Snapping with Moving Tool

[Philou7168]

Hi
I am an inkscape user, but I decided to extend my experience to Affinity Designer. I find a lot of nice tools in Affinity, but the snapping needs to be revised because it lacks an important option. When using the Move Tool, it is impossible to anchor the node of one object to the node of another object. See the image for an explanation.

[lepr]

Point Transform Tool (F)

If playing with the tool doesn't help, try also reading the Help, and then come back here if still needing help.

[That comment was full of help, even if not helpful 😀]

[Philou7168]

Sorry, I am French, and my research has not been fruitful. And again, you have to move the center of rotation of each object to the node you want to snap, otherwise it doesn't work, or I set the snapping wrong.
You have to do a lot of manipulation for a simple snapping of 2 nodes. I know I'm on an Affinity help forum, but I think an improvement based on inkscape snapping would be a plus for Affinity Designer.
Hence my post in the Feedback & Suggestion.
Anyway, thanks for the help, it has unblocked the situation.

[lepr]

24 minutes ago, Philou7168 said:

And again, you have to move the center of rotation of each object to the node you want to snap, otherwise it doesn't work, or I set the snapping wrong.
You have to do a lot of manipulation for a simple snapping of 2 nodes.

There is no need to move the centres of rotation.

1. Select only the hexagon that is to be moved.
2. Press F to activate Point Transform Tool.
3. Ensure the second snap option ("Snap to geometry...") in context toolbar is enabled.
4. On a Mac, hold down ctrl key and drag a node of the selected hexagon until it snaps to a vertex of the other hexagon.

Regarding step 4: you use Windows, so look at the status bar at bottom of the app window to discover the modifier for "to translate" when the pointer is over a node of the selected hexagon.

Also, steps 1 and 2 can be transposed.

[Philou7168]

Thanks for the help.
I can read English pretty well, it's writing or speaking it that I have more trouble with. For translation I use DeepL

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, Philou7168 said:

When using the Move Tool, it is impossible to anchor the node of one object to the node of another object. See the image for an explanation.

Don't use the Move tool. Use the Node tool and select both objects. Drag select all the nodes on the one you want to move. Grab the node you want to be aligned and drag it (and all the other selected nodes, solid in the picture) overtop the one you want it aligned to. If you have the for the node tool context toolbar setup to be able to Snap you can get the nodes to snap. You can even turn off the regular snapping and still get the nodes snapping.

[lepr]

50 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Don't use the Move tool. Use the Node tool and select both objects. Drag select all the nodes on the one you want to move. Grab the node you want to be aligned and drag it (and all the other selected nodes, solid in the picture) overtop the one you want it aligned to. If you have the for the node tool context toolbar setup to be able to Snap you can get the nodes to snap. You can even turn off the regular snapping and still get the nodes snapping.

 

 

Note the OP has Polygon objects, not Curve objects. The user would need to convert each Polygon to a Curve, losing their parametric nature, to use the Node Tool for the task. That could be acceptable to the OP, of course.

 

There is a simple way to do the snapping with Move Tool, but it involves using the Transform Origin of the Polygon being moved. Transform origins are buggy in Affinity 2 at the moment, so I don't want to post something that could cause confusion. I was confused! 2.0.4 is OK. It is only the current 2.1 beta that has broken Transform Origins, so the method is posted in my next message.

[lepr]

The following is broken in the current 2.1 beta, but it does work in 2.0.4.

The method using Move Tool:

1. In the app's snapping options, enable Snap To Object Geometry.
2. Use Move Tool to select one Polygon object.
3. Snap the Transform Origin to a vertex of that Polygon.
4. On a Mac, ctrl-drag the Transform Origin to snap to a vertex of the other Polygon - the Transform Origin will act as a handle moving the first polygon.

Regarding step 4: if you use Windows, look at the status bar at bottom of the app window to discover the modifier for "to move selected objects" when the pointer is over the Transform Origin.

[Philou7168]

As I said above, I am also an Inkscape user. And I usually use the Move tool which by default uses snapping and all the checked functions in Inkscape. In Affinity, it's totally different, so it's up to me to change that.
To answer Red Sand, the Node to Node with borders allows to superimpose the two borders of the objects, otherwise without border, we work in edge to edge.

For your information, on Designer I don't use a dev version because I'm still learning the software, but on Inkscape, I'm at version 1.3 dev.

As it is, the use of these two softwares allows to have more functions than Illustrator for a fixed price; far from the 24€/month of Adobe software

To make the model of the video, it took me 10 minutes less on Inkscape, well, I'm not used to it anymore, but for those who want to see how snapping works on Inkscape.

Thanks to everyone for the help
 

[lepr]

6 hours ago, Red Sands said:

Bottom line, there is no real node snapping in Affinity when using the move tool. Even with these advice, zoom in and discover this:

 

 

Your image suggests user error to me. There really is precise snapping in Affinity. The screenshots below feature a zoom factor of over 70 million percent. The Polygon objects vertices and the Curve objects nodes  were snapped by using Move Tool as I described earlier in this thread.

 

 

 

[lepr]

8 minutes ago, Red Sands said:

Ah, I can see there is some kind of node snapping if you select all nodes with the node tool and move the object. But then you will have to know this is how to do it, and toggle between the move and node tool to rotate and skew. I wouldnt call this "User error" - I would call it clumsy workaround. Different behavior even depending on type of shape? Not how it should be done.

But the conclusion is still that this type of snapping is not implemented in Affinity as such. There are just ways to achieve it in a roundabout way.

If you look at my previous message, I edited it after re-reading yours. I re-did the snapping of the Curve objects with the Move Tool in exactly the same way as I snapped the Polygons with the Move Tool.

I do admit that the Move Tool relying on the use of an object's Transform Origin is less convenient than Inkscape's snapping of the hexagons in the video above.

 

[lepr]

15 minutes ago, Red Sands said:

I wouldnt call this "User error" - I would call it clumsy workaround. Different behavior even depending on type of shape? Not how it should be done.

My statement of "user error" referred to your failing to use the Move Tool correctly when you failed to achieve the desired snapping when using that tool.

[lepr]

4 minutes ago, Red Sands said:

What setting prevents me from succes here? I only see vertical or horisontal edge snapping:

You aren't using the moving object's Transform Origin as a handle that snaps. Here's my earlier instructions:

15 hours ago, ,,, said:

The following is broken in the current 2.1 beta, but it does work in 2.0.4.

The method using Move Tool:

1. In the app's snapping options, enable Snap To Object Geometry.
2. Use Move Tool to select one Polygon object.
3. Snap the Transform Origin to a vertex of that Polygon.
4. On a Mac, ctrl-drag the Transform Origin to snap to a vertex of the other Polygon - the Transform Origin will act as a handle moving the first polygon.

Regarding step 4: if you use Windows, look at the status bar at bottom of the app window to discover the modifier for "to move selected objects" when the pointer is over the Transform Origin.

[lepr]

1 minute ago, Red Sands said:

Hahaha now I see the transform origin part. You gotta be kidding:

I didn't fail anything. This is pushing the workaround concept to the maximum. Even by Linux standards. Don't call anything like that "using it correctly".

NO node snapping implemented in Affinity. Simple as that. 

!Over and out!

LOL. Come on, there is node snapping in Affinity. There is room for improvement, of course. As I said earlier, the snapping of the hexagons in the Inkscape video is more convenient.

[Philou7168]

47 minutes ago, ,,, said:

LOL. Come on, there is node snapping in Affinity. There is room for improvement, of course. As I said earlier, the snapping of the hexagons in the Inkscape video is more convenient.

That's why I put the post here. I think Designer could really use some inspiration from the much more intuitive Inkscape snapping.

[user_0815]

If I use the "point transformation tool", I can click on the node I want to snap and it will snap to any node of the other polygon.

Is that what the op was looking for? Or did he just want to suggest a different way of doing it?

[lepr]

48 minutes ago, user_0815 said:

If I use the "point transformation tool", I can click on the node I want to snap and it will snap to any node of the other polygon.

Is that what the op was looking for? Or did he just want to suggest a different way of doing it?

Point Transform Tool was my first suggestion, but the OP would like Affinity to be able to snap Polygon vertices when using Move Tool as easily as it is done when using Move Tool in Inkscape - see the video that was pasted in this thread.

[lepr]

@Red Sands: yes, my mind is going.

We've been discussing using Affinity's Move Tool to perform node snapping. If you allow losing the parametric controls of a Polygon object, it can be converted to a Curve object with nodes, and then the Node Tool enables convenient node snapping. Below is the equivalent of the node snapping part of the Inkscape video. I repeatedly used cmd+J followed by cmd+A to quickly duplicate a hexagon and select all of its nodes so that the entire object would be dragged each time. Notice that I was able to drag by any node, not just the node that snapped into place.

OK, I cheated by not limiting myself to the Move Tool.