Change the direction of the ruler

[Throne777]

I'm sure there's a historical/technical reason why the ruler defaults with 0 at the top left on a document, meaning you measure down the page, but for everything I've used it for (posters, displays, etc), it's a total pain. I want to know how far something is up a poster/display for a stand (because I measure from the floor up, not from the ceiling down, to work out the space in a room), so I can work out if the bottom part of the design is going to be cut off by a table or someone's chair.

Is there any way to reverse the ruler, so 0 (mm/pixels/etc) starts at the bottom of the page and the top left of the ruler is where the max height of your document is?

I know you can set 0 at the bottom by dragging the top left corner of the rulers down, but that doesn't change the direction of the ruler.

Am I missing some obvious setting?

[Old Bruce]

Just now, Throne777 said:

Am I missing some obvious setting?

No. It is the way it is and I doubt that it will change in the foreseeable future.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Throne777 said:

so I can work out if the bottom part of the design is going to be cut off by a table or someone's chair.

As a workaround in such situations you could place reference objects on the layout page. Then size them as required independently from the ruler (via Transform panel), and just aligned to a common ground line. For instance simple horizontal strokes as guides for table, chair or peoples eye-level, or as more detailed drawings. Like so:

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Throne777 said:

I know you can set 0 at the bottom by dragging the top left corner of the rulers down, but that doesn't change the direction of the ruler.

What if you do that & just ignore the minus sign, so for instance -2ft corresponds to 2 feet above the ground reference?

[firstdefence]

What about temporarily rotating the document 180º then flip it back, although I like thomaso's idea.

[Return]

Like this perhaps?
 

 

 

 

[R C-R]

38 minutes ago, Return said:

Like this perhaps?

Really, for what the OP needs why not just ignore the minus sign(s) in the ruler, instead of adding those options to the UI?

[GaryLearnTech]

I know I'm going off at a slight tangent, but have you looked at the new-in-v2 Measure tool?  It's in both Photo v2 and Designer v2.

I've not had need to use it myself yet, but I remember seeing it (and an Area tool) featured when v2 was originally released.

• https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_measure.html 
• https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_measure.html

[Throne777]

On 8/4/2023 at 6:38 PM, R C-R said:

What if you do that & just ignore the minus sign, so for instance -2ft corresponds to 2 feet above the ground reference?

I was wondering if that would end up causing some weird formatting behaviour somewhere down the line?

[AndyWh]

A possible work around the lack of vertically incrementing ruler is to create an object that is the ruler. I have attached an example for A4 portrait designs.

In Publisher select the master page that is used for the design layout. Place the ruler object onto the master such that it is aligned with the page height, but placed just to the left of the spread. The transform panel supports accurate placement.

Set the View -> View Mode -> Clip to Canvas to OFF enabling off spread objects to be seen. The backslash key is a shortcut to toggle this setting. Because the ruler is outside the spread it does not print, but because it is on the master all design pages can see the ruler.

upward ruler.afdesign

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, Throne777 said:

I was wondering if that would end up causing some weird formatting behaviour somewhere down the line?

No, – unless you type negative values to define layout objects.

The ruler is an interface item, not a layout item. Accordingly you may switch the ruler's unit + position at any time without influence to the existing layout, as you also may type a certain unit in a value field different from the current ruler's unit.

Apart from the ruler, its zero position & measuring upwards: For 3D areas – like a poster behind a table or chair – you also need to consider the viewing position, its distance and angle. They usually vary for an identical setup.