How to Select and Snap to position two complex shapes point to point? (coming from Adobe Illustrator)

[KristianK]

I am trying to transition from Adobe Illustrator to Affinity Designer but struggle with using object snap to position one object to another using specific corners of the object shapes like in the example attached. In Illustrator I can just hover over point 1., and click-drag the object to point 2. in a way that points 1. and 2. perfectly overlap. How can I do that in Affinity Designer? All I seem to be able to manage in Affinity is to snap to bounding box edges and center lines but not actual object geometry points. Any help would be much appreciated as this is one of the bread and butter move for me in Illustrator.

 

 

[Old Bruce]

Use the node tool. Make certain that the context toolbar has this turned on

Select both curve layers, either in the layers panel or on the canvas by shift clicking. 

For the upper object (still using the node tool) click and drag to select all of its nodes.

Grab the node you have labelled as 1 and drag it to the node you have labelled 2. All of the nodes from the upper object will follow the node labelled 1 as you drag it.

[dominik]

Hello @KristianK,

in the snapping manager make sure to have selected 'Snap to shape key points' and 'Snap to object geometry'. And also make sure to have snapping turned on.

In order to drag a certain object node together with all other nodes switch to the Node Tool (a).

Then hit CTRL+A to select all nodes of the object you want to move.
Then grab the node you want to position and move it over to the destination node.

If everything is set correctly you will see snapping guides and nodes snap exactly onto each other.

d.

[KristianK]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, @dominik and @Old Bruce!

Your pointers helped in wrapping my head around how snapping really works in Affinity Designer. Super helpful.

[GarryP]

An alternative to the above suggestions might be to use the Point Transform Tool in Translate mode (see the Status Bar for more information about this when you hover the mouse over a node, pointed to by the red arrow in my video, different OSes do it differently).