Ideas (workaround) for a Reflect Tool....

[Scungio]

I really miss Illustrator's Reflect Tool. I love Von Glitschka's tutorials and how he will at times do pieces that have symmetry and will build half a face and then use the Reflect tool to complete the other half of the face.

So, I got to thinking, how do I do the same in Designer?? Here is my preliminary idea, I use the macro ability of a device like a Tourbox or Stream Deck XL to run a bunch of commands/functions to duplicate and then flip and complete the piece.

Say you have a document, and then drag out a vertical guide at the exact midway point of the document. Then you create half of a face with the vertical guide in mind. You have a Layer with all of the curves, shapes comprising your face, but you add one more shape, a rectangle. That will be resized to match the exact same dimensions as the document and we name it Reflect. Give it a fill and stroke of none and put it at the very bottom of the stack and lock it.

Now, to automate the duplication and flipping of the face, I hope to do it something like this:

First, select the items you want to copy and flip.

Then at this point I run a macro, that Duplicates the objects, Groups them, Moves to Back.

This Group is now at the bottom of the stack, below the Reflect object, so Move Forward One, moves it above the Reflect object, and Move Inside puts it inside the Reflect object. Now if we use Select Parent, the Reflect object is selected and then Flip Horizontal will create the other half of the face. We are flipping the rectangle that is the same dimensions as the document and the half of the face that we created is a child of the rectangle, and since we created it around that vertical guide, the two halves match up.

I see no way to select a child of that Reflect object, so this is where the macro ends for this button. Another button could be created to run a macro that finished the procedure.

For example you would have to select the child of the Reflect object, the Group that has the new halve of the face, and then click on a new button/macro that would Move to Outside and then Ungroup.

Of course this is me daydreaming, I will in the next day or two try this out and see if it actually works on both the Tourbox and Steam Deck.

What other workarounds do people have for a Reflect or Mirror tool???

 

[Old Bruce]

You are overthinking this. Just do this;

20 minutes ago, Scungio said:

create half of a face with the vertical guide in mind.

19 minutes ago, Scungio said:

 select the items you want to copy and flip.

Group them and duplicate that group, flip it and move it.

 

[firstdefence]

To flip around a centre line...

1. Group multiple objects and select the group, else select the single object
2. Move Transform origin to centre line
3. Duplicate and rotate 180º using...
   
    
4. Then use the Flip Vertical icon on the top menu 
    

[Scungio]

Interesting. Okay, so firstdefence, with your method I have to duplicate objects, group objects, move transform origin to centre line, rotate 180 degrees and then use the Flip Vertical. 

I would add that probably a good idea to double click on the transform origin to move it back to center if one wants to keep it as a group. In your method I would want to duplicate the objects first before making a group because I don't want to have two groups that I have to center the origins.

All in all though that is still 6 steps and I figure that I can duplicate and flip in 7 steps and have it automated to boot. Make a selection and click a button. Some may say that is too complicated but that is why I love both the Tourbox and Stream Deck. Invest a little time in setting this reflect macro and then the time savings add up later on down the road.

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Scungio said:

So, I got to thinking, how do I do the same in Designer??

 

6 minutes ago, Scungio said:

Invest a little time in setting this reflect macro and then the time savings add up later on down the road.

One problem. Designer has no Macros.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

One problem. Designer has no Macros.

True, but he's talking about a "macro" that is a set of commands driven by an external device or application, not one that is directly part of Designer.

 

 

[Scungio]

You misunderstand. Tourbox is an input device that has knobs, dials, buttons that allows you to bind keyboard shortcuts to it. Stream Deck does the same thing, I have 32 buttons on the XL version and you can set up macros with both. Meaning I can have a button fire off a number of commands one after the other so that in Designer I can do what Illustrator users can do with their Actions.

Anyway, here is a short movie showing the gist of what I am talking about. I am doing the reflect manually here in less that 5 seconds, but with a macro it will be instantaneous.