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How to snap circle to irregular path


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Hi everyone, I need help with the snap feature, I need to snap the circle in the corner of the triangle, I know this can be done with the corner tool by just entering the size of the circle, but it would be nice to have this new snap option, especially with more abstract or complex shapes.

Screenshot 2023-10-18 115335.png

Screenshot 2023-10-18 120343.png

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Affinity is no app for 2D/3D construction or school mathematics. It has no actual circles, but uses ellipse shapes based on Bézier curves (with only 4 nodes for a circular shape). The error is about 5/1000 deviation in radius, far too much for those use cases.

For mathematical construction other apps are far better suited.

For such kind of snapping there are tedious workarounds available, using grid, helper objects, move special options, rotating circles temporarily to allow snapping on shape bounding box (then rotate further to snap other directions).

again, all this makes no sense for serious CAD usage, Designer is intended for design purposes or lightweight adjustments on top of existing CAD files (color changes, adding or replacing some decorative shapes).

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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Try the Point Transform Tool. It can help at least in some scenarios.
https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_pointTransform.html

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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46 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Affinity is no app for 2D/3D construction or school mathematics. It has no actual circles, but uses ellipse shapes based on Bézier curves (with only 4 nodes for a circular shape). The error is about 5/1000 deviation in radius, far too much for those use cases.

For mathematical construction other apps are far better suited.

For such kind of snapping there are tedious workarounds available, using grid, helper objects, move special options, rotating circles temporarily to allow snapping on shape bounding box (then rotate further to snap other directions).

again, all this makes no sense for serious CAD usage, Designer is intended for design purposes or lightweight adjustments on top of existing CAD files (color changes, adding or replacing some decorative shapes).

I mean, Illustrator has this feature (and iirc use ellipses as well), that's why I was asking if Designer had it.

Screenshot 2023-10-18 130724.png

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The same applies to Illustrator. Ok for illustrative use, no suitable for math/science (education) or CAD (construction)

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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If I need precision I do it either way programmatically, but in Affinity apps as a workaround, definining a fine raster/grid and align geometric objects temporary accordingly to the grid and then using "Snap to grid" & "Snap to baseline grid" should at least do this approximately too (with lesser precision).

fine_grid.png.7946bfb703cebc3874670e597ba5d9a8.png

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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For surgically precise object alignment (and a bunch of other weird tools and effects) I actually bought VectorStyler while it was on sale some time ago.
I don't like it otherwise as a tool to work with though: too cluttered and unfocused, suffering from Featuritis™. But it cooperates fine with the Affinity apps simply via copy & paste.
The feature you're looking for is called there Collision Snapping.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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1 hour ago, loukash said:

I don't like it otherwise as a tool to work with though: too cluttered and unfocused, suffering from Featuritis™. 

Agreed. The UI & in particular the toolbar is so cluttered with around ~40 buttons (!!) that while I bought a license for it I basically never use it. 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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8 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

The same applies to Illustrator. Ok for illustrative use, no suitable for math/science (education) or CAD (construction)

I don't get your point, when designing or illustrating this feature is incredibly useful in a lot of uses, and Designer happens to be a direct alternative to Illustrator, so it makes sense and would be nice if devs replicate this feature in Designer.

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@R C-R @loukash have either of you checked out the new 1.2 beta update of Vectorstyler? It's got massive updates including collapsing panels to icons. You both mention its somehow clunky and has too many features but it's no more complex than illustrator. Granted, designer is a lot more simplistic but also lacks a ton of features still. I use Vectorstyler daily and never felt it was clunky. I just doing understand the negativity toward vectorstyler. You admit you use it for the features affinity is missing but then you feel the need to be negative about it overall. I don't get it. Why not complain that affinity is lacking tools? 

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2 hours ago, lalod said:

I don't get your point, when designing or illustrating this feature is incredibly useful in a lot of uses, and Designer happens to be a direct alternative to Illustrator, so it makes sense and would be nice if devs replicate this feature in Designer.

Agree it would be nice to have. 
 

 

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

a lot more simplistic but also lacks a ton of features still

In the past three decades I've been enjoying quite a few pro apps that were "simplistic" and "lacked a ton of features". Recent example: Packzview which lacks at least two tons of features compared to Acrobat Pro but it has exactly those few features that I was using Acrobat for in 90% of cases… (other 5% I can accomplish with other apps on Ventura while about 5% still missing so that I may occasionally need to copy a PDF to my old MacBook to inspect it with Acrobat X)

2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

the negativity toward vectorstyler

You should have seen all my posts on this forum with "negativity toward Affinity apps" then… :D (search the forum for my user name and e.g. "PDF export", hehe)
Those are just tools, not religions.
I wouldn't have bought Vectorstyler if I didn't see any "positivity" in it as well. Heck, I bought Designer v1 in 2014 but have barely used it until 2019 when I decided that both Affinity as well as me (!) are ready to leave Adobe CS5 behind.

I consider VS an extension / "plugin" to the Affinity suite, much like the afforementioned Packzview. Fits my workflow all right.
To each their own.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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5 hours ago, lalod said:

would be nice if devs replicate this feature in Designer

Definitely! Please post a feature request in the feedback forum or bump an existing one if any.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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