Grid Tool

[EricP]

After the great spiral tool of 2.3, it would be great to have a grid tool. We all love grids and practical applications are infinite.

I know it is now very easy to duplicate lines with the power duplicate tool and publisher has a table tool, but having a grid in the form of a "shape" that can be adjusted with a few parameters anytime would really be powerful. 

controls could include :

• spacing : by interval or number of column/row
• border : yes/no
• gutter
• transform to curve : as lines or as polygons

[loukash]

Most of this is already easily possible via Quick Grids:
affinity.help/designer2/pages/ObjectControl/objectGrids.html
Only the border in example 2 would have to be added manually…

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, loukash said:

Only the border in example 2 would have to be added manually…

Quick Grid should work for that, too, if you start with making a grid of rectangles (as in #4, with gutter, but without the gutter).

[loukash]

12 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Quick Grid should work for that, too, if you start with making a grid of rectangles (as in #4, with gutter, but without the gutter).

Ah, right, that's actually the only way to accomplish this form with Quick Grid in one step.

[loukash]

Also, in example 1, two steps would be needed as you cannot "quick grid" two objects at the same time.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I think there would be less need for a grid tool if it was possible to have a pattern tool that allowed for such duplications. The basic shapes are already there, we just need a way to easily fill the canvas with such shapes that are preferably iterative and non-destructive.

[EricP]

22 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Quick Grid should work for that, too, if you start with making a grid of rectangles (as in #4, with gutter, but without the gutter).

Yes, quick grid can achieve the result (as the new power duplicate menu), but we're missing the ability to adjust the spacing and number of duplicates later, which a live shape would allow. Think of realigning different grids after scaling, changing the number of lines etc ... The workflow benefit would be before converting to curves, having the ability to re-adjust the parameters to fit the needs of the design.

You can also save presets, with different grid patterns that can be used for hatching, pattern fills etc.

Of course a more generic tool like the upcoming blender tool might bring this as well, but it may be overkill for some simple applications. We already have a "heart" and a "cloud" shape tool, which I am sure have some use, I feel a grid shape tool, although being basic, would have much more practical  use cases and not be too costly to implement.

More generally, I would love Serif to add vector effect adjustment layers, like the mesh warp introduced in V2.0. A live vector repeater would address this need and much more.

[EricP]

so I've been playing a bit with Publisher table tool and it's close to the grid tool I was asking for.

Always better to try to use what we already have rather than wait for new things. The table cell/border formatting is quite painful to use, but it you use the vector flood fill tool for fills and recolour adjustment layer for borders, add a bit of Fx, you get great creative possibilities. All done with live table objects ...