fill tool), it is no longer possible to use the fill tool in this way. The fill will be assigned to the constraint group itself, not to the members.

Even after ungrouping, removing constraints, grouping again (which gives a "group" instead of "constraint group" as label) it is still impossible to get the fill assigned to child layers.

This bug makes it impossible to create assets or symbols with pre-determined constraints (before fill). 

In the image below, please have a look at the layer thumbnails, showing the difference.

Edited February 5, 2023 by NotMyFault

[NotMyFault]

Side node:

I used swatches during my tests. It seems that swatches are total unreliable when using groups with rectangles, and a bitmap fill or gradient fill. In many cases the fill won't get applied at all. In case of gradients, you need to activate the gradient tool and click on one of the nodes to get correct rendering.

[NotMyFault]

What I try to achieve is generate a template (with constraints) that can be filled with any bitmap fill to allow a 9-slice resize.

You can use the move tool to resize the constraint group, the 8 edge tiles will be constraint to the edges and 0 or 1 axis, whereas the centre tile scales in 2 axis.

I created the file below on iPad, and there it works. Unfortunately the process to get there is too tedious and cannot be saves as asset / template.

 

I tried to reproduce the same process on Mac and stumble from one bug to the other (fill, style, constraint etc)

 

 

9 slice template.afdesign

[NotMyFault]

17 minutes ago, N.P.M. said:

Select the 9 rects>

This is much simpler and makes it redundant to use a group layer. Thank you.

The main UI issue is that gradient fill does not show correct rendering of multiple layers are selected. you need to touch any node and move it to get correct rendering. These (many) UI bugs consume so much time and distract from the essence.

[NathanC]

Hey @NotMyFault,

Thanks for providing detail, I've replicated this and logged it with the developers. 🙂