Move data entry

[Aammppaa]

14 hours ago, Ash said:

20 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Agreed, I suggested a toggle to create the duplicates In Front/In Back.

Expand  

Yes - this was noted. We'll have a look at this for 2.3

Rather than adding a toggle to the Move / copy dialogue, please revisit and reconsider the operation of the global insert above/inside/behind buttons and menu options. 

I still feel that these simply don't work in any useful manner. 

If they were genuine global toggles they would interact with the move/copy data entry dialogue as requested. 

 

[Intuos5]

I'm hoping that this feature will be expanded to become a pattern maker for vector patterns.

[Ash]

Been good to see you having fun with this feature. tbh the main objective of the feature was to make it easy to move an object (and now rotate of course) by a specified value. We originally planned to just have an option to either just move or duplicate a single copy to new location. But then thought useful to add ability to create multiple copies at the same time - effectively power duplicate but with ability to specify number of duplicates rather than hitting cmd-J n times.

I want to be clear we do not consider this something which could become a blend tool, pattern maker or replicate / distribute type tool - we can do a better job of that functionality in other ways. Some of which might be in a >2.2 beta in the not too distant future

[Affinityconfusesme]

@Ash Looking forward to a blend tool when it comes.😄

[debraspicher]

7 hours ago, Ash said:

effectively power duplicate but with ability to specify number of duplicates rather than hitting cmd-J n times.

This is much appreciated, because I always have to count out what I'm doing using Power Dupe as you say. Manipulations by data entry is usually the quickest. If only Designer had Macros, then we could store our manipulations for future tasks.

Anyway, happy coding and thanks for this.

[Fenrir0921]

I think you can add a "group after copying" option, so that you don't have to manually select a lot of layers

[Hangman]

11 minutes ago, Fenrir0921 said:

I think you can add a "group after copying" option, so that you don't have to manually select a lot of layers

As @Ash pointed out earlier in the thread, "you could group before, double click to select child and then do the operation so the duplicates do end up in a group together."

[MikeTO]

6 hours ago, Fenrir0921 said:

I think you can add a "group after copying" option, so that you don't have to manually select a lot of layers

Or perhaps an alternative: This feature currently leaves the original object selected instead of the duplicate which is the opposite of the Duplicate feature that leaves the duplicate selected. Perhaps just change this feature to select all of the duplicates. Then you could group them, move them, delete them, or do whatever you like. Some might want the original and duplicates to be selected although it seems more logical to just select the duplicates.

[ADRs]

Is there similar option for moving (and duplicating) like this feature but for guides instead?

[Affinityconfusesme]

no but you could post it in the feature request section of the forums.

[MikeTO]

4 minutes ago, ADRs said:

Is there similar option for moving (and duplicating) like this feature but for guides instead?

If there isn't I'll write a script to do this when scripting is available. Last week I was checking what the limit was for guides (you can create 105, not 48 as was previously reported) and it wasn't much fun to create that many guides.

I suggested to that person that if they really wanted more than 105 guides they could create text frames on the master and lock them to use as guides so you could use that idea to take advantage of Move Data Entry. Just draw a text frame the height or width of a page, make it very narrow or tall as applicable so it's effectively 0 (Affinity won't let you make it exactly 0 so enter something like 0.0001, depending on your measurement units). Then use the new Move Data Entry feature to make lots of evenly-spaced duplicates (or use Power Duplicate). Then lock the text frames and with Show Text Flow turned on you'll have a bunch of nice guides. Because they're locked you won't be able to click into them by mistake and they won't interfere with anything.

Cheers

[ADRs]

5 minutes ago, tzvi20 said:

no but you could post it in the feature request section of the forums.

Will do, thanks!

5 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Then use the new Move Data Entry feature to make lots of evenly-spaced duplicates (or use Power Duplicate). Then lock the text frames and with Show Text Flow turned on you'll have a bunch of nice guides. Because they're locked you won't be able to click into them by mistake and they won't interfere with anything.

This is what i was using right now (or even using regular line tool instead of textbox), the only drawbacks is i cannot hide it quickly along with other guides, because it's an "actual objects". and in my case, I'm not using it for creating a lot (>105) guides, another drawbacks is i also have activate the snap to object when i want to use that "guides", so i usually create an actual guide and snap it to those textbox/line afterwards.

One of my usage is to create some horizontal gutter guides, as affinity doesn't have a separate gutter value for columns and rows.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions!

[Affinityconfusesme]

@Ash mentioned that in 2.3 tables may get gutters.

[Petar Petrenko]

14 hours ago, tzvi20 said:

@Ash mentioned that in 2.3 tables may get gutters.

I hope they will be able to span multiple pages and have table notes, too.

[paulgfrey]

Can anyone tell me how to access this new Move/Duplicate menu in Affinity Designer on iPad Pro?

Not sure what would indicate hitting enter or return on the iPad.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, paulgfrey said:

Can anyone tell me how to access this new Move/Duplicate menu in Affinity Designer on iPad Pro?

Not sure what would indicate hitting enter or return on the iPad.

As Ash mentioned in the first post in this thread, and as shown in the What's New page, this function is available only on Windows and macOS.

[Frozner]

How to keep letter or numbers horizontally using data entry around circle just like speedometer ? 

[anto]

@Ash Is the bug with transform origins and line on pages other than the first page fixed?

Move Tool does not work in 2.3.0.2139.

 

 

[Rondem]

Thanks for this new feature. 

[ATP]

Is there really no UI option to open this dialog, only a keyboard shortcut?

[Dazzler]

After spotting this in the new features for 2.3 I thought I'd give it a try. Had to open all three packages (because the updates text doesn't mentoin which package it's in) and do a google search before I found how to show the Move/Duplicate dialogue using the keyboard shortcut! Fine once you know it's there, but easily forgotten and not easily found without instructions to look at. I think there should be some way to access this via the menus or icons.

Secondly, the angle confused me a lot before I realised it's for offsetting the position at an angle at a certain distance. But easily mixed up with the rotation. I intially thought it might have been to correct the object you were duplicating, so for example if you wanted to put numbers on a clock you'd make a text box then offset the origin to the centre of the clock and rotate 30 degrees with 11 duplicates, which works great but you might want to keep the numbers upright, which then means going to each duplicate and twisting them all back around. Would be great if there was checkbox that enabled rotating the object positions around the origin but keeping the orientation the same. I spent a while putting -30degrees into the angle field and wondering why the angle of the object wasn't changing at all. It might be worth grouping the Horizontal, Vertical, Distance and Angle into a group (or having a empty line after Angle) then having the rotation and scale in a separate group to avoid confusion?

[lenogre]

A suggestion.

I always group my copies. When you've made dozens of copies, it's a pain to select them all to make a group. 

[GarryP]

3 hours ago, lenogre said:

A suggestion.

Since this thread is in a beta archive, and the related functionality is now part of the commercial releases, you might be better off making this request/suggestion in the ‘normal’ Feedback & Suggestions section of the forums.

[Funghi]

Will this feature be added on the iPad end? Or if it’s already on, where to find the feature, thank you

btw, while on the Mac, when creating a new  shape on AD, while dragging and click arrow key the shape can be duplicated, yet on the iPad end, this feature has not yet to come, even with the Magic Keyboard, can you make it possible on the iPad end with the two features.

thank you