Dashed lines / stroke panel Improvements

[MoonaticDestiny]

I dont know if I using it right but the "clear any arrowheads on a stroke" button isnt working for me. I create a stroke, gave it some arrowheads, and then hit the "clear any arrowheads on a stroke" button to clear the arrowheads and nothing. Actually, the 4 buttons at the very bottom arent working at all. Not even the dial and chain icon above those 4 buttons are working. Is it just me? Everything under the arrowhead buttons arent working. 

 

On 3/15/2023 at 7:12 AM, Ash said:

3. A new button has been added to clear any arrowheads on a stroke - just making it more convenient than having to open the drop downs to set both ends to "None".

What you said about number 3 got me thinking about the stroke pressure. Can a "reset pressure" button be added next to Pressure? You currently have to tap a node from the pressure handles to reset the pressure. Its the same concept of not having to scroll through your arrowheads to hit none so a button was created for it to clear the arrow heads. Instead of clicking a node to reset the pressure a button could be pressed to easily reset it. Itd be more convenient. 

[Ash]

1 hour ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

I dont know if I using it right but the "clear any arrowheads on a stroke" button isnt working for me. I create a stroke, gave it some arrowheads, and then hit the "clear any arrowheads on a stroke" button to clear the arrowheads and nothing. Actually, the 4 buttons at the very bottom arent working at all. Not even the dial and chain icon above those 4 buttons are working. Is it just me? Everything under the arrowhead buttons arent working. 

You are right! Sorry that's a bug, have included note on post and will be fixed in next update.

1 hour ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

What you said about number 3 got me thinking about the stroke pressure. Can a "reset pressure" button be added next to Pressure? You currently have to tap a node from the pressure handles to reset the pressure. Its the same concept of not having to scroll through your arrowheads to hit none so a button was created for it to clear the arrow heads. Instead of clicking a node to reset the pressure a button could be pressed to easily reset it. Itd be more convenient. 

Actually you can tap anywhere within the pressure box to bring up the reset pressure option?

[Hangman]

4 hours ago, Ash said:

You are right! Sorry that's a bug, have included note on post and will be fixed in next update.

Assuming a bug on Windows as all four buttons are working as expected on macOS (for me at least)...

[Frozen Death Knight]

Glad to see that this old bug has been dealt with with the new dashed lines. Switching Styles no longer makes dashed lines invisible just because it has Pressure applied in another Style mode.

Speaking of Pressure, any chance that Affinity could support dashed lines with different line thickness applied on a vector line?

[Frozen Death Knight]

With some further testing, I noticed that Pressure makes arrowheads invisible regardless of mode sometimes. I had to reset the Pressure profile just to make it work again.

Invisible Arrowheads with Pressure applied.afpub

Changing Pressure affects the size of the arrows while using Dashed Line Style at the same time, so having tapered off line thickness at each end can make the arrows look invisible when using dashed lines.

[MikeTO]

I like the new dash/gap indicators below the number fields - they are much nicer than displaying the words dash and gap.

At first I thought the indicators were clickable and that you'd added a visual dash pattern editor - some apps use a row of on/off toggle switches to allow users to define a dash pattern by clicking which is convenient for non-technical users baffled by the numbers. This might be a nice future enhancement.

Something else to consider as a future enhancement would be a variety of dash shapes beyond the current rectangular dash. For example, a curved or slanted "dash" vector could be repeated around the object's path with an additional vector shape used for the vertices when balanced corners is selected. While it's easy to transform shapes around a path, it's not the same as an automatic border with balanced corners. Ideally these custom dashed lines wouldn't require a gap value so they could form continuous lines such as waves. A variety of common shapes could be included, including curls and waves, dashes with slanted ends, dash/dot patterns, hashes and chevrons, and map neatlines.

[Ash]

48 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I like the new dash/gap indicators below the number fields - they are much nicer than displaying the words dash and gap.

That's good to hear, thanks. Words were also going to cause a lot of problems in German, etc. and happy with this solution.

Everything else sensible comments / feedback thanks!

[MikeTO]

31 minutes ago, anto said:

Publisher freezes with combinations: 0 0 0 X 0 0, 0 0 0 0 X 0, where X - any numeric

I can't duplicate this on macOS - probably because the second field (gap) can't be set to 0 on Mac.

[MikeTO]

One minor issue. With cap set to butt and balanced corners on, the corner shape is drawn differently inside and outside of the shape's border. It looks a bit off in the first screenshot with a 1 1 dash pattern but in the second screenshot with a 1 2 dash the issue is more pronounced.

[MoonaticDestiny]

14 hours ago, Ash said:

Actually you can tap anywhere within the pressure box to bring up the reset pressure option?

Oh. Yes. You are correct. I thought you specifically had to tap a node to rest the pressure. Thats why I wanted a button but this makes things easier. 

[Sean P]

On 3/18/2023 at 4:41 PM, anto said:

Publisher freezes with combinations: 0 0 0 X 0 0, 0 0 0 0 X 0, where X - any numeric

Thanks Anto,

I suspect this is pretty much the same as this issue you reported on Thursday. The first dash gap shouldn't be possible to set to 0, so I believe that is causing the same problems. This should be fixed in the next build, so please retry next build!

[Sean P]

On 3/18/2023 at 12:28 PM, Frozen Death Knight said:

With some further testing, I noticed that Pressure makes arrowheads invisible regardless of mode sometimes. I had to reset the Pressure profile just to make it work again.

Invisible Arrowheads with Pressure applied.afpub

Changing Pressure affects the size of the arrows while using Dashed Line Style at the same time, so having tapered off line thickness at each end can make the arrows look invisible when using dashed lines.

Hey FDK,
Looks like the arrow heads should return when the pressure is disabled due to the dash, but they're not. I'll get this logged

[Sean P]

14 minutes ago, anto said:

Is it possible to create dash-dotted square as in picture in the right side? I cannot find settings how to.

Unfortunately not - currently the dashed line has to be the same around the entire curve. That said you could break the line and separate the segment you want to be different and then adjust the dash pattern on the two curves independently. The balanced lines will help them line up as well.

[Ash]

16 minutes ago, anto said:

Is it possible to create dash-dotted square as in picture in the right side? I cannot find settings how to.

Oh yeah, you can get close by typing a value close to zero in the second dash value (e.g. 3, 4, 0.001, 4, 0, 0). The dot in this case will not be 100% perfect circle however. Will see if there is any reason why we can't just accept zeros in the 2nd or 3rd dash value.

[Sean P]

On 3/18/2023 at 6:29 PM, MikeTO said:

One minor issue. With cap set to butt and balanced corners on, the corner shape is drawn differently inside and outside of the shape's border. It looks a bit off in the first screenshot with a 1 1 dash pattern but in the second screenshot with a 1 2 dash the issue is more pronounced.

Thanks for that! I've been able to reproduce this and will get it logged - the height/width of the object is affecting how bad the difference is.

[Hangman]

6 hours ago, Ash said:

Oh yeah, you can get close by typing a value close to zero in the second dash value (e.g. 3, 4, 0.001, 4, 0, 0). The dot in this case will not be 100% perfect circle however. Will see if there is any reason why we can't just accept zeros in the 2nd or 3rd dash value.

Another option is this...

[MoonaticDestiny]

This is for AD v2 on ipad. You know how it says dash gap, dash gap, and dash gap? Dont you think it should say "Length" instead of dash? Because youre changing the length of the dash. Just how above the stroke studio theres a "Width" slider that changes the width. It wouldnt say stroke. It would say width. Here it should say length because youre changing the length of the dash. I already know it refers to my dash because the category is dash pattern.

I also feel like these 3 dash gaps should be numbered. Its probably unnecessary, but I just feel like somethings missing design wise. A number is missing telling me what dash is what. I know how to count. Its more of like an indicator. I drew it out below. 

On 3/15/2023 at 7:12 AM, Ash said:

Currently this increments in whole numbers, we will be changing to increment by 0.1 in the next update. 

Please, please, PLEASE 🙏 make it a setting in the preferences where users can choose to have the app work in increments in whole numbers or increments of 0.1. In v1, I always hated having my stroke width in 0.1 increments and my fx context menu dials in increments of 0.1. I hated it so much. I just wanted to work in whole numbers. Please make this an option instead. 

[spiderpod7d]

Hi Ash

This works great thanks

Doug

[gw_westdale]

Lovely. Some really cool uses - great 'hearts'.   There seems to be an issue with butt alignment ... some artifacts centre column ? 1732 beta Windows

 

 

balanced dots.afdesign

[Peter1959]

Love the new balanced option on dotted lines, but one thing I would love to see in strokes is a twin line option, I know it's not too difficult to create twin lines uing two boxes but would be a real time saver if twin lines were available as an option, and if they could be independently edited that would be awesome.

[Old Bruce]

51 minutes ago, Peter1959 said:

Love the new balanced option on dotted lines, but one thing I would love to see in strokes is a twin line option, I know it's not too difficult to create twin lines uing two boxes but would be a real time saver if twin lines were available as an option, and if they could be independently edited that would be awesome.

Perhaps you could try out Designer's Appearance panel.

[Sean P]

On 3/25/2023 at 10:39 AM, gw_westdale said:

There seems to be an issue with butt alignment ... some artifacts centre column ?

 

balanced dots.afdesign 24.7 kB · 0 downloads

Hi gw_westdale,

This is something we do have logged. 

[Hangman]

On 3/26/2023 at 4:07 PM, Peter1959 said:

Love the new balanced option on dotted lines, but one thing I would love to see in strokes is a twin line option, I know it's not too difficult to create twin lines uing two boxes but would be a real time saver if twin lines were available as an option, and if they could be independently edited that would be awesome.

Just adding a few variations and options to @Old Bruce's post. using the same technique... one thing that isn't currently possible is to have twin dotted lines, twin dashed yes but not vertically aligned twin dotted lines...

[Hangman]

A feature request for dashed strokes...

It would add additional flexibility if there were an option to both positively and negatively offset balanced strokes on a per dash/gap pair in a similar fashion to baseline shift for text, this would then provide an option for creating more advanced twin and triple dotted strokes and many other variations...

[Peter1959]

23 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Perhaps you could try out Designer's Appearance panel.

You're quite right Old Bruce but it's not an exact science for the type of dual lines I mean and takes some trial and error, the option I was referring to would be able to select dual lines inner line = x pt, offset = x pt, outer line = x Untitled.afpub